User:JohnSyme

My name is John Syme. I'm originally from the suburbs of CHI-Town, or Chicago for those who don't understand the parlance of a proud individual from the city of broad shoulders.

Pronunciation

My name is pronounced John (like it's normally pronounced) Sy-M.

Goals

I hope to major in Engineering here at Duke and possibly double major in economics. I'm, also, interested in studying Arabic in my time at Duke. I hope to become a Titan on industry at some point in my life.

Activities

At Duke, I'm involved in Men's Club Rowing, Duke Debate, and House Council for Epworth. I look forward to working hard, learning a lot, and having fun!

Grand Challenges

[1], Alison Go, US News & World Report, updated 14 August 2008, accessed 14 September 2013 (Provide Energy from Fusion)

One of the Grand Challenges states that engineers must be able to provide energy from fusion. Fusion is a nuclear process where in molecules are created, instead of destroyed as in fission. The US News article above speaks of the great uptick of interest in nuclear engineering within universities. The uptick in interest comes without any government backing as the government has withdrawn much of its stake in nuclear engineering. Since The Cold War, the government has been sinking millions of dollars into nuclear research, but after the Cold War the intense nuclear efforts of the US did not seem necessary. The resulting withdrawal of funds caused many universities to cut their nuclear engineering programs. These programs are now recovering as unregulated student interest causes universities to reinvest in nuclear programs. The reinvestment of universities makes it easier for students to work on problems in nuclear engineering, and, perhaps, solve fusion energy and make it available to the people.

Matlab Demonstrations: Programming Scripts & Functions

I enjoyed this demonstration the most because I learned the most information from this section. I have not been coding long, so the helpful coding productivity tips they gave me greatly increased my confidence that I can code correctly. The section that contains a compiled list of all helpful loop structures, such as for loops and switch loops, is very useful because it can be used as a good reference later on. In addition, the list of debugging commands will be very useful in larger programs because commands, like dbstatus, will make it easier to target specific break points. Also, the grabcode script command will be useful to streamline coding process because then i can simply initiate that command instead of cluttering my program by copying different code. The Programming Scripts & Functions section greatly increased my knowledge of the matlab programming language.