JUST TO SHARE (Lau Tai Onn): Dr JB Lim’s Crazy Hobby

The blogger received a copy of an email from his most learned e-buddy ‘The Great Sifu’ Dr JB Lim (pic last row left, taken at Queen Elizabeth College, 1965-66 while doing Post-Graduate Diploma in Nutrition) that talked about his ‘crazy’ hobby, in response to the question from another e-buddy Senior Civil Engineer Ir Tan Seng Khoon why he was so fond of Mechanical Engineering and not Civil Engineering. The Great Sifu’s interesting ‘confessions’ are posted as follows:

From: lim juboo

Date: Thu, May 23, 2013 at 6:46 PM

Learned Civil Eng Khoon,

I have nothing against civil engineers. It so happens that I am very interested in anything that moves, the faster, the more interesting.

When I studied physics and mathematics in school (BPHS, English College JB & Singapore Polytechnic) and again 1st year at the University of Aligarh, there were 2 divisions in this field - Statics and Dynamics. I used to enjoy calculating out any object that moves such as the planets, comets, stars and galaxies, or the velocity of an atomic particle under different pressures and temperatures.

When I travel about in a jet plane, I would bring along my compass and GPS to determine the velocity and the direction of the jet plane, its height, outside temperatures, calculate out its expected time of arrival. I would calculate out all the flight parameters from data shown on my GPS all through the long night while all the other passengers are fast asleep. Mine is the ONLY cabin light on all night long with my high-tech scientific calculator and a log book beside me.

Similarly, when I am on a ship's cruise, I would do the same, That's just my obsession about anything that moves - the faster it moves, the more interesting. I would also indulge into the sizes of atomic particles or cosmic rays from outer space. It is just my crazy hobby.

Moreover, most of my engineer friends, including my dear brother-in-law OGS are all 'immovable' engineers. I only have one of my classmates from BPHS who qualified as a 'movable' engineer (mechanical engineer). Unfortunately he is now working in England dealing with undersea cables which does not move at all (except the electrons inside that moves near the speed of light for telecommunication).

Unfortunately this brilliant classmate of mine does not calculate the speed and motions of electrons inside his cables. He just submerged them into the North Seas and oceans using some machines which I cannot understand. I thought that mechanical engineering deals with machines that move like automobiles, trains and planes.

I am not saying Civil Engineering is not interesting. It also requires brains to think and plan critically except everything is static (not moving) except calculating shear and wind forces, pressures, margin of safety on the structures.

At last! No matter how interested I am on the physics of motion and dynamics, on nuclear physics and nuclear engineering, I landed up on the wrong runway and wrong airport. An ill wind kept blowing me off course till I landed on a place that deals with animals (zoology), chemistry (analytical food chemistry and food quality control), food, health & nutrition, microbiology, drugs, medicine and medical research. What a misfortune for me when I wanted to be a pilot if not an astronomer!

See what I have written in Captain KH Lim website:

http://www.askcaptainlim.com/-profession-flying-52/683-airline-pilot-a-very-responsible-and-noble-profession-a-medical-scientists-insight.html

A lot of my other articles are also in Capt Lim's website scattered here and there.

So you can now call me a BOGUS physicist

(Wrong Airport landed by a BOGUS pilot)

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The blogger has written to Dr JB Lim for permission to 'publish' his email as follows:

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:16 PM, Tai Onn Lau wrote:

Dear Great Sifu,

Once again may I request your permission to allow me to post into my blog your inspirational response to the question from the Chief High Priest of Evolution Temple Datuk Khoon why you are so fond of Mechanical Engineering and not Civil Engineering? Readers must be amazed at your versatile 'crazy' hobby and that you are really a 'Jack of All Trades' (and also Master of Every Subject).

Being a Civil Engineer myself, I just want to inform you about a very important case of 'movable' element in our discipline and that is the construction of foundations of any structures, i.e. piling. The installation of any driven and/or bored piles involves the movement of soils. But of course such movement is very slow and cannot be as exciting as those examples you quoted and meet your criterion of 'the faster, the more interesting'.

Thank you.

Have a pleasant long weekend!

Lau

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Below is the reply for the Great Sifu:

Friday, 24 May, 2013 1:13 AM

From: lim juboo

Dear Great Grand Sifu TO Lau (the blogger’s note: See how inconsistently the Great Sifu addressed me everytime),

Once again I did not say civil engineering is not interesting. All I said was I like anything that moves - the faster the motion, the more exciting, and the harder the calculations as some may involve advanced integral calculus to follow the motion in a continuous quantum over time.

To illustrate, the nuclear reactions in the interior of the Sun and stars are so horrendously fast, that you need to apply a new mathematical procedure called "Iteration" (don't confuse this with integral calculus) that repeats a calculation again and again as new data need to be inserted back into an equation. The parameters in such cases keep on changing again and again during the reaction.

This is like playing with "juggler sequences" or "Collatz conjecture" just to quote a simple mathematical example.

This sort of calculation is very hard to handle as new data keep coming out that have to be substituted back into the chain of equations.

No ordinary computer, let alone even the most advanced programmable scientific calculations can handle such dizzying speeds. Only the fastest super-computers in the world calculating at speeds to the tune of millions of trillions of flops per seconds can race along with that sort of reactions.

Such motions going on at near the speed of light are found in nuclear reactions in the interior of some Population I blue stars. I am very amazed by that.

Such motions are extremely exciting to me. I only wish I am born with such mathematical gift to think as fast as the speed of light. At last, bad luck for me. I am only eligible to deal with animals, nutrition, disease and the human body which are all very boring and sleepy to me.

I have never said civil engineering is no use in civil life. Of course engineering is a great profession which ever field.

I remember as a small child in my shop in Batu Pahat one of my sister’s friends came one day a visiting. The only entertainment for guests those years was just the radio. But the radio in our house was not working. So my sister did her best to tune it on. Nothing worked. So she called me if I could get that old radio sing out some old tunes for her friend.

I looked behind that radio and all I did was plug one of the many wires into it. Not sure which wire? Was it the aerial wire, the ground wire, some stray wires, electric wires...or what? There you are! The radio was alive again. My sister's friend was extremely impressed with my 'performance'.

She remarked to my sister that one day I shall surely grow up to be an engineer. I can never forget that flattery. There you are! - A BOGUS engineer now.

Back to what I said. What I have in mind was, it is very boring for me to see a static building or a bridge standing there all the time, and not moving at all, short of an earth quark to shake it down (or from the vibrations of a billion Miilo tin violins attached to an electric saw to saw that Learned Engineer's Khoon's bridge down - remember those chains of email of arguments circulating round for months).

I just can't stand seeing anything standing there like a dummy in the hot sun forever. It must at least move a bit so that we can investigate. If it does not move, there is nothing to investigate and calculate. The more it moves, the more exciting it is.

That was all I meant. I never said anything that dishonored the civil engineering profession. I only mentioned my interest about mathematics, physics and motion such as areodynamics or at least about heat, energy, entropy and heat transfer as in thermodynamics.

Fortunately as students, we had to learn some thermodynamics and heat transfer in food engineering in some of the many various courses I took up in the university.

That was the only formal engineering I have to learn and pass.

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Comment from Ir Tan Seng Khoon:

Sunday, 26 May, 2013 9:46 AM

From: Tan Seng Khoon

Lau,

Talking about speed in engineering, your piling example is one of the movement analysis in Civil Engineering.

But the more complex analysis is in the derivation of deflection in structures under load..

Even lagi teruk is the analysis for the deformation of structures which you will need to use dy/dx and integration calculus to the 2nd degree.

And also the use of matix for stiffnes computation in structural analysis.

Then you will need to use speed analysis in road design to compute tracking forces of speeding heavy vehicles in impact load on bridges and to evaluate the design for superelevation for transition and circular curves profile in highway design.

On top of that, then there is open channel flow and pipe flow for water and fuel oil design, which will again involve calculus to 2nd degree to work out hydraulic jump, water hammer action and erosion along the fluid edges.