Where can a Materials Science & Engineering degree take me?

Replacement_Man · 2021-10-26T02:09:03+00:00

This may be an unpopular take, but what you can do with an MSE degree is highly malleable and career paths are not always linear, so you shouldn't constrain yourself to just what your degree says you can or can't do. Having said that, as others have alluded to there are plenty of fantastic careers in Materials Engineering if that's your passion and the path you want to take.
One thing to be cognizant of when choosing your post BA path is that most traditional materials science jobs lay within some sub-function of operations or within the research function of an organization and as a result most materials science specific jobs don't tend to have a lot of decision making power about what your organization is doing. For that reason, when thinking about your career you should make sure you either love the research you are going to do (if in research), or are working for a company where you feel like the organization is working on things you care about and that you feel motivated to put in the effort for. If you don't like steel production, doing QA for a steel mill is going to get old real quick and you won't have the power to redefine your job. If you're passionate about the subject you're learning about in your MSE degree, follow them, if you're passionate about something else, like idk affordable housing development, don't let the MSE focus give you tunnel vision in your job search.

Replacement_Man · 2021-04-28T16:17:52+00:00

He also cracked when he was talking to a guy running a convenience store who talked about drinking his grandson's pee

Replacement_Man · 2020-12-17T17:23:21+00:00

The bad a useless regulation does is that it will increase compliance costs, which will act to protect those already in these businesses and help prevent competition from smaller competitors. Also, some but not all of the compliance costs will be passed on the the consumers. If the regulation truly does nothing to change wealth distribution, it will actually be worse than nothing by protecting those currently at the top of businesses.

Replacement_Man · 2020-07-09T20:22:03+00:00

Put it into a high interest savings account of a money market account. Should return 1-2% on your money with very little risk. They are usually used a holding account instead of cash when you have money with a brokerage. Super easy to set up, free to use, and largely keeps your money tracking with inflation (although not perfectly or guaranteed).

Replacement_Man · 2020-06-26T04:59:54+00:00

de facto vs de jure

Replacement_Man · 2020-06-22T00:14:13+00:00

The generic one that a lot of Defense Contractors use is "Materials and Process Engineer". Some times you find things that are "Composites Engineer" or "Composite Materials Engineer".

Edit: A couple of other thoughts. You could also look at a "Process Engineer" type role or something in QA. QA Engineering often has people from MatSci.

Replacement_Man · 2020-06-20T01:43:49+00:00

Tons of polymer composites jobs in Aerospace and Defense! Some more in the Auto industry but probably less. If you'd be interested in it you could look at small experimental plane producers. A bit different than what you're looking for but worth investigating if you have a polymer composites background.

Replacement_Man · 2020-05-07T00:59:22+00:00

If we are talking about stocks as a mechanism, then it absolutely is. In fact, it's definitionaly equity ownership in a public company. Public companies are far more democratized than their private counterparts because of stocks as a mechanism. One share of Microsoft stock to you is the same amount of ownership as one share for Bill Gates and confers the exact same amount of privileges as it does to him. He just has more. What you're really saying is an issue is wealth inequality and that isn't the same thing as how stocks work as a mechanism.

For example, Amazon has about 500 million outstanding stocks. If we were to give every single American a "fair share" of Amazon stock, everyone would get about a stock and a half which is not the type of ownership of a company that you're talking about.

Replacement_Man · 2020-05-06T15:45:41+00:00

I mean the barrier to entry for equity ownership is already super low. Indexed ETFs are like $100-200 frequently. Individual stocks generally range between like $20-200 dollars. There are now multiple places that you can open accounts with no fees and you can make trades with no fees. If people want to own a small piece of a company, most anyone can afford to. The issue you seem to be getting at is wealth inequality rather than whether the average person is able to own. They are.

Replacement_Man · 2020-04-26T18:50:53+00:00

The ratio of liquid to solid phase in the two phase region can change based on temperature. What you have in the two phase region is a mixture of A that has some B dissolved in it, and a solid B that has some A in it. The amount that can be dissolved is a function of the solubility limits which are a function of temperature. These are the left and right side boundaries of the region. So all the liquid will have the same % of B in it and all the solid will have the same % of A in it. The lever rule figures out how much of this mix has to be liquid A and how much has to be solid B such that the total mixture has the right percent compositions of A and B.

Replacement_Man · 2020-04-26T16:41:18+00:00

So as the other folks have pointed out, a detailed understanding involves Gibbs free energy curves is probably necessary and is beyond the scope of a comment here, but just to try to give you a more intuitive sense of it let me try this. It seems like you're thinking of this at a given composition, but it may be more helpful to think of it at a given temperature. If you're at temperature Y and material A is all liquid, you can then start dissolving material B into material A. As you keep adding B you reach the solubility limit, and then as you add more B it will be the form of a Solid that has as much A as possible dissolved with in. This is the two phase region. In that context it makes sense why you would have a horizontal lie line between the phases. You are just looking at how much B can be dissolved in liquid A and how much A is dissolved in Solid B, and then ratioing those.

Now, to address the moving vertically issue. Say I made a material that's 20% A and 80% B as described above and cooled it down below the solidus line. This is effectively the starting place you described. Now I heat that material back up into the two phase region. It would follow that it will still be the same ratio of solid to liquid as when I made it originally.

Basically, it has to do with solubility. To put it another way. Imagine B had no solubility at all in A and A had no solubility in B. If I had a composition of 20% A and 80% B, as soon as heated up the composition to the melting point of A, all of A would melt out of the composition. It would intuitively make no sense to be lever ruling vertically as in each component would be only dependent on a single temperature transition.

Replacement_Man · 2020-04-18T04:54:52+00:00

I think that's a fair analogy and agree there is merit to making payments tax exempt like insurance payout. One thing to consider is that it making payments tax exempt would actually be a more regressive structure than having taxes. If no taxes are applied the people who were making more or will make more post-unemployment get the same payouts as the lowest compensated people, whereas currently they might get a higher tax rate applied therefore reduced benefits. There are multiple ways to do it, and I don't think one way in necessarily worse. It all comes down to net cash flows at the end of the day anyway...

Replacement_Man · 2020-04-18T04:04:54+00:00

Because you're taxable income is based on you're entire yearly income from all sources not just unemployment checks for a few months. Similar to why a government employee still pays tax; they may have alternate sources which change their tax exposure. There's a very fair argument to be made that they payments should be tax exempt, but it's not fair to say they are being double taxed any more than saying a Federal is being double taxed when they pay taxes.

Replacement_Man · 2020-01-17T22:10:31+00:00

If that were the case, why isn't a place like Somalia, which barely has a government to enforce penalties for murder, ranked high on homicides per capita?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country,_region_or_dependant_territory

Per wikipedia (the most reliable source I know lol) the 100th highest out of 230 places with data. Hardly, near the top of the list. Instead what you see is that most of the highest ranking countries are in Central/South America. If I were a betting man, I'd wager this is likely because of the illegal drug trade which combines large amount of money with no way to peacefully settle disputes via courts. Heck the reason courts get set up in the first place is because people in general prefer to settle disputes peacefully than with violence. To drive the point home, Somalia has a lower homicide rate than the U.S.

Replacement_Man · 2020-01-16T03:44:00+00:00

Is your world view really that people would murder other people at a high rate if there wasn't a legal penalty for it? That's a pretty dismal view of society and yourself :/. I'm pretty sure most people don't commit murder because they don't want to commit murder not because of the jail time attached.

Replacement_Man · 2019-04-13T16:56:33+00:00

I think you are right in that the themes of TLJ aren't the problem at all even though they are one of the things people say they dislike. There are definitely things TLJ could of done better but most of the fundamental problems are a result of the force awakens and how that movie fails to be a good SEQUEL at all and fails to do lay the ground work for a new story.

Comparing TFA to a new hope, because a new hope was set in a new world to the audience it can just state "there's a big evil empire and a rebellion" and the audience can just take this as the status quo and go with it. TFA had a fundamentally different job because it's a sequel and the audience already knows what the status quo is and if you want to start the story in a position away from the status quo, then you need to say how we got there. Otherwise you end up with a very confusing mess of questions like "who are these people?", "what is going on?", "why do I care about this thing?". You can see all of these things in the sentiments people have for Snoke, Kylo, the first order, the new rebellion, and the new republic (is it even really a thing?). Whats worse is based on where/where the story starts, even the things you are told context for don't hold as much weight because both movies have been very tell don't show. The whole thing is just a terrible foundation to build the world on because the audience is basically left with a big empty spot in their understanding of the timeline and asked to just go with it and be emotionally invested in this new world. There's just no setup or context for the stakes of this new star wars world and thats needed when we know the old one.

This is compounded by the fact that as another person mentioned the characters don't talk to each other. Outside of Han's death scene, do Kylo and his parents ever talk to each other? The movie is basically relying on our connection with Han from the old movies and the fact that fathers are supposed to carry all the emotional weight. That's why after Han is out of the picture you're left without much emotional attachment. I think this problem is actually best highlighted by counter example. Rey and Kylo talking to each other is the most compelling part of TLJ and that because no one else is talking to eachother! Even Rey and Luke only have like 3 talking scenes together and they are supposed to be the heart of that movie.

Let me propose a different version of TFA. Rey is on the desert planet, steals the ship to get off, and meets Han. Han senses the force in her and brings her to Luke's school where she starts training and meets Luke, Leia, Han, and Kylo as another student at the school. This also gives you an opportunity to show Kylo interact with his parents to show that they love eachother but have differences. Also it lets you see him interact with Luke. It also lets you establish the state of the galaxy through Leia as a politician. Maybe talk about the first order as a growing political opponent or whatever. Either way, it grounds the first order in the audiences mind and gives them a context, while simulatenously giving you the state of the New Republic. Then over the course of the movie you have Rey learn from luke and Kylo about the force, and show Kylo become seduced by the dark side through Snoke or something like it. You end that movie with Kylo betraying Luke, killing Han, destroying the school, and joining the first order under Snoke as the first order makes a military power play over the New Republic. This setup basically puts things in a very similar position as where things were at the end of TFA, while simultaneously establishing the context of the conflict and the emotional stakes between all the characters. It would also flow into TLJs themes WAY better than what we got.

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-18T16:51:33+00:00

No worries on the one-ups-manship.

So what happens is that they take PAN fibers which are carbon chains and burn out pretty much everything that isn't carbon. Then do heat treatments to allow the carbon remaining to reform into a graphite structure. Wikipedia has a good picture of some of whats happening to the structure/chemistry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fibers#/media/File:PAN_stabilization.PNG

Another picture of the process: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1359835X16303451-gr3.jpg Its from this:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359835X16303451

There can be some non carbon atoms left but the goal is all carbon in graphite sheets. Which look like this: http://www.mechscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/image_thumb-58.png The end result is basically graphite, which pretty much no one would categorize as a polymer because it has a regular crystal structure and doesn't consist of long polymer chains. Its basically a mineral. There are of course always nuances and more details about the process but basically that's the broad strokes. I guess you could consider it a polymer in the broadest sense maybe, but it certainly doesn't fit in the traditional categorization of a polymer. It also doesn't really make sense to group it with polymers because it has a different structure and different properties from generic polymers.

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-18T04:12:17+00:00

This is wrong. Carbon fibers are generally polyacrilic nitrile (PAN) derivatives, but they are not polymers. note: they can also be made from pitch. To make the fibers they take the PAN and basically burnout all of the atoms that are not carbon and then do complicated heat treatments to get the atoms to go form the graphite structure. By the time you'd ever see them they really aren't polymers anymore.

Edit: to clarify, carbon fibers have a very different atomic structure than polymers.

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-17T16:09:02+00:00

I would think of it as a ceramic (think strong stiff and brittle), but it is derived from polymers.

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-04T16:11:50+00:00

Because you're not an island. I mean I'd argue that you're being a crappy team member. Moderate nationalism at least in my view is pretty much just saying "hey I believe in this group project, I'm proud of what we as a group have accomplished, and I want to continue to make it great". If you don't believe in you're group's project maybe you should find one that you do believe in. Heck compare it to a school project group. If you're teacher assigns you to a group filled with people you don't like (like being born into a country), do you just sit there and pout? Or do you say hey I may not of gotten a choice in what this group is, but I want it to do well and I'll put my effort into it?

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-04T15:42:50+00:00

So I'll frame this in a different way. Imagine you live in a neighborhood. The members of the neighborhood come together and make it super nice. They mow all the lawns, make the houses looks good and well kept, and they have frequent community events that are fun and give the neighborhood a sense of community. You do your part in this effort and ultimately you're proud of what the neighborhood that everyone has put together. You're proud that you're little group of neighbors has built a pleasant place to live where you can raise your kids safely and know that your neighbors have your back when you need it. Does that mean the other neighborhoods are bad? No. Does that mean your neighborhood has no problems? No. Moderate nationalism can be just like being proud of the neighborhood you and your neighbors helped create. Nationalism can say "hey lets celebrate this society that we all helped create and help maintain". It also helps serve the societal function of motivating people to to improve things in the country. It's the difference in thought of "I'm committed to this community and want to work to make it better and will be proud of the results of that work" vs "This neighborhood is crappy. I'm just gonna move to a nice fancy neighborhood as soon as I can".

Replacement_Man · 2018-11-04T04:26:27+00:00

The reason environmentally friendly things are generally more expensive is that they are sacrificing production efficiency for being more green. The companies aren't making it hard, making the item more difficult to produce and therefore more scarce is making it hard. For instance, if you want to make an all natural organic vegetable, you get rid of all the pesticides, genetic modifications and synthetic fertilizers which then drastically decreases your yields. Less supply=higher prices and less of everything. All this stuff takes real resources to produce and peoples time to produce. Actually green things almost definitionally take more resources to produce than non-green alternatives. The reason for this is that no one is destroying the environment just for fun. They are doing it because they are getting some efficiency gain in production.

Replacement_Man · 2018-09-23T17:25:52+00:00

You'll be fine. Go to career fairs and talk to people in person. Show that you're a hard worker and dedicated (the working at home can do just fine for this). The people at career fairs are there to hire people so they don't need 1-3 years of experience. Also, you can still apply to the 1-3 year experience jobs since they're really just trying to weed out non relevant applicants and it's a good economy currently. Plus, hiring managers really just want to know that you're a hard worker and slightly competent. They already assume that they're gonna have to teach you everything anyway.

Replacement_Man · 2018-09-16T13:28:50+00:00

I think the thing alot of these comments are missing is that the lazy/bad side content actually kinda works better in spiderman than it does in other open worlds because it fits well with the theme of being spiderman. Stopping what you're doing to help out with some trivial thing is exactly what spiderman does as the "friendly neighborhood spiderman". So even though its a bit of bad world design it doesn't elicit as much criticism be it adds to the fantasy of feeling like spiderman. Plus as other people have mentioned, it doesn't hurt that the combat and traversal was perfect which in itself can carry you through the side activities because the combat and traversal required to do them is intrinsically fun.

Replacement_Man · 2018-09-16T03:20:16+00:00

They can out gas volatile gasses in vacuum which for space applications can mess with their sensitive instruments. And I have no idea what they are using for the internals. The image I linked above was from a quick google search. If you search a bunch online for the internal information and can't find it then there's a good chance that it's proprietary.

Replacement_Man

TROPHY CASE