Engineering measuring: What Adam Savage taught me.
and why it was one of my eureka moments
Measuring objects and using various devices has always been a subject I needed work on, and it was probably about a year ago that I came across Adam Savage’s “Tested” YouTube channel (yes, I use YT a lot for learning – best way to learn is to copy an expert). For me as an Engineer / Tinker it’s brilliant as he does his One day builds which involves many different tools and techniques that I’ve either used or seen in my career.
But every so often I learn or discover something either new or a piece of information that makes a switch click in my mind (not just from Adam’s channel), and all of a sudden the bit of information that I was missing that I had no idea I was, has fallen into place and several topics now relate or an idea or method becomes clearer, this usually results in me rushing off to test it.
Now the subject of measuring that this happened to me was on Gage blocks, for years I had always used them for referencing against my Calipers or Micrometer after wringing together the dimension I wanted to check and seeing the error in my measuring device. What I wasn’t aware of was that the dimension you make the gage block to, can also be used as a reference when using a DTI to zero off and check against a part to see how they compare! ‘click’ I hadn’t seen this before but I could see its uses straight away and since that moment I haven’t stopped using this knowledge when the opportunity allows.
Hopefully watching the video you can see the light bulb moment I had “Oh, they are used for comparison as well!”. This moment I enjoyed and I often experience these in the reference materials I read / watch / study and the more I absorb the more I adjust my daily work to incorporate these links (what I am getting at is that spending time studying helps us grow and not just in our careers).
This is important, we don’t go to schools / colleges or universities regularly after we’re done with them in our youth (but you can develop working relationships with them and your company for benefits later on). So interacting with research / reference materials or mentors is the next best thing (and something Elon is known to do, so if he doesn’t know the answer he’ll ask the questions to the experts he hires).
Why is this important to have these eureka moments? Because it could be the key to solving your current or future problems and gives you a new perspective. Having that knowledge there ready and found in a way that forms a strong memory will ensures that when the time comes, you’ll be able to continue. You may think “this is obvious, why didn’t you know this before?” – well unless your told directly it then relies on chance that your work / life environment will create that experience for you to learn, so this is about increasing that occurrence.
Yes, you can’t know everything, but there are benefits to learning and becoming a better version of yourself. Here are several quotes from the more popular books:
- 7 Habits – The seventh habit is to “Sharpen the saw” – keep practicing
- Feynman – One of his ways of learning was to find the gaps in our knowledge, so that we could explain the concept to a layman
- The obstacle is the way – From Marcus Aurelius “Objective judgement” – the more facts you know that are true the more objective your judgement can become.
- The way of the superior man – “Lean just beyond your edge”, again from last month keep pushing.
They all relate to the same idea of exploring and finding the gaps to be ready for when the knowledge is needed, think of the film Limitless – we can’t have the NZT drug to help, but we can store good information to be unlocked when needed.
This article may be short but the message is clear, be open to explore all content available (for free) as you never know if that puzzle piece is missing until it drops.
The books in this piece are some of the many I have read to enrich and develop myself, check out my current reading list and recommendations at:
Or perhaps you would like to learn more? then I recommend my resources page:
There’s also my Engineer’s Log Book PDF download for £1.99!, get yours here:
Engineer’s Log Book PDF download
What are your thoughts? Have I covered everything or is there more you know and would like to share?
I’m always learning and improving this site and my blogs, so please feel free to get in touch with me via LinkedIn or this site to discuss any topics I have covered.
If you’re having trouble finding ways to progress check out this site filled with free learning tools: