How Nerd Can You Go?

For those of you who missed the bulletin, I am studying chemical engineering. They generally do stuff like this

but can also be found doing sweet stuff like this

Guess which one I'm
aiming for?

True story: in my chem class, there are about 5 chemical engineering majors, and we have all formed a group in the corner where we scowl condescendingly at the lesser students (and also make fart jokes). When we all first met up, one of the first questions passed around the group was, "What job do you want after you get your degree?"

"I want to go on to study nuclear engineering and develop better ways to safely get rid of nuclear waste," said one member of the ChemE group.

"I want to get into developing new types of materials for use in medical settings," said another.

"I want to be a mad scientist," I said.

And with a lab coat like THIS....

..... I think I'm well on my way.

It should be noted that they all thought "mad scientist" was an acceptable profession to go into with a chemical engineering degree.

Anyway, part of being an engineer of any flavor (ChemE's are chocolate, I have decided, and EE's can be jalapeno) is learning how to use MatLab.

MatLab is short for Matrix Laboratory (you must pronounce it la-BOHR-uh-tohr-ee), and it is just as awful as you're imagining.

MatLab logo jacked from MathWorks

For people who don't give a rat's ass about engineering or programming, MatLab is like the second circle of hell, because it's painful and confusing and serves no purpose. For people who aspire to be engineers, MatLab is like the sixth circle of hell, because it's painful and confusing and YOU NEED TO KNOW HOW TO USE IT SO SADDLE UP.

I'm not a MatLab whiz by any means, but I am managing to have a little fun in it. MatLab is kinda like an unnecessarily-complicated calculator. One of the things you have to do when entering in an equation is define any variables you might have. If you took algebra, you are familiar with a variable. The most insanely basic equation I can think of that demonstrates this feature of MatLab is the following:

x = 5
y = 7
x + y
to which MatLab will reply
ans = 12, fool.

Well, you don't have to call your variables x or y. You can call them anything you want. ANYTHING. One of my homework problems looks like this:

gonna = 100

you = 0.9

up = 10

give = exp(1)
never = gonna*give^(you*up)

If anyone cares, the problem is for determining exponential growth, and the actual definitions for the values are:

never = current population

gonna = original population

you = continuous growth rate

up = time

give = e (which is like pi)

I only included one of these for the first homework. I want to see what I get on it before I do this more. Hopefully the TA grading it has a sense of humor and doesn't hate Rick Astley. Finger crossed that I will be able to invent and subsequently blog about more MatLab shenanigans in the coming semester!