|
|
|
|
|
|
recent entries "My take on Thanksgiving" "Belichick used results from dynamic programming!" "I know he's not to blame, but..." "In sickness and in health..." "Fall Beautiful"
|
Jun 03, 2008 CollaborationsCollaborations are great. Really, they are. You take a bunch of experts in different fields, throw them onto the same project, and see what cool stuff emerges a few years later. I currently work on a large collaboration in which we’re trying to make electronic-photonic integrated circuits. It’s a nifty idea and has the potential to fix some of the problems with our current electronic-only systems. The problem comes when you have meetings. (By the way, I thought one of the perks about grad school over “real life” was the chance to avoid being stuck in meetings. I was wrong. Very wrong.) I had a meeting today in which we, the materials folks, got up and said (roughly), “Yo, optics people, we have a fundamental problem over here. Please alter your designs by doing blah and blah to help us fix it.” In response, the optics people said, “Yo, materials people, the solution you propose is far more complicated than you realize.” “Yes, but we’re up against fundamental laws of physics here. You need to budge.” “We’re also up against fundamental laws of physics. What do you want us to do?” “Our laws of physics are stricter than your laws of physics!” And this continued for a good 20 minutes. Neither side could really understand the difficulty that the other side was describing. Why couldn’t we just change one small thing? Because it’s hard! Really, really hard! Why couldn’t the optics folks just incorporate this one change? Because it’s hard! Really, really hard! Sometimes these meetings can be frustrating because it feels like we’re all talking past each other. But sometimes I walk away with a greater appreciation of what we’re up against. It turns out that these optics folks are actually quite good at what they do. If the solution was as easy as I thought it was… they would have done it by now.
A Response To This Entry:Post A Response
|
Ya, i agree with you, but keep in mind what Einstein said: ” Imagination is more important than Knowledge” ^_^
Posted by: Ayoub on June 4th, 2008 at 10:26 am