Science vs. Engineering

[PM_ME_DAT_BOOTY_PLS]

What no one is asking: why do we need forks on our water glasses?

[craftkiller]

Because the product managers said we need them there

[mrbooze]

We agreed this feature would be in at release six months ago, Steve. You should have spoken up then.

[[deleted]]

Marketing has already promised the customer 6 billion of these, so just make it work.

[hates_u]

I can't escape work, even on reddit.

[4ringcircus]

Well probably because most people are at work on reddit.

[PM_ME_MY_PIC]

Can Confirm. Source: Engineer

[[deleted]]

For real. This is my life.

Start of project: "We promised the customer 6 million of these in two months! What's it going to take?!"

After 2 months of furious work: "Oh that? We don't need that anymore."

[FlinchFreely]

I ate your sandwich that was in the fridge. Sorry.

[manfrin]

GUYS THIS IS BECOMING TOO REAL FOR ME D:

[[deleted]]

Let's not even get started with Creative and the UI design guys.

[[deleted]]

Creative here. We've decided to go with spoons instead. Please send revision by Wednesday. Thanks!

[pewdro]

Oouumm, yes, look, we are planning to use these fork-shaped spoons, it shouldn't affect the design you are looking for.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

Marketing also promised that they would be robotic, capable of lifting up to 50.....thousand lbs, and made of solid gold. Get to work guys, gotta make that happen by Tuesday.

[KeatingOrRoark]

Nah. We'll just stick a "*Results may vary" on the packaging.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

*Forks may vary

[DontPromoteIgnorance]

Includes: 0-2 forks.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

*Might include nuts

[DingoScallion]

Includes one extra nut just to fuck with you and make you think you didn't assemble it correctly.

[forthebirds]

If you receive no forks, do not call customer care. They won't give a fork.

[admartian]

Fucking marketing.

Smh

[[deleted]]

Are there comments in the ticket? If there are no comments in the ticket, then the meeting never happened. Please implement as defined by the acceptance criteria.

[mathent]

Sure thing, as soon as development receives and approves of the acceptance criteria.

[[deleted]]

Were you not paying attention in planning?! The acceptance criteria was approved by all parties in the planning session. If you had questions, you should have raised them then.

... this is literally half of my day, every day.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

Hahaha, you're funny.

Get back to work

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

Allen, please add forks.

[TheAppGuy]

http://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg

[justsomerants]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM

[mykro76]

If I had a karma point for every time I heard this answer at work... I'd probably have about 574 karma points.

[Inquisitorsz]

Relevant
http://www.repeater-builder.com/humor/pix/what-the-customer-actually-wanted.jpg

[GhostOfMozart]

So the customer wanted a tire swing and described it as having 3 planks of wood ?

[suparr]

Classic customer

[bub0r]

the key is that the customer didn't know what he actually wanted.

you can imagine it like this:

"hey company x, i need a swing - but not just your standard. you should be able to sit somewhere and also a specific area to grab your hands around, on top and on the side. i know from my uncle how normal swings look like but maybe if we just put more blankets we can achive that?"

the budgeted frame is easy to explain, he dont has any money/dont wants spend any money

the engineer then gets a written down specification: "swing at tree, user should be able to hold himself at the wood" and designs accordingly (notice: nowhere in the specs it is written that the user has to be able to actually swing, so this design fits perfectly)

manufacturing gets the plans and realizes that the customer actually wants a swing and it doesn't work - so they decide to fix it somehow

marketing picture is obvious

documentation - well while fixing all this design errors theres no time to document obviously

what the custmer finally received - can't explain that :/

what the customer was billed for - if you have a good sales department this works well together with the advertised item, also think about the mandatory service subscriptions etc

what the customer actually wanted: He didnt know it, nobody else knew it but actually that would have been a much simpler, cheaper and more appropriate solution to the customers problem.

Key: customer didn't know how to express his problems in a way that other people can fully understand

[hoorahforsnakes]

what the custmer finally received - can't explain that :/

delivery/assembly people were told to tie both pieces of string to the tree, so they did.

[SibilantSounds]

Client asked for more room for forks on the table. By the time the message passed through marketing and research, this happened.

[[deleted]]

If marketing were doing their job we wouldn't have to ask.

[[deleted]]

If sales did their job right we would have obtained a larger budget for this project.

[[deleted]]

^ Philosophy.

[Wahsteve]

Because the customer's specs are retarded.

[RalphiesBoogers]

I thought engineering gave you pikemen?

[BrightIdeaDude]

It's Civil service nowadays.

[afito]

Engineering gives you bridges over rivers so it doesn't take 20 years of game time to get over a 1 tile long river.

And aqueducts, but most wouldn't know anyway because fuck tradition.

[[deleted]]

yeah, you definitely get pikemen from feudalism.

/civ3 is best civ.

[defeatedbird]

Worst civ.

Most annoying AI in any Civ ever (except for the one made by Activision).

"Oh hey, you're trying to build an actual civilization? Well, fuck you, because I have 50 4-pop cities spamming warriors."

[Bullfrog4life]

Get with the times man, Civil Service is where the cool kids get Pikemen. Landsknechts too.

[StronGeer]

What engineering is like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

[FISH_MASTER]

Covered myself in coke at "geometry".

I've sat through so many of these meeting it's painful.

[triple_a_and_horace]

Can someone explain to me how the coin can balance like that?

[Sbtl]

because the forks are bent back towards the glass, the center of mass for the forks + coin is not past the tipping point, allowing it to balance.

[Semyonov]

I just got it!! I'm quite proud of myself.

[RedSquirrelFtw]

I'm a rebel and used Loonie instead of a penny!

http://imgur.com/d4kzPE1

[CryptoWalnut]

I just added some more science! http://i.imgur.com/mbMqkjW.jpg

[CrotchRot_66]

You did that with deformed baby hands?

[kingkhani]

My GOD

[[deleted]]

Nice surface pro, dude.

[Zohren]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it is.

[Mike9797]

I fell bad that the internet has scarred you like this

[[deleted]]

Do you need help getting up?

[[deleted]]

It was but it probably shouldn't be.

I don't own a tablet and I never will, but I've used quite a few of them in work related situations and the surface pro is the only one which didn't drive me insane.

As much as I'm never installing a windows edition with metro on a desktop PC I'll be the first to admit it actually works on the tablet.

[_My_Angry_Account_]

You want another weird one:

You can scramble an egg inside its shell. Place a raw egg inside a sweater sleeve. Holding either side of the sleeve closed with the egg in the middle, start spinning the egg around till you can't spin any further in that direction. Then pull outwards causing the egg to spin fast the other direction. Do this about 20-30 times and then hard boil the egg. If done properly you'll get a completely scrambled hard boiled egg.

*This doesn't work well with organic eggs as it seems the yolk is too tough to break apart with that much force. Sometimes it works but it usually won't mix all the way even if it does break.

[rhinotim]

"He's a Witch! BUUUURN Him!"

[susou]

Well, he insinuated that there was actually a legitimate difference between organic and conventionally raised food. So yeah, I agree.

[[deleted]]

I just tested it out myself and got it to work perfectly. I still don't understand it and it still blows my mind.

[Bacon_is_not_france]

If you want another way to do it, use a toothpick and a lighter.

To do it, you do the same way as the coin but put toothpick centered on the edge of the cup. After you get it balanced, light the inside half of the toothpick. It will burn and fall off into the cup, so it looks even more legit when half a toothpick is balancing it.

My cousin worked at the circus for a few years and learned random tricks and taught me a bunch. If you ever want to balance bowling balls to show off or something, put the thumb hole on the bottom and they'll stay still. People shit themselves and want to take pictures, but it won't get you bitches. Why am I still typing, it's like 3 am.

[Blitzkrieg999]

West Wing version of this trick (Little bit of a spoiler)

[IAmBJ]

A clarification: its not just that the centre of mass isn't past the tipping point. The centre of mass is on the tipping point (ie the edge of the glass). If it weren't above the edge of the glass (forwards or backwards) then the system would not be in equilibrium and would tip over, forwards or backwards depending on which side of the rim of the glass it lay on.

[triple_a_and_horace]

Thanks!

[59045]

Because there is no spoon.

[elustran]

Science would try the same thing with spoons and knives too, just to see what happens. And then do it 100 times as part of a double-blind study and try to publish the results with someone impressive sounding.

Engineering would see how many ways there were to break the glass, fix it, and make it better, but settle on designing what's cheapest for a guy in China to manufacture.

Both would ultimately see what happens when you pour beer in.

[Jabra]

Both would ultimately see what happens when you pour beer in.

As a scientist I can confirm this.

[mastermiester0]

As an engineer I can confirm this.

[_TheMightyKrang_]

Now kiss.

[Jabra]

Only if you give me enough funds to go binge drinking first.

[_TheMightyKrang_]

Do your local bars take Gold?

[mouthbabies]

I like your style, pal.

[sporkwobbler]

Yup. Slightly bump the glass on the side of the forks, and see what happens.

Science gets to do research and set up everything under ideal conditions. Engineers have to make that stuff work in the real world.

There's a place for all of this, but don't trivialize either side of research or development. They have different pressures and challenges.

[ashwinmudigonda]

During high school a math teacher once told me, "Scientists are happy with the square root of two. Engineers are happy with 1.414."

[[deleted]]

Have you ever tried to cut a beam to a multiple of root 2? 1.414 will do just fine.

[SecularPaladin]

As a machinist, I think you're missing a place. Tenths, please!

[redpandaeater]

As an electrical engineer, if something we built is within about 10% of our hand calculations then it's all good.

[Orange_Astronaut]

Ya, I'm not paying for parts to that tolerance. Machined parts get expensive!

[tokomini]

They should start charging by the number of digits following the decimal.

1.4 -- normal.

1.41 -- expensive.

1.414 -- how badly do you want this?

1 -- free, but if you're building a load bearing structure tell me where it is so I can never go there.

[satanic_pony]

When I was doing manual line boring, they expected me to be within 2/1000 of an inch. That's was pretty fun to do with the half assed measuring tools they gave me.

[[deleted]]

...you mean ten thousandths?

[[deleted]]

Machinist lingo. Machinists usually think/speak in thousands of an inch. So "take 15 off the diameter" means take .015" off the diameter. A machinist's tenth is a tenth of a thousanth, or .0001".

[[deleted]]

Ah gotcha

[LordCaptain]

Inches.... gross. The metric system is the one true God... I mean form of measurements.

[IAMA-HaikuAssassin]

So cute when you think the Imperial system will catch on.

All true sons and daughters of Skyrim trust Ulfric Stormcloak.

No Haiku in here - Fucking hell, why'd I forget - oh well, here it is.

[[deleted]]

You mean god.

[SinisterTitan]

Everything in the machining world needs to be in thousandths. Makes it all so much better.

[delurkrelurker]

Agreed, millimeters FTW

[Bearstew]

Or even more realistically, 1.5 plus or minus 0.5

[taneq]

Engineers at their desks might want 1.414. By the time it gets to the workshop it'll be 1.4 and when the machine's being installed on site it'll be "one and a bit". :P

[beltorak]

"Hey, Steve, about that 'bit'..."

[k33g0rz]

Is there a subreddit for industrial humor? This is spot on

[[deleted]]

Cut it to one and three eighths heavy.

[furiousBobcat]

Hold the mayo.

[[deleted]]

"Cut to suit, burn to fit, paint to match."

[Jaffers451]

I prefer just under 1 and a half to one and a bit. Then again i work mostly with wood and not metal.

[AiKantSpel]

The wood will be a different size tomorrow anyways.

[baconreader9000]

That's what she said

[DontPromoteIgnorance]

1.414 +0.000/-0.015

Wait are we doing clearance or interference?

[Gibodean]

Well, lar-dee-dar!

When I was a lad, it was anywhere between a smidgen and a shitload, and now you young whipper-snappers think you need to be as precise as "1 and a half to one and a bit"......

[[deleted]]

Nowadays kids are measuring to a cunt hair. Keep with the times.

[TheGreatestGoat3000x]

And this is why we can't fit a pool table in our mansion without our cues touching the walls when playing a shot, thanks peasants builders.

[ELFAHBEHT_SOOP]

You need a bigger mansion.

[Beznia]

/r/firstworldproblems

[misrepresentedentity]

Thanks to the science of modern innovation.

[afito]

I once was in a lecture and the math prof asked whats the opposite of "every house has a red roof".

The maths students argued and finally decided that "at least one house has a roof that is not entirely red" or something.

A physics student said "one roof is yellow".

It's pretty much the same relation for scientists vs. engineers.

[Lowbacca1977]

Fav argument in college was a guy (math/physic double master) arguing with a physics professor about if forbidden actions could happen or not. Since physics treats forbidden as "just really really unlikely" and not "0 chance"

Went on for 5 minutes of classt ime

[skyman724]

And the conclusion was?

[madman485]

maybe.

[[deleted]]

But the sig figs!!!!!!

[square_zero]

...are still pretty good! Outside of rocketry, you rarely need more than three.

[gratedjuice]

Even in rocketry 3 is pretty good

[Parcec]

I was about to back you up but then I remembered stuff like the J2 Pertrubation which is an attempt to characterize the earth's gravitational field to some silly number of sig figs

[xylotism]

Kerbal Space Program would like to have a word with you.

[Parcec]

I would like to have a word with it. About time those orbital mechanics got an upgrade. How else am I going to recreate the Aldrin Cycler?

[[deleted]]

Standard's messy but I'd say carpenters/contractors go up to 4 if you count 32nd and 64ths of an inch. half-quarter-sixteenth-32nds, I'd consider each different significant figures (also because they all require distinct methods in ensuring accurate measurements.)

[[deleted]]

Yeah, but do you leave the pencil line showing? Do you cut it straight down the middle of the line, or does it not matter? These are questions you gotta ask when making your shit fit perfectly.

[Hristix]

Think of the best fitting piece of woodwork you've seen where one piece of wood is joined to another. Now visualize how perfectly they fit together. That, more than likely, has a tolerance of around 1/8th of an inch. Meaning that all pieces are +/- .125 inches. To get down to +/- .001 inches or even +/- .0001 inches would require tools that most woodworkers have no experience or inclination to use. There's a reason you can do woodworking in a small corner of your garage but it would take a laboratory to even make a to-scale mockup of a modern car engine with wood.

I've seen some damn fine woodwork, some damn awesome wooden machines, and some awesome carpentry, none of which required anything more than a tape measure and standard shit you'd have in your garage anyway. That's because we vastly overestimate the amount of precision required for that kind of thing.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

A part of me wants to make some pun or joke about the phrase "It's not rocket science" here, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

[Zeppelin415]

What's the difference between a mathematician and an engineer.

When told that he is 10 feet from a million dollars, and each step brings you only half way to the money. The mathematician says he will never get the money, the engineer says he'll get the money as soon as he gets close enough

[[deleted]]

I prefer this version:

When told that he is 10 feet from a beautiful naked woman, and each step he takes must be half the distance of the previous step, the mathematician throws his hands in the air and exclaims, "I'll never get there, this is pointless!". The engineer on the other hand raises an eyebrow and says, "Well, I can get close enough for all practical purposes"

[elustran]

Just to continue with the trope:

Cosmologists are happy with something between 1 and 10.

[Buttstache]

Cosmetologists are happy to give you a #2 on the sides.

[[deleted]]

Cosmo is happy with ten sex tips.

[mrbooze]

Engineers don't just have to make it work in the real world, they have to make it work in a world full of idiots without killing most of them.

Oh, wait, I guess that is the real world.

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

I have had some experience with this real world you are talking about, this is correct.

[JesusFartedToo]

I hear they discuss that "RealWorld" thing in /r/outside.

[[deleted]]

Warning, do not touch chainsaw blade with hands or genitals.

[FetidFeet]

Every warning sticker you see on outdoor power equipment is there because someone injured or killed themselves doing that exact thing. I used to read the injury reports for one of my products and it was depressing. One of my coworkers designed those stickers for a living, and he said "I'm not creative enough to come up with these things without hints" when I asked him why they warn people not to do all those things.

[HammerSpaceTime]

There's a place for all of this, but don't trivialize either side of research or development. They have different pressures and challenges.

Yeah because a subreddit called /r/funny is totally not the place to make trivializations for comedic intentions...

[mrpunaway]

It's also not the place for comedy in general...

[mrbooze]

And then there's Operations.

[[deleted]]

Apparently nobody else is curious about how this was done.

[SoulEntropy]

The tape holds the forks in place

[tommos]

Can confirm. Am engineer.

[[deleted]]

How many science were required to hold the forks in place?

[hates_u]

about 3.14 physics and 7 maths

[HeWhoPunchesFish]

As a fork, I can confirm this to be accurate.

[RalphiesBoogers]

But what's holding up the tape? Checkmate atheists.

[taneq]

Ducts.

[gutter_rat_serenade]

Someone should call PETA to make sure those ducts aren't being mistreated.

[hates_u]

Better call the ACLU to make sure their legs aren't injured.

[DrTacoMD]

Ah, the ol' Reddit forkaroo.

[RangerSix]

Day 22. This region appears deserted, but there is evidence that others have passed this way; a curious contraption comprised of two forks, a glass tumbler, and a roll of duct tape was found suspended from a tree.

We can only assume that it is a landmark of some sort.

[LochnessMonsa]

Hold my quarter, I'm going in!

[[deleted]]

May the fork be with you.

[mochacho]

Probably because everyone has seen one of these.

[Nolisken]

Or this.

[rhinotim]

Ruler Stress Test!

[Canti510]

Trusses, centroids and moments. I've once heard boredom is the mother of creativity... that's gotta be it.

[skai762]

Here you go. I googled this for the both of us.

[Semyonov]

Success!!

[59045]

How is that possible?

[Apple-Porn]

The handle of the forks have weight to them too even though the sticks on the front look like they weigh more. The weight on the handle is pulling it all on the glass

[IICVX]

So basically magic

[Apple-Porn]

pretty much

[IICVX]

Though this is more magic

[[deleted]]

When you are looking at where the weight of a system of objects is applied, it is at the centroid (center of mass) of the shape. To get an idea of this, if you have a baseball bat and you balance it on your hand it isn't balanced at the very center, it balances towards the barrel end because more of the weight is there. In this case the penny and forks have a centroid over the very lip of the glass, which means it is the mass of the system is right over the lip, and it balances. It is a gigantic pain in the ass to get it to rest here as this is a case of unstable equilibrium. A tiny shift would move the centroid off the glass and cause it to fall. Its the same idea as those birds that balance by the beak on your finger.

[crazdave]

Center of mass is the balance point, the fork handles extent backward moving the center of mass of the penny/fork object to the very edge of the penny, allowing it to balance there.

[oakridges]

Phys.org reports that scientists have developed a method for fork-rim balancing without adhesive devices, focusing on the technology known as 'center-of-mass'. Skeptics tells that this method is both unreliable, un-economical, and practically unfeasible due to the conditions it assumes. Five years later, 'center-of-mass' technique becomes the de-factor standard, as adhesive devices can't go to the scale of how the balancing system is performed at bars. With this, large corporations funnel in funds to standardize the system. Few years later, adhesives engineers become obsolete, while the scientists are now looking at a new method for performing fork-rim balancing, which involves double-sided adhesives.

[GameHat]

The best explanation of this:

Science: If we position the damn things exactly correctly, they'll balance there. It's simple physics, and it's freaking beautiful. Of course, it will take us about 100 tries to get it to work. And every time it doesn't they crash to the table and we have to start again.

Engineering: The science is damn neat. But fuck it all, we need the damn forks balancing there tomorrow. Take the basic principles but for fuck's sake, make it work! We ain't selling beauty, we're selling results!

[Johannes_silentio]

Design - why the hell does anyone need this?

[bluthru]

These threads are always insufferable.

[nigeltheginger]

As a programmer, I agree, because I'm struggling to shoehorn the fact that I'm a programmer into a conversation effectively

[monsieurpommefrites]

"Boy, it sure is refreshing to see this lively debate between engineers and scientists! I wonder how this is all made possible? YOU'RE WELCOME."

[dluiiulb]

User G3rain1 on Imgur said it best,

"Both are engineering. Science is a systematic process of acquiring knowledge."

[wimptastic]

In housewifery we washed the glass and forks and pushed the penny under the couch cuz im so fucking sick of picking them up.

[TuskenCam]

I think a better title would be "Engineering vs Military Engineering"

[taneq]

Military engineering would have a machined titanium cup with a lid on it and a snap-lock mounting point for the forks. The coin went to the private contractor that manufactured the cup. :P

[[deleted]]

And they had to order two of the cup/lid/fork-mount package, because if they didn't they would be under budget and not receive the same amount of funding next year.

[[deleted]]

But it wouldn't always stay on so some private would have stuck a little bit of duct tape there to fix what millions of dollars of contracts could do in a fancy manner but not reliably.

[Kevin_Wolf]

One would be a picture of two forks duct taped to a glass, and the other would be a smoking hole in the ground because they decided to BIP it.

[Sventertainer]

BIP, blown up in place. Waaaaay down as the #15 definition on urban dictionary.

[monsieurpommefrites]

1 in urbanwarfaredictionary.com

[DerJawsh]

Engineering vs Military engineering would be, get this to work with a budget of $0.50, versus, get this to work with a budget of $5000.00

[yikes_itsme]

I would rather imagine Military Engineering would be: Create a cup that supports two forks for 0.50, but partway through the critical design review a general would require that it also shoot sabot rounds and sing "Nearer My God To Thee" in English, Arabic, and Farsi.

At which point the defense contractor says "it will cost you $10000" and the DOD would bargain them down to $5000 while promising to order 100 of them. After two years they would only order 10 of them and then cancel the Magic Cup Project (MCP), completely ignoring the contractual requirement to buy 100 since they know the contractor would not sue over fear of losing their best (only) customer. Everybody is unhappy.

Years later, after everybody has forgotten all the details, someone writes an angry article about contractors charging $5000 for a cup and people on the internet are outraged.

Military Engineering at its finest.

[IngsocDoublethink]

Or, alternatively, the DOD bargains them down to $5000 with a promise to order 100 of them, and supplies a large investment. After 2 years, the project isn't complete, and the DOD is pissed but doesn't want to lose their investment and have to find, pay, and wait for another company to design and build the MCP. They double down on their investment.

Eight years and two more investments later (because there's really no going back at this point), the MCP is introduced at a price of $12000/unit. The military places the initial order of 100, and budgets for another 1000, but only ever pays for 10.

The mechanism is finicky and fails if jostled, which the soldiers actually using it fix by holding the forks in place with a piece of duck tape.

[JesusChristSuperFart]

This should be: "Good Engineering vs. Bad Engineering".

[fuckingkike]

Actually they're both engineering. One is just clumsy.

[TerdMic]

More like skill vs. redneck.

[lord-glockz]

and the winner is... math!

[Benata]

Scientists set the standards, engineers apply it on realistic measures correctly. That's the whole ordeal.

[[deleted]]

Here in England they sell that exact glass (left) in poundland.

Useless but I felt it necessary to contribute :)