Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Current Technologies Are Vastly Different Than The Technologies In Place When Most Mechanical Engineers Started

By J. Patrick Banse, PE, LEED AP, Smith Seckman Reid Inc., Houston


When mechanical engineers are in school, few of them know exactly where their degree might take them. I was one of those engineers. Being exposed to many aspects of this fascinating engineering program, I was awed by the range of career choices—steam and power generation, automotive design, structures. However, only a few courses—thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer—prepared me for the area I ended up in, partially by choice but mostly by having mentors that instilled a passion in me that continues to guide me more than 35 years after graduation. The area of mechanical engineering I ended up in was HVAC, plumbing, and fire protection design in buildings, specifically healthcare, but that was after a few years of preliminaries and, as I found out, nothing like I learned in school.


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