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A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#101

Post by jwitchel »

psd1 wrote: post #86
slingnow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would much rather live in a world where people question biased media narratives and we risk hurting someone's feelings than the other way around. If this kid can't handle a little bit of criticism, he won't be long for the engineering discipline.

That's a false dichotomy > If this kid can't handle a little bit of criticism I do expect adults - over 25 - to take the rough with the smooth. But children are not adults. I think you're assuming your own competence at pedagogy. I would want to shield children from you until they've developed the resilience you demand from them. Also, the emotional tone - sheesh

+1 And to pile on a bit here... part of learning to be a good engineer is learning how to give good constructive feedback. If you are creating real risk of truly hurting someone with your feedback (in a PR or a code review for example) then it's you who are at fault for tone deafness not them for being thin skinned.

Giving and getting feedback is hard. It's a skill and it doesn't come easily to most. Sometimes hurting someone's feelings is inevitable, but starting from a place of "toughen up buttercup" is really self-serving and counterproductive.

There is always someone better than you, and always someone worse. Always someone who knows something you don't, and always someone who can learn from you.

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#102

Post by picture »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #72
throw_m239339 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bringing the beatdown is bad for everyone. It's healthy to question media narrative as the media tend to sensationalize and embellish stories for clicks or views. It's disingenuous to try to make people feel guilty about it arguing if we question that story that child will turn bad or something, in an post-truth era. Nobody is attacking that kid, just how the media cover these stories with a template.

I don't think this is totally on the media. The story is sufficiently weasel worded -- the motor "could" "pave the way". Anybody with any experience reads "could" as "probably not" and "pave the way" as "a tiny little step in a long process". Most 6 year olds have figured out that "maybe" means "probably not". Many adults have forgotten that lesson.

Hey, as someone who's participated in the same competition, you got it right on the money. It's a well known joke amongst science fair students that "could pave the way to this and that" really means its kinda useless. Some of our school's projects from two years ago worked on quantum computing but didn't achieve the goals they'd hope for so our instructor just told them to sprinkle some paved the ways in their paper

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#103

Post by codazoda »

zackmorris wrote: post #64

This is great, I'm happy for him! But I miss the creative aspect in myself. I used to be so creative like him, with so many half-finished inventions scattered around the house. Today there's nothing. I finally managed to carve out a day or two per week away from my job to work on personal projects after many years of failed attempts to get away at great personal expense. But the last 3 days that I went to work on som…

I recently created a Scanner Daybook from the ideas presented by the late Barbara Sher in one of her books. It's freed me to explore ideas on paper with no obligation to create the works I describe. The funny thing is that it strokes my mind and I actually get a lot of the projects done. I tend to work in an MVP fashion and create very simple things, however.

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#104

Post by EgoIncarnate »

Impressive to come up with this on his own, but possibly already patented. Tesla has been using magenets instead of airgaps in their Internal Permanent Magnet - Synchronous Reluctance Motor back in 2020. Hopefully his other inovations are more novel. https://uk.motor1.com/news/462107/video-tesla-model-3-electr...

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#106

Post by dsr_ »

RHSeeger wrote: post #76
todd8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back before the internet, in 1964, I read a brief Scientific American column on laboratory glass blowing (for making condensers and so forth). This set me on a quest; and I acquired supplies and primitive homemade equipment. I was years away from being able to drive so I took the bus downtown to the Detroit public library where I found several books devoted to the subject. I studied these for hours. I worked on this…

> So I moved on to my next project, making a solid fuel rocket from scratch Remember when you could get the ingredients to do things like that easily; sometimes even in a "Science Kit for Kids!" one would buy at Caldor or the like? Man, how times have changed.

In the late 1980s, the toy store at the mall carried a section of model rockets and rocket engines, igniters... supermarkets carried cap guns and refills in racks just before checkout.

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#107

Post by kthartic »

zackmorris wrote: post #64

This is great, I'm happy for him! But I miss the creative aspect in myself. I used to be so creative like him, with so many half-finished inventions scattered around the house. Today there's nothing. I finally managed to carve out a day or two per week away from my job to work on personal projects after many years of failed attempts to get away at great personal expense. But the last 3 days that I went to work on som…

Therapy, therapy, therapy :)

Re: A 17-year-old designed a novel synchronous reluctance motor

#110

Post by yuan43 »

zackmorris wrote: post #64

This is great, I'm happy for him! But I miss the creative aspect in myself. I used to be so creative like him, with so many half-finished inventions scattered around the house. Today there's nothing. I finally managed to carve out a day or two per week away from my job to work on personal projects after many years of failed attempts to get away at great personal expense. But the last 3 days that I went to work on som…

> No creative impulse, just worries about chores/bills/obligation and painful memories...

and later:

> Does anyone know a way to truly rekindle the creative spark after it's completely died?

Take an unreasonably keen interest in your chores/bills/obligations. Do you need to cook dinner? Research the hell out of it to understand the underlying principles. Experiment with your techniques, take notes, and perfect. Learn the history of what you're doing. Do you need to do car maintenance? Really understand what it is you're doing and why. Do you need to manage finances? Become an expert in double-entry accounting. Actually watch how-to videos on it and maybe engage in an online discussion or two about it.

It's easy to ignore the mundane things we're all faced to do. It's also remarkable how interesting anything - no matter how seemingly unremarkable - can be if viewed from the right perspective and taken to sufficient extremes.

If you were to take this approach, I suspect you might find some interests you never knew you had. It's possible you can't make headway on your old interests because you yourself have changed. Those old interests don't in fact interest you in the same way anymore, but you haven't recognized that yet.

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