Wednesday, April 11, 2012

"What type of ballistics courses do you have?"

As many of you know, I volunteer for the Mechanical and Aerospace Science and Engineering department's table at Decision UC Davis. One of the questions I got was:

What type of ballistic courses do you have?

To be honest, I didn't know how to answer this question. What was going through my mind was
  • Does this guy want to work as a military contractor?
  • Does he want to create guns for a living (like that TV show)?
  • If the question wasn't for the two questions above...should I be worried?
With the above in mind, I attempted to divert from the question. 

"Well what is your interest in? The heat transfer? The chemical reaction? The trajectory? The materials? The design? The controls? The overall system? It honestly depends on which aspect.  However, you will take classes in each of those aspects which you can then apply to toward any problem that comes your way."

I asked my friend later in the day, and he said, "He's in the wrong school if he wants to do that!" I don't know if he was implying the military or just a different university, but I just laughed and left it at that.

Should I have answered this question any differently? I've been thinking about this question all weekend and cannot come up with something else.

-Serena

2 comments:

  1. It sounds like you broken that question down pretty well. There is always the chance the student was messing with you. I've heard on the first day of an engineering profession when everyone introduces themselves and says what they want to do, one person wanted to do something about ballistics and firearms, but I believe he was a meche. I'm not sure you would need to get a degree that focused to go into that field.

    -Anthony Cotto

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    1. I know he wasn't joking. His mom was standing right next to him, and gave me that I'm-a-really-serious-mother look.

      I also told him he should look into what qualifications/interests/specialties he would need to go into that field. He didn't really know.

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