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While many students are drawn to studying engineering because of it’s use of math and science to solve real-world problems, many students undoubtedly are also attracted to the potential payoff. Because of the demand for technically proficient engineers, students graduating with a degree in an engineering discipline tend to have some of the highest salaries of all college graduates. However, sometimes it’s difficult to find reliable salary information for various branches of engineering, so I have attempted to assemble some data relevant to engineering students at Penn State. My hope is that this information could be used by prospective or current students to evaluate their future career path.

In this post,  I compare 8 of the most popular engineering majors at Penn State: Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. The following table includes data from Penn State’s Engineering Career Resources as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This data gives a rough idea of how engineering salaries are distributed at the outset and throughout careers. However in addition to salary, many students want to know where most jobs in their field are located. For example, there is a high concentration of jobs for computer science majors in Silicon Valley area. Massachusetts is also home to a high number of biomedical engineering jobs. So in addition to salary, students should take into account where their choice of major will most likely take them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has some fantastic graphics that show where different engineering jobs are generally located. The following graphics compare the location quotients of Biomedical, Chemical, and Mechanical Engineers. The location quotient is calculated as employment in major/thousands of jobs for each state.

From this data, it’s clear that Biomedical Engineering is the most geographically limited major of the 3 compared here with a high concentration of jobs in Massachusetts and Minnesota. Chemical Engineering is slightly more geographically diverse, with the highest concentration of jobs in Delaware and Louisiana. Lastly, Mechanical Engineering is the most geographically diverse major of the 3 with the highest concentration in Michigan.

Students choosing to go into engineering can expect a lot of hard work, but also many well-paying jobs available across the country. However, each major has its’ own advantages and students should make sure to research their major thoroughly so they understand the opportunities and limitations of their major.

Chemistry set from 1952

Although hardly seen anymore, chemistry sets used to be a very popular toy for young, aspiring scientists. They were once so popular some manufacturers claimed that there was a chemistry set in every child’s household. The beauty of these early chemistry sets were in their total freedom for children to freely experiment with various chemicals. These “toys” inspired a whole generation of engaged chemists, many of whom would go on to make landmark discoveries. As Robert Bruce Thompson put it, “I doubt you could interview a chemist between the ages of 50 and 80 today who didn’t get started with a chemistry set.”

So what happened to chemistry sets? Due to safety concerns and fear of legal repercussions, most manufacturers discontinued production of chemistry sets. While the safety concerns are legitimate, many people worry that lack of hands-on exposure to experimentation is decreasing children’s passion for science. In order to combat this problem, the Moore Foundation started the Science Play and Research Kit (SPARK) competition to reward the best design of a safe, modern day chemistry set.

Chemistry Set on a Chip, winner of the SPARK competition

The winning design was created by two bioengineers at Stanford, Manu Prakash and George Korir, which they dubbed the “Chemistry Set on a Chip”. The genius of this design is in its’ automation and scale. The device contains a hand crank and a plastic microfluidic chip. Anyone can design a punch card to place in the machine which triggers pins releasing chemicals into a microfluidic channel. This design prevents users from directly managing the chemical while still allowing them the freedom to design reactions. The microfluidic device also uses microliter portions of chemicals thereby preventing large quantities of hazardous chemicals from being released. With this new device in the hands of young scientists, a new generation of aspiring chemists could be exposed to the excitement of performing hands-on experiments.

Source: http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i15/21st-Century-Chemistry-Set.html

This past Tuesday, I attended the Schreyer Honors College’s “Shaping the Future Summit” to hear a talk by Dr. Peter Diamandis. Dr. Diamandis has led a fascinating life starting with graduating from Harvard Medical School, founding several space related companies, becoming a world-renowned author, and founding XPrize.  In his talk, Dr. Diamandis explained his inspiration for XPrize came from the Orteig Prize. The Orteig Prize was the famous $25,000 reward for the first aviator to fly from New York to Paris won by Charles Lindbergh. This $25,000 reward induced over $300,000 in private funding from various competitors. Dr. Diamandis’ saw the potential in a prize “system” and founded the XPrize Foundation to address the world’s most pressing problems.  People in the Penn State community may be familiar with the Google Lunar XPrize since Penn State’s very own Lunar Lion team is attempting to land on the moon, but there are several different XPrizes covering various industries.

On their website, the XPrize foundation lists the 5 main categories their prizes fall under:

• Energy and Environment
• Exploration
• Global Development
• Learning
• Life Sciences

The prizes for the winners vary from around $1 million to $10 million depending on the nature of the challenge. Some current and past XPrizes include the Google Lunar XPrize awarded to the first private team to create a moon-landing craft, The Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize awarded to the team who creates a palm sized device capable of collecting basic health metrics and diagnosing at least 15 diseases, and the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XChallenge awarded to the team that designs a more efficient and cheaper method of cleaning up oil spills. These various XPrizes have followed the Orteig Prize in inspiring investments several times that of the value of the prize itself. It’s an incredible display of how human ingenuity and competitiveness can be used to benefit everyone.

Dr. Diamandis was very passionate in his speech when discussing how major problems can be addressed by smaller groups of people, not just huge companies and governments. With the rise of several technologies including the internet and 3D printing, individuals have more power than ever. We have access to such an incredible breadth of knowledge at our fingertips that unlocks a huge amount of potential. Dr. Diamandis ended his speech by explaining that with over 6 billion people on this earth who all think uniquely, there is almost no problem humans can’t solve. His favorite part of XPrize is seeing the “underdog” team win the prize. He mentioned the one tattoo artist from Las Vegas who came up with the second best design for the Oil Cleanup challenge despite virtually no experience in the field. Dr. Diamandis vision of the XPrize shows that everybody has the potential to make revolutionary change, it just has to be unlocked.

Molecular structure of graphene
Image taken from www.sciencedaily.com

As the sixth most abundant element, carbon forms much of the universe around us. It has an exceptional ability to chemically bond with other elements to form unique structures such as large organic chains or diamonds. Recently, research has been focused on developing a compound called graphene. As is seen in the picture above, graphene is a 1-atom thick layer of carbon arranged in hexagonal “chicken wire” pattern. Graphite, commonly used as pencil lead, is simply multiple layers of graphene stacked on top of each other. The unique mono-atomic thickness and crystalline structure of graphene gives it some unique properties.

What Makes Graphene Unique?

Before graphene was successfully isolated and identified in 2004, many chemists believed it was impossible to create 2-dimensional compounds. Graphene’s unique 2-dimensional structure gives it some highly specialized properties. The following properties are listed on GrapheneA’s website:

1. Due to its’ sp2 molecular hybridization, graphene currently has the highest electrical conductivity of any known material.
2. Graphene is suspected of having the highest mass-to-tensile strength ratio of any material. Or in other words, it’s incredibly light and incredibly strong.
3. Graphene has an unusually high opacity. This means that despite being only one atom thick, graphene is still visible to the naked eye.

What Can We Use Graphene For?

Since it’s recent discovery, researchers all over the world have been working to develop practical uses for graphene’s unusual characteristics. The following examples are just a few of the current areas of research for graphene:

• Bioelectric sensory devices
• LCD and OLED displays
• Water filtration
• Super-strong materials
• Photovoltaic cells
• Supercapacitors
• Instantly charged batteries

Much more work needs to be done to further develop graphene. One of the main challenges hindering wider adoption of graphene is production. There is currently no easy way to produce a large amount of graphene. However, further research is developing better production techniques in addition to finding more uses for graphene. In a few years, it’s very likely graphene could be a ubiquitous compound in many devices.

A hydrogen-powered car created by Air Products

With fossil fuel costs rising and increasing efforts to reduce pollution, automakers and politicians are looking for alternatives to power our nation’s vehicles. This Wall Street Journal Article details current efforts by several companies that are trying to develop this technology. To some, vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells are an attractive alternative that potentially could become the standard for powering cars and trucks.

So how exactly do these vehicles use hydrogen as an energy source? The diagram above demonstrates the steps involved in turning hydrogen into electricity:

1. Raw hydrogen is fed in from a fuel tank in the car
2. The molecular hydrogen is split into its ionic form and releases electrons
3. The hydrogen ions travel through a Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) and electrons travel along the circuit providing current
4. The electrons and ionic hydrogen are combined with oxygen to create water, the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells

So hydrogen-powered cars are also technically electric cars, but the electricity is provided from hydrogen rather than batteries as in most typical electric cars.

But how exactly are hydrogen-powered cars better than other standard cars? Here’s a short list of the benefits of hydrogen fuel cell technology:

• Hydrogen is one of the most abundant chemicals in our universe
• Water is the only “pollution” created by hydrogen fuel cells
• Hydrogen fuel-cells are significantly more efficient than internal combustion engines
• It’s easier to scale up the technology for large vehicles than it would be to scale up purely electric vehicles

Because of these benefits, many companies such as Air Products are working with auto companies to create a feasible fueling system for hydrogen powered vehicles. However despite the possibilities, hydrogen powered vehicles face several significant barriers to being widely adopted. Some of the main problems facing this technology include the following:

• Despite it’s abundance, pure hydrogen is difficult to extract from natural sources
• Hydrogen fuel-cells are prohibitively expensive
• Developing the necessary infrastructure would be massively expensive
• Hydrogen is highly flammable and poses several safety concerns

These issues can potentially be solved, but it will require a substantial investment from both the public and private sector. However with enough support, it is entirely possible you could be driving a hydrogen-powered car within your lifetime.