The Engineer (of the eccentric)

       I scribble out the last few lines I just spent an hour calculating, cursing under my breath. My graphing calculator has a migraine and refuses to run the “solve” function no matter how many times I press it and plead with it, so I’m left to my own devices when it comes to these derivatives. Not easy on a good day, not to mention in this scorching California heat wave. My stuffy studio apartment feels like a toaster oven: the clock on the microwave seems to stretch the seconds on for eternity; all my kitchen cabinet doors are flapping open and closed to cool themselves off, negotiating with the refrigerator to release the occasional puff of cold air, although the selfish milk tries to keep it all to itself; even the fan pants heavily, spinning lazily in useless circles; oh, and the actual toaster oven burned my bagel before I even turned it on. As if the heat itself wasn’t enough, my brain is fried even worse from also working on this steady-state heat equation.

“How did they get this to work?” I mumble and scan through the article to re-read its methodology. I’m using only a slight variation of the standard problem, so why am I not getting a solution? The robo-vacuum crawling around the floor makes its way toward me and nudges my foot.

            “Not now, I need to work,” I gently kick it away and return to my calculation. “Okay, think,” I try to talk myself through it, pensively chewing through a bowl of trail mix since that bagel didn’t work out, and neither I nor my appliances feel like making me a sustainable meal. “Laplace equation, Dirichlet boundaries, where is this going wrong? It should settle at a steady state and-”

            The vacuum creeps back, prodding against my foot until it tips the sandal off my heel. “Would you stop it? Go away,” I roll my eyes and kick it back again. It whirls and chirps, annoyed and hurt, and scurries away to hide under the coffee table like it always does when it wants to sulk. “Alright, wait, come back,” I roll my eyes but try to coax it back out; it just huffs stubbornly; the tea kettle whistles with amusement.

I sigh. Considering the vacuum does the bulk of the chores in this apartment, I’m not in a position to complain, so I need to restore our very complicated relationship. Grabbing a handful of trail mix, I scatter it around the carpet, and the vacuum’s blue lights flash eagerly as it darts out to clean it up. It purrs and bounces around my feet happily; all is forgiven.

With the vacuum occupied, I return to my partial differential equation where I continue to stare and scribble and scratch out; the calculator’s mood has not improved. Retying my ponytail higher to get the hair off the back of my neck and rummaging through the refrigerator for a yogurt cup – the milk nearly slams the door on my hand: “Alright, alright, I’m closing it, relax, geez” – I wonder why I even need to solve this equation. Southern California in May is already the perfect example: heat diffuses from hot regions to adjacent colder regions until everyone and everything is broiled and miserable. There you go, proof by example. QED. 

I collapse onto the sofa with a groan, the cushions embracing me. “Dara, Dara, take a break, you need a break,” they whisper to me soothingly and they almost convince me.

“Ugh, soon,” I prop myself up and rub my tired eyes. I do need a break but I can’t afford to sleep; my faculty mentor wanted me to present my progress last week but I hadn’t made any yet, and he’ll really be on my case if I don’t get anything new by this Thursday. 

Instead, I pick up the little model bridge I’ve been making out of toothpicks and string: a suspension bridge. Technically, it’s an underspanned suspension bridge. Unlike in the Golden Gate, in an underspanned suspension bridge, the cables hang below the deck, instead of swooping above. Since a construction like this makes the deck much less stable, they are rarely made in real life. The best way to construct them is to use cables that themselves recognize when to tighten and slacken, but most engineers don’t have access to those materials. But I’ve made several standard suspension bridge models before so I thought something new would be a fun challenge instead. My mom is an artist and my dad is an architect so it must be genetic that I can work well with my hands, even in the little details of pinching together toothpicks with a dot of craft glue and tying together tiny knots in the strings. My logical dad would also say I should have done the typical suspension bridge than try to defy gravity, and my creative mom would say I shouldn’t let my imagination be stopped by laws of physics – I suppose I’m a little of both of them.

My goal is to successfully roll a heavy marble across the bridge and have it hold up, and I’m fairly close. I have everything calculated and constructed down to the cosine so the deck is stable enough. I made all my household items promise not to mess with it so they don’t accidentally break it – though I still keep it in a drawer because I don’t trust the curtains not to knock it over; they can get a little careless at times.

I’m trying to distract myself but also, I can’t get the Laplace equation out of my head and keep turning over reasons why my solution breaks down. My textbooks know my thoughts well because they float around me, opened to chapters about steady-state convergence and heat conduction. The books and I live in a permanent symbiosis. They know exactly what I’m thinking and serve as a pillow whenever I fall asleep at my desk, whispering me bedtime stories of steepest gradient decent or fluid mechanics. 

Eventually, dusk falls on this unproductive day. The sun sets but forgets to take the heat with it. Every sentient being gives up on the chance of a night breeze, and I nearly give up the last sliver of hope of solving my equation.

“Alright, I understand that. Can you skip to the part about harmonic functions?” I wearily ask PDEs for Engineers, 3^rd Edition; it ruffles its dog-eared pages in confusion and exhaustion. “I know, I know, I don’t think it will help either but maybe it’ll give me an idea,” I sigh but try one more time. The book flips to the section and I scan over the paragraph as I wait for the glue to dry between two toothpicks. 

“Wait,” I suddenly freeze. The solutions are analytic within the domain the Laplace equation is satisfied. “Wait.” Oh my God, I did not actually do that, did I?

In a flash, I jump out of my seat, nearly dropping my bridge, and frantically read through my problem; the books hover over my shoulders, reading with me. 

“No way,” I groan and slam a fist on the wooden table; it shudders with a yelp and raises its splinters in self-defense like a porcupine. “I forgot to fix the domain.” Rookie mistake, definitely not one for someone studying this for over four years. Definitely not something that should have taken me five hours to figure out.

“You are freakin’ kidding me,” I press my fingers to my temples in disbelief. I rip the page out of my notebook in sheer frustration and toss it aside; the robo-vacuum immediately rushes out to sweep it away.