Necessary Qualities in an Engineer-Dr. Alfred Hume. Frontispiece Water Measurements at the Pirahy Tunnel, Rio Janeiro, Brazil— .339 341 342 R. S. Wark .343 Clay Products in the Design of Homes-A. H. Kimball.. .350 The Senior Civil Inspection Trip-W. M. MacGibbon.... .354 .361 STUDENTS OF THE DIVISION OF ENGINEERING IOWA STATE COLLEGE, AMES, IOWA Annual subsription $1.00 Single Copies, 15 cents Necessary Qualities in an Engineer It has always seemed to me that the nature of an engineer's work encouraged, if, indeed, it did not compel, mental honesty, and an attitude of mind toward truth naturally leading to the highest standards in applied morals. Nature's laws are mercilessly unalterable. Closely associated with honesty in the makeup of an engineer is thoroughness. He must possess a power of analysis and a sort of genius for details. Building, as he does, for posterity, his structures to be tested by time, he must be careful, patient and thoroughgoing in the preparation of his plans. Honesty and thoroughness are bound to produce selfreliance and a certain degree of boldness. But for such spirit of daring, Niagara had never seen a railroad suspension bridge, and none of the romances of engineering had been written. This quality of boldness is close kin to another which characterizes the ideal engineer-initiative. Without it how few of his mighty works would have been wrought! While in no sense disregarding the lessons taught by experience, he will not be bound and fettered by the past, but will see old facts in new relations. This is but another way of saying that the engineer must be a man of vision. He must have an eye for things invisible to other men. How have the theories of so-called cranks led to discoveries of untold benefit to mankind and applications of incalculable practical value? Then, too, the engineer of the best type must be a man of faith. He must believe that the things he does are really worth doing. He must be conscious of such law and order in nature as guarantees the stability of his structure. It goes without saying that the engineer must have that comparatively rare gift called judgment. It is needed to regulate and control all things lest honesty in dealing with men lead to unnecessarily brutal bluntness and a tactless way of telling truth; lest thoroughness in matters relatively unimportant be carried to such an extreme as to result in extravagant waste of time and a failure to economize effort and conserve force. These seven-honesty, thoroughness, boldness, initiative, vision, faith, judgment—are as necessary in the evolution of an engineer as are the seven primary colors of the rainbow in sunlight.—An extract from the Presidential Address of Dr. Alfred Hume before the Engineering Association of the South, Dec. 28, 1914. Plant of the Roy Consolidated Copper Campany, 85 miles east of Phoenix Arizona. Structures designed by F N. Lewis, B.C.E. '98. It has been aptly said that less is known today concerning the laws controlling the flow of water than was known of the laws governing the movements of the heavenly bodies several centuries ago. There are in use by engineers today several methods of determining the flow of water in rivers, canals, pipes, etc., but all are more or less empirical and not entirely satisfactory. The writer, while in the employ of the Rio Janeiro Tramway, Light & Power Co., at Rio Janeiro, Brazil, spent considerable time in gaging the flow of streams emptying into the Lages reservoir. The primary object of this work was to determine the capacity of the Pirahy Tunnel, which is an unlined tunnel driven through a very hard gneiss, and is five and a quarter miles long. For all practical purposes, it may be considered as an unlined tunnel. There is 13-21=-4.02m less than 700 feet of concrete lining, no one section of which is longer than seventy feet, and is scattered throughout the length of the tunnel. Where only a short length of lining was necessary, the concreted section was the same as the solid rock section. The following are the hydraulic properties of a solid rock section: Slope, metric, .002335; English, .002335. Area, metric, 14.11 sq. m.; English, 151.783 sq. ft. R, metric, .994; English, 3.259. n, metric, .02; English, .02. f. p. s c, metric, 51.03; English, 90.30. Velocity, metric, 2.40 m. p. s.; English, 7.87 f. p. s. |