Book Review: Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks

I just finished reading "Hot Air Rises and Heat Sinks:  Everything You Know About Cooling Electronics is Wrong" by Tony Kordyban.  You may be thinking, "That sounds kind of nerdy."  You would be correct.  It is nerdy - because it's about the thermodynamics and heat transfer of electronics.  But I think even a non-engineer could enjoy it if you have some basic interest in heat transfer principles.  It's written to be a bit Dilbert-esque and has lots of funny jokes and makes tongue-in-cheek jokes about corporate America.  At least I thought the jokes were funny.

The examples and advice given in the book are very real-world scenarios and examples, and the author does a good job of relating heat and electronics to real life.  The book illustrates well the typical dilemmas in a day (or year) in the life of an electrical hardware design engineer.

For my fellow engineers and science lovers, I recommend this book.  For those not deeply interested in science, you may want to give this one a pass.  Even though the writing is funny, that may not compensate enough for the technical lessons and details in the book.

Random Old School

As I was driving home from robotics today and was scanning through the radio channels, I heard two older but good songs that I had never really focused on the words before.  One was Michael Jackson's "Man In the Mirror".  I think lots of times I picture him singing silly songs or singing songs with somewhat obscure lyrics and making strange music videos.  This one has one of those classic messages like "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

The other song was "Try" by Pink.  Now THAT is a funky music video.  But the chorus has some interesting lyrics.  Maybe I was just feeling philosophical tonight and I would have thought anything was interesting.  "Where there is desire there is going to be a flame.  Where there's a flame someone's bound to get burned.  Just because it burns doesn't mean you're going to die - you gotta get up and try, try, try."

Have a good Wednesday.