PhD-Level Ultrasonic Engineering • Medical • Manufacturing • Consumer
What's your transducer IQ level?
IQ is basically a measure of a person's ability to recognize patterns. It is your ability to make non-trivial connections.
A person's IQ is certainly put through the test when developing, enhancing, or maintaining ultrasonic transducers.
I know that experienced ultrasonic transducer engineers can tell when the impedance response of a transducer looks “funky” even though they can't fully explain the cause. Those engineers are using pattern recognition, which is a function of IQ and experience:
However, I'd like to add another factor to this discussion. That factor is “understanding.” IQ and experience are incredible forces. These forces are amplified with the “fulcrum” of understanding. Simply put, this is the “why?”. I argue that your ability to overcome ultrasonic transducer challenges is the product of IQ, experience, and UNDERSTANDING.
One method to start building your understanding of the impedance response of ultrasonic transducers is to take my “to-the-point” course on the subject.
Formal learning aside, you and your team should take the time to do learning experiments. Often times, the only experiments and tests we complete are with a commercial transducer and a realistic setup (this is not good for learning!). These systems are complex, and often it becomes hard to weed out essential observations needed to build understanding.
Never stop asking why - in your heart you know when you are stopping yourself from asking the hard questions.