Author Archives: mathscinotes

Personality Characteristics of a Great Engineering Hire

Posted on 6-November-2010 by mathscinotes

Quote of the Day Acting was fun, but my grandfather would always tell me, "It's never too late to be an engineer." You were supposed to get a "job" and do acting on weekends or at school. — Jon Hamm … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

GPS and Relativity

Posted on 5-November-2010 by mathscinotes

A friend just sent me some viewgraphs from a presentation that he recently attended on the history of the Global Positioning System (GPS). The presentation was given by Hugo Fruehauf, one of the key GPS developers. In this presentation, he … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Navigation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Product Cost Reduction Example

Posted on 23-October-2010 by mathscinotes

Introduction Maintaining good product margins is crucial to maintaining a healthy business. In the electronics business, customers have come to expect prices to drop every year. This means that I need to incorporate frequent cost reductions just to maintain margins. … Continue reading →

Posted in Financial, Management | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A Product Cost Reduction Example

Magic Number Analysis – Converting Spectral Width to Sigma

Posted on 12-October-2010 by mathscinotes

Introduction Engineering seems to have a lot of "magic numbers" – numbers used in equations with no explanations of where they come from. I REALLY do not like magic numbers because years from now some other engineer will be staring … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiber Optics | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Solar Eclipse Math

Posted on 11-October-2010 by mathscinotes

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching the Wonders of the Solar System with Brian Cox on the Science channel.In this episode, he was talking about the Moon and solar eclipses. He made a comment that the region of totality (i.e. complete darkness) during a solar eclipse is only a few hundred kilometers across. To illustrate this point, I found a great picture (Figure 1) taken from the Mir space station of the moon's shadow on the Earth. Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy | Tagged , , | 32 Comments

Dispersion Power Penalty Modeling (Part 3)

Posted on 8-October-2010 by mathscinotes

Deriving Equation 2 Equation 2 is derived from Equation 7 by noting the following items. A true normal pulse has infinite length, so we cannot have a high speed data system that sends true normal pulses. A common choice is … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiber Optics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Dispersion Power Penalty Modeling (Part 2)

Posted on 7-October-2010 by mathscinotes

Modeling Pulse Distortion Choice of Pulse Basis Function As with most modeling problems, it is very important to choose a function that accurately represents your physical signal. The most commonly used pulse models in optics are based on the normal … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiber Optics | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Dispersion Power Penalty Modeling (Part 1)

Posted on 6-October-2010 by mathscinotes

An Apology This blog post is rather long (3 parts). I have had so many questions on this topic lately that I thought I should put some of the notes into a more formal format. The discussion is very specific … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiber Optics | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Engineer Humor (yes, they do have a sense of humor)

Posted on 23-September-2010 by mathscinotes

Introduction Engineers can be hilarious – albeit a bit dry and cynical. Engineers are problem-solvers by nature. Much of their humor involves problem solving. Here are a few things that came up this morning that I thought would be worthwhile … Continue reading →

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My Little Gilligan's Island - Part 1 (The Shower)

Posted on 8-September-2010 by mathscinotes

Introduction My cabin in northern Minnesota is very primitive (the only water is lake water, no heat, no air conditioning, no phone, no Internet) and I do not want to put any money into it until I get my sons … Continue reading →

Posted in Cabin, Construction | Tagged , | 2 Comments