ECH 80 Essay 1 - Grade: A- PDF

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This is the first assignment in this engineering ethics. We were asked to write a short essay on why we want to be a chemical engineer, and what specific field I want to explore as a profession in chemical engineering. I got an A- in this assignment and earned an A in this class eventually....

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ECH80 Essay 1 Why I want to become a Chemical Engineer Since I was in primary school, I have always had a great desire to find out problems, solve them with all means and apply what I learn while solving. Such a strong sense of curiosity built up my interest and paved my way of learning science during my high school stage. At that time, while learning important theories and phenomenon of mathematics and physics, I had a true passion for chemistry. However, driven by my curiosity, I could not help asking myself some questions: How practical can chemistry be in my daily life? Will what happens in a beaker happen in a factory the same way? These questions urged me to reconsider and even answer them while I study at UC Davis. During my freshmen year, I kept these questions in my mind while majoring in chemistry. Nevertheless, as I gradually accumulated chemistry knowledge, I realized that the answers are quite different from what I expected. For instance, the reaction in a beaker is more likely to be an ideal situation. To perform it in a factory is a much larger scale. For a factory to make good use of this reaction, we need to consider a lot of factors such as time, money, the amount of the reactant, and the process of being environmentally friendly when using the remnants. Meanwhile, as I was exposed to the UC Davis community, I got the opportunity to have conversations with my friends who major in chemical engineering. Through these conversations, I was able to fully understand the difference between chemistry and chemical engineering. Such an understanding led me to believe that chemical engineering matches my curiosity and problem solving personality more. I am strongly willing to dedicate the rest of my college life to dive deeper into the chemical engineering major. With this belief embedded in my mind, I changed my major from chemistry to chemical engineering at the commencement of my sophomore year. Up till now, as a junior, I have been actively devoting myself to majoring in chemical engineering for one year. I have started to the feel the amazingness of this major. First, to me, chemical engineering is more like systematic learning of solving problems in a chemical scenario with interdisciplinary skills and techniques. For instance, in doing the programming project of estimating the combustion heat of some organic compounds in my ECM6 class, I needed to have

a solid understanding of the concept of combustion heat and the related chemical settings given in the project statement. At the same time, I should be rather familiar with some useful syntax of for loop and calling on functions in mat-lab such that I could track down this project with less time spent on debugging the mat-lab code. With such a strong demand of interdisciplinary application, I will have to learn each course in a greater depth instead of staying at the level of cramming equations and facts. Thus, majoring in chemical engineering is beneficial to me in helping me learn various courses better and bringing up the potential opportunity to apply them at the same time. Second, since engineering also requires some skills to work with other people, majoring in chemical engineering also betters me in establishing my corporate awareness. Take my experience in taking ECM5 as an example. During the lab session of that course, I would have to team up with another students in chemical engineering to apply heat transfer, mass transfer concepts in making coffee with raw beans. During that time, we had nice teaming up and our harmony eventually led us to be the section champion and 4th place in overall coffee-making competition. Therefore, majoring in chemical engineering is advantageous to me in terms of improving my interdisciplinary ability and teamwork spirit. In mentioning the specific aspects of a career in chemical engineering which addresses my interest, I will try my best to be a research engineer emphasizing on nanotechnology and renewable energy. Similar to I mentioned before, I was born with a have strong sense of curiosity. Thus, being a research engineer will be a perfect match to my personality. As for having an emphasis on nanotechnology and renewable energy, I want to learn more about them because they have been increasingly received attention in the research field. To an even more important degree, it may even help people save energy and mitigate the over exploit situation happening in developing countries. In the remaining time of my college career, I will still keep exploring the chemical engineering major and I firmly believe that I can reach my goal of being a competitive research engineer one day....