Charlie Cohen
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Engineering notes

Short reflections about class, projects, and how I am approaching the year.

Blog #1: Engineering notebook reflections

I made this site so I could keep all of my engineering work in one place. I do not want it to only show the final result. A lot of the real work comes from the sketches, tests, mistakes, and changes along the way.

This year, I want to take more time during the design process. I sometimes jump to the first idea that seems like it will work. I want to get better at comparing different ideas, testing them, and figuring out why one design works better than another.

This summer, I worked on a high-altitude balloon project and traveled to Colorado for the launch. I spent a lot of time getting the payload ready, testing everything, and fixing problems before launch day. It was cool seeing something I worked on for so long actually get launched. The project also taught me a lot about planning ahead and dealing with things that do not go as planned.

I am keeping the site simple on purpose. I want each page to make it easy to find class work, see what I am working on, and follow how my ideas change throughout the year.

Blog #2: Being Human Chapter 1 and Hammurabi's Code

I think Hammurabi's Code was unethical because a lot of the punishments were too severe for the crimes. Some mistakes in the code could lead to death or other life-changing punishments, even when the crime did not seem serious enough for someone to lose their life. To me, that feels uncivilized by today's standards because people who made smaller mistakes could still be punished in extreme ways.

One part that stands out to me is how this would affect engineering. If modern engineers were held to the same standard, I think there would be far fewer buildings, bridges, and designs made. Why would someone want to become an engineer if one mistake at work could mean their life would be taken away? There might be fewer casualties in some cases, but it would also probably lead to much less engineering being done overall.

Hammurabi's Code was still an important first step toward having a society with written laws. It showed that people were trying to organize rules and punishments instead of leaving everything undecided. But the code was not applied fairly to everyone. A person's punishment could change depending on their social class, so it was not equal justice in the way we would expect today.

Punishments like having your hands taken away for attacking your father, or being killed because there was fault in your work, may have seemed fair at the time. In modern society, though, that would not fit at all. Today, the death penalty is usually talked about for the most serious crimes involving a planned attack that takes someone's life. Hammurabi's Code helped move society toward laws, but the punishments were too harsh and unequal to be considered ethical now.

Blog #3: Boeing MCAS

Investigators examining wreckage from a Boeing 737 MAX crash.

I found the presentation about the Boeing MCAS intriguing, as it relates heavily to my interest in aviation. The Boeing MCAS failure was due to a sensor onboard giving the airplane bad information, making the airplane think it was rising too steeply. This, in turn, automatically decreased the pitch and caused the nose to sink.

The physics behind this was that the new jet this system was based in, the 737 MAX, had a shifted center of mass compared with other jets. The MCAS system was not made for this shift, which caused it to misread data and think the plane was rising even when it was not. There was also no redundancy in this system.

I found this interesting because Boeing has been a big thing in the news recently, and this is just another instance of why people keep distrusting them. I am also very big into aviation, so this ties closely with my interests.

The failure impacted all 189 lives on board, as there were no survivors of the crash. This was a design failure, not a pilot error, and Boeing is to blame. This should have never happened, and there should have been more oversight in the making of this system. There also should have been more redundancy instead of just one sensor for the entire system.

Blog #4: AI in Education

I think it definitely matters if teachers use AI, but it does not always have to be a negative thing. I think discretion is very important, and all AI-generated content on the internet or produced by a teacher should have an “AI-Made” label. If a teacher gave their students a fully AI-generated piece of content to consume, I would not be the biggest fan. I would hope all of the content was completely factual, but I would still feel apprehensive about it.

If I had the choice between listening to an educational video with some errors and a fully AI-generated video with completely factual evidence, I would still choose the human-made video because hard work and time were put into its creation, versus a single prompt making the other.

I think channels like Fern on YouTube are a great example of this argument. Fern is a fully human channel that makes very high-quality educational content without the use of AI. It has 3D animators and designers who spend a lot of time and effort creating every video. Even so, AI clones of the channel have been popping up all over the place, and it is obvious that the videos are low quality and simply made for profit.

I think even if the content is true, it should be humans who ultimately deliver the content.