​Randomness as an engineering strategy?

Or: Luck; it’s a thing!

Sometimes there is remains chance in any well formed engineering process

In this article I am going to go over 3 case studies from different engineering fields to show:

1. How sometimes you need to resort to experimental methods.
2. And, when you do, how you might, or might not beat the competition.

Case study 1 – Materials Engineering
Are you familiar with the development of the vulcanisation of rubber?
If you are, then you know how remarkable and strange that story is. If not, then be prepared to be amazed or maybe even disappointed at how much randomness can be a major influence over engineering success.
Charles Goodyear had become obsessed with doing something with rubber.
He believed that he was directed by God to take rubber and turn it into something beneficial to humanity. This obsession drove him to bankruptcy numerous times (meaning his imprisonment for a period), and his family into poverty. To top it off, he almost killed himself a number of times experimenting.
Despite the consequences – his obsession drove him on. Some call him an eccentric, but mentally unbalanced could be a better description.
While he had shown technical insights as a child, he had not been given any advanced education.
He was more a tinkerer. And it was a tinkerer’s approach he used to improving rubber.
A number of experiments had shown some promise, but they ultimately failed. Then, either by accident or elimination of other options, sulphur was mixed with the rubber.
This cross linked the molecules in the rubber – making it tough and durable while keeping its compliance.
Some say he called in vulcanisation and some say it was a contemporary British inventor of the same process. Personally, given his religiosity – I think he would refrain from giving praise to any god but his own.
See below for the short video showing a perspective on Goodyear and how he made this discovery/invention.

Something to note. Charles Goodyear did not found the company Goodyear. The company was named after him by others who wanted to recognise his achievement.

Case Study 2 – Electronics Engineering
Are you familiar with the development of the blue LED? Watch the video below if not.

The key points are:

• Shuji Nakamura was obsessed by the development of the blue LED.
• He focused on growing the perfect crystal – to then make the LED.
• He really only ever had hunches.
• He went against the mainstream, and chose to explore gallium nitride over zinc selenide.
• He defied his boss after being asked to stop working on the blue LED due to a lack of success after decades of effort.
• He replaced the use of an electron beam with simple heating to generate light – this was another hunch – and then understood why the electron beam method worked.
• He at times used brute force approaches that were then later refined through adjustments.
• He continues to work on smaller LEDs after winning a Nobel Prize and developing the blue LED.
• No-one else had been able to create a blue LED.

 
Case Study 3 – Marine engineering
Everyone today assumes boat propellers are short. They are screw propellers, but they are not long like other screws. We know this because that’s how propellers have been for over a century. However, as you might infer from drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci, people first assumed screw propellers would be long – like the screw drill bits used to drill holes in wood or screw presses or water screws used to lift water. It just seemed obvious that screw propellers would also be long.
Around the 1830s there were many people exploring improved screw propellers.
One of them was Francis Pettit Smith. He had been fascinated with boats as a boy and later in life reached the conclusion that screw propellers were superior to paddles.
As did many others.
There was thus a competition on to find and patent the best screw propeller.
Most were doing the sensible thing of trying different configurations: pitch, speed diameter, length. They would build a propeller of one combination, note its performance, build another, note the change in performance, and then work out what to try next.
Our man Francis though ended up doing things a bit differently.
He was not known as being the most precise and methodical of his contemporaries. That probably would have been John Ericsson, and if not for what I am about to mention, John Ericsson, while being noted as a contributor to the screw propeller, would have likely been noted as the sole contributor. Thus, Francis was a bit more random than would normally be considered ideal for an engineer.
Despite this lack of method, Francis had the good fortune to have struck a log while testing a propeller on a boat.
This collision knocked the majority of the propeller off – leaving only a fraction connected to the shaft.
Wisdom of the time would have expected the boat to founder. However, instead, the boat surged forward.
Francis Pettit Smith had discovered/invented a far superior screw propeller. The one that was then adopted by later ship builders.
 
What do we take from this?
The above examples show how sometimes we need to use experimental approaches. Our understanding of the natural laws is insufficient. When we do, there is always the chance that someone else will try that near perfect permutation before we do.
Or maybe we will be the ones who try it first.
Regardless, the lesson to take from this is the same. This was not a matter of genius. Effort and commitments certainly played a role – but luck was the decider once those involved committed.
So don’t beat yourself up if you did not win in those circumstances, do not think you are amazing if you did win, do not lionise those who do win, and certainly do not think less of those who did not. Because, in such cases, all you can do is commit and hope.