Earlier today, the professor for my Combustion class mentioned that for our final project, we will be working on a problem that currently has no solution. This intrigued me of course, as I wondered if our final grades would have no solution as well. After he explained, it made all the more sense and reminded me why my love and passion is in the field of fire protection engineering, the school I go to, and the people I work with: they all heavily align with my values and principles of sharing knowledge and making information available to everyone, everywhere.

[From NASA]

So, let me explain his model simply by example:

The professor said that when he first started this class 2 years ago, the students were working on a different problem with no solution… at the time. The class worked together and in the end the results were so significant that a couple of students took the initiative to publish the results in a scientific journal. The same happened when the class was taught last year – project done, paper published.

So what does this mean and why do you care? Well, all too often in the academic world, people can get caught up in working on projects and sort of work themselves into a dark corner where nobody gets to benefit from the results… and this is done in real life as well, not just academics. This is where the ridiculous amount of collaborative technology available to us comes in to play. Want to gather up notes on the Smagorinsky constant and publish them for anyone to find who is searching for them in the next 1000 years? Easy: 5 minutes. Want to publish your results in the most useful way? Easy: work on an open source project in your area along with your research – or make your own.

…Or you could write a paper, finish your thesis work, wrap up the loose ends in a few years and show a flashy poster of your work 5 years after anybody cares about it anymore or thinks it to be useful.

I digress. I just wanted to stress this new method of collaboration that is among us, and how it’s going to change the way that we work together and grow together in fire protection engineering and fire science.

[From Rowan University College of Engineering]

Why not make use of motivated students and brainpower when they come together? Here is me welcoming this new phase of community and collaboration in a field that directly impacts life safety and makes safer buildings around the world. So when we work on that final project in a few weeks, it’s not really at all about a grade anymore – it’s about a new way of doing science – together.

Update: This is exactly the kind of stuff that I’m talking about here, posted today on the SFPE National blog that I set up a year ago – collaboration: Foundation Funded Research underway at WPI

So there are scientists, and there are artful scientists. Here’s version 0.9999 of the graph from my last post in all of its full and smooth glory. It’s for a homework exercise in my combustion course (go ahead, click for full size – it’s fantastic):

Well, why do you care about my graph? I certainly do. There are many books about conveying information in statistics and how to present data in a very informationally dense format, sure. But let’s think about this graph that I made for a homework assignment. The purpose of the homework was for me to learn, yes? And that nice orange line bought me some extra credit worth 25 points, but that’s another story. I want to learn it inside out, run it amongst others, and in the end communicate great things to many, many people. Every time. With every action.

So I could have left the default Excel settings for the chart, but my soul cannot allow such a thing.

This graph shows relationships, it runs a conversation with itself and lets the numbers drive by each other and say hello. It’s living, and it talks to me. Check out the dark red diamond line called “Mixture Fraction”. This guy drives all of the others. Then the f’s come in. Then we go back to the real quantities like the mass fraction of oxygen (Yo) and fuel (Yf) and we can also grab temperature (in Kelvin) based off of what those f’s are telling each other.

Yes, yes, Kris. You are talking nonsense, I don’t like it. Well, perhaps I’m not as eloquent and direct as this guy (watch this great motivating video, do I ever let you down?):

But our messages are the same. Do what you love, and work your ass off at it. All the time. Not the old and dead cliched way of “do what you love” – but the minute by minute, day by day, just got home tired from work but I need more, but I don’t have the time, wake up and do it, it keeps you up and night, but I want to watch TV every day, what you REALLY want to do, an exact thing/action/pursuit every day until you die – kind of way.

If I wasn’t here loving my graphs at 2:34 AM in the morning and pondering the million things I just learned from this 4 day exercise, I’d quit. If I doubted for a second (as the guy in the video says), I’d do us all a favor and leave here. But I want this knowledge, and these relationships so very badly. And when the end-result comes along, I have a sick urge to spend so much time and detail on things so that others may benefit. Make your life, thoughts, and business public, and see what happens to it. It skyrockets.

Now do you see why I care about my graph? I’m proud of what it represents. Now go off and care about your own graph. For the rest of us.

I just finished the longest problem that I think I’ve ever worked on in my life. It took about 14 hours to complete this one problem in my combustion homework, but damn was it satisfying to finish and solve!

There is a serious amount of knowledge being learned here by all, and it does take time, sure; but it is very satisfying work. I could tell you about all of the above data points and how the mixture fraction of the fuel is a localized and conceptual version of the mass fraction or how the Shvab-Zel’Dovich parameters help to make such analysis possible, but I’ll leave that for you to learn in the combustion class if you take it.

Instead of that kind of talk, I was driven last night to my stove. I often get distracted while reading about fire and start fantasizing of ways that it actually connects to real life – I want to see it. And it just so happened that I was reading about the subject of diffusion flames.

Understandibly, I still have many unanswered questions about the love of my life: fire. Things like why it looks at me how it does with different colors representing how efficient the flame is burning or how much carbon is being produced and thereby how much radiant heat energy is being lost (I’m looking at you, sleek yellowy flame on the left).

So I was led to removing the cover panel on my gas stove last night and equipped only with a wet towel, I wanted some answers right then and there. Long story short, after 30 or so minutes of messing with the disassembled stove at midnight, I had a much better understanding of diffusion vs. premixed flames. For you, just know that there is an amazing amount of philosophy, fire dynamics, and fluid mechanics going on as soon as you turn the knob on your stove to on. Enough there for me to spend my whole life pondering about with passion, even.

In other news, on the opposite of my topic, it is quickly getting cold up here in MA. Tonight it’ll hit around 45 F before the sun peeks around the roof shingles. Life is good. Cool weather, good friends, and lots and lots of dedication to studies. And a bit of fun, come on now.

Well, I’m off for a much needed break. Take over on tackling your passion for me.

Peace.