18 Jul
2011
18 Jul
'11
11:06 a.m.
One of my friends had a card printed up (this is Leon K) which included
the title Physicist. He worked for TRW when they made satellites, and
was responsible for balancing the spacecraft loads and as such did real
physics. If you need to blame someone for orbiting 400# of sand because
a payload was not ready, he specified the mass and shape of the load.
We hired him to balance a CIE systems CI-300 printer which was vibrating
all over the computer room for CI. The desire was not to just make a
heavier stand, but to dampen the vibrations so the printer wouldn't
dance around. Our design as submitted worked, but in the end they went
with heavy stand, and really sticky (rubber) feet on the stand.
So in other words you employed a physicist, but didn't actually make use
of the work he did.
I can see a lot of physicists would get disheartneed by things like that
(spending time doign the job properly just to have it ignored). And I can
see that manymanagers would not bother to employ a physicist if they can
pridcue a workable pduct by BFI.
-tony