The opening post has an empirical experiment, but they chose to measure it with a probe thermometer in the glass itself, which is highly inconsistent at best due to the placement of the ice cubes. Your method sounds much simpler and more accurate. It's basically why I didn't choose to study civil engineering. I know I could if I found a way to make myself plow through the math. It just never seemed that interesting, especially a future job as a human calculator. Not in the I-hate-math-its-useless-anyway kind of way, just a very low score when you divide how interesting it is by the necessary effort . What have you done with your mechanical engineering degree? It was one of my options, mostly because you get to make awesome contraptions. But it seems a far stretch from audio engineering afaik.And nobody has to argue about heat sink equations.
That experiment was about cooling, not dilution. You could do the cooling measurement here, too; it wouldn't much influence the outcome. SO THE PATH FROM MECHANICAL ENGINEERING TO MIXING TELEVISION When I was working on my pre-engineering I took a couple classes in mixing in order to make my keyboard stuff sound better. When I transferred I decided to see if I could get a job mixing bands in clubs to help pay the bills. mission accomplished; in addition to a full engineering load, I mixed a good 50-60 hours a week for my last three years of college. When you spend that much time with sound, you hear "acoustics" muttered about in much the same way "latin" was likely muttered about in pre-Enlightenment Europe. However, since I was pursuing a mechanical engineering degree, and since acoustics is an offshoot of fluid mechanics, "acoustics" was an undeclared minor I could pursue. It was also handy in bioengineering, the other job I had in addition to mixing in clubs. Bioacoustics is interesting in and of itself; not only that, but the fluid mechanics of blood are so horrifically non-linear that they teach you that life happens in the empirical regime. "building awesome contraptions" is something that most MEs don't do much of. In my market, my choices were thus: 1) designing logging and paper-processing equipment for Weyerhauser 2) designing construction equipment for Genie 3) designing subsystems for Boeing 4) designing HVAC systems for any number of mechanical contractors In pursuit of employment, I ended up applying to a firm that did HVAC design, acoustical consulting and audiovisual design. they were looking for an HVAC CAD guy; I mentioned that I had post-grad stuff in acoustics and had paid for college by mixing bands in clubs. Which is how I ended up being the youngest acoustical consultant west of the Mississippi. Acoustics is actually all mechanical engineering. Problem is, fluid mechanics doesn't work unless air is a massless particle, and because "sound" is energy transmitted through a fluid which means the particles must have mass. So you're yanked right out of your theoretical ivory tower and cast down into empirical curve-fitting hell. Sometimes you have to look at the problems, run some numbers, re-derive a few equations and curve-fit a whole new equation in order to get your answer. Despite my abiding hatred for math, I used my degree hella more than anyone I knew who had pursued any of steps (1)-(4) above. And, of course, sound system design is essentially electroacoustics.
That's a really interesting path to have taken. Did you ever plan that ahead or was it just smaller good ideas building upon each other? I really think that educating yourself on a ton of different skills can be vital to your later career path. But I don't see myself finding a skill that I can make a job out of during my study. Not much GIS or Illustrator jobs without experience I know of. Well, that's the impression I got from the propaganda machines they call 'open days', visiting campus to get a rehearsed talk about how great the study is. They showed off how they made a machine students made to play darts. Ensured me how anyone who took the necessary maths in high school will be able to handle matrix equations. Sure. What they never tell you is the list you gave, where 80% of the students will land. Hard to sell, I think. those damn acoustic east-coast kids, ruining your consultancy dominance"building awesome contraptions" is something that most MEs don't do much of.
Which is how I ended up being the youngest acoustical consultant west of the Mississippi.