^ 620.5 STX THl 104:3 SPR 1989 ^ f9pf 1^ I ^feN V J K MITCHELL AGR 338 AGR ENGR SCI BLDG CAMPUS IL 00644 \:\t\\•:i^^.^^^i^\ii^.<Xi•'^^3i'^ii'^Ji^ff^*<^i^^^ ASHTON-TATE, the premier developer of microcomputer business software products like dBASE IV; FRAMEWORK MultiMate Advantage ll," MASTER GRAPHICS'; and the Macintosh products, including Full Impact" and FullWrite Professional" will be on campus: Tuesday, April 11 interviewing Computer Science, Engineering and .vV^^ ^<.^ Applied Math degree candidates for positions in: Microcomputer Software Development vX'^ ^^^ A^- See your Career Planning and Placement Office Mv^ for more details and to sign up. .Aashtontatf ^" ^ 20101 Hamilton Avenue Torrance, CA 90502 Equal Opportunity Employer 1 Illinois Technograph Spring 1989 Volume 104, Issue 3 Editor-in-Chief: Kiefer K. Mayenkar The Septillion Ton String By lack Gidding Superstring remnants from the Big Bang, Business Manager: Karen Vallero infinitely massive and infinitesimally thin, may hold the answers to creation. Production Editor: Victoria L. Degler Features Editor: Iris Chang The Eagle Has Landed By Mike Grimm The EAGLE FYogram offers American en- Copy Editor: Scott M. Heydinger gineering students the opportunity to inter- face with their Asian counterparts. Asst. Copy Editor: Melinda Ciien The Invisible Peacekeeper EOH Editor: lack A. Gidding By A.]. Singh The science of nuclear assault enters an entirely new realm with the advent of the Photo Editor: Dan Powers Stealth Bomber. Designer: Brian Switzer Undergraduate Research At UIUC 9 By Lorenzo Smith Research enables undergraduate students Asst. Designer: Mathieu Nuygen to gain valuable work experience and put theory into practice. Publisher: Michael Smeltzer Departments Forum 2, In Focus 6 Production Managers: Mary Cory, Kit Up Close 1 Donahue Editorial Staff: Thomas Chuang, Mike Grimm, Minako Hashimoto, Laurie Hell- mer, Calvin Huang, Chi-ting Huang, David Kenyon, Kinney Ludwa, Andrew Martens, Bradley Maurer, Julie Reyer, Bij- al Shah, A.J.Singh, Ken Skodacek, Loren- zo Smith, Ketan Thakkar, Todd Veltman, Dean Wagner, Mon Yee, Deborah Zan- Illinois Technograph. 57E. Green Si .Champaign. Illinois. 61820. phone: dell. (217) 333-6602. Copynghl mini Media Company. 1988, Staff: Photo Christopher Guy, Laurie niuiois Technograph (USPS 258 760). Vol. 104 No. 2 Hellmer, Ken Horlander, Julie Reyer, Winter 1988. Illinois Technograph is published four times during ihc academic year at the University of Illinois at Uibana-Champaign Pub- Dean Wagner, Mon Yee. lished by the IlLni Media Co., 57 E Green St , Champaign. IL 61820 Subsnptions arc available for $7.25 per academic year Advertismg by Utiel-Murray-Bamhill. Inc.. P.O. Box 1405. Morrislown. NJ. 07960- Cover/illustrations: Brian Switzer 1405 Illinois Technograph is a member of Engineering College Maga- zines Associated. forum International Perspective From The Wall Street Journal, Monday. majors at most universities are not even UIUC currently has exchange agree- February 27, 1989: required to take any sort of intemational ments with three universities in France: education class, let alone one in a foreign L'Ecole Nationale des Fonts et Chaussees ' The next century's corporate chief language. in Paris, L'Institut Nationale Polytechni- must have a multicnvironment, multicoun- Unfortunate also is the fact that here que de Lorraine, and Univerite de Tech- try, multifunction^, maybe even multi- at the University of Illinois, students and nologic de Compiegne. Interested students company, multi-industry experience." specifically engineers, have ample oppor- should be juniors or seniors. -Ed Dunn, Corporate Vice President tunity to take advantage of the growing The Colombian summer program is Whirlpcxil Corporation. trend of globalization but rarely do so. arranged through the Universidad de los Foreign languages and cultural courses are Andes in Bogota. Students work part-time " Global, global, global, " is how only the beginning. The university also in Colombian industry for nine weeks, Noel Tichy, a professor at University of offers a wide range of intemational educa- which includes two weeks of travel Michigan's graduate school of business tion programs that are intended exactly for through Colombia and South America. describes the wider-ranging chief execu- the purpose of providing intemational ex- An exchange program is available for tive of the future. perience to students. students in ceramic engineering to study UIUC is the only college in the U.S. for one year at the Universidade de " With over half of Arthur Andersen offering an Intemational Minor in En- Aveiro in Portugal. Students should be & Co.'s revenue generated outside the gineering as part of a regular degree prog- juniors with some knowledge of Portu- U.S., the company's next chief executive ram. A major in mechanical engineering guese. will be a person with experience outside may have a minor in Far Eastern Studies, The college works with Yonsei Uni- the borders of the U.S...." an Electrical engineer may have a minor versity in Seoul, Korea to involve students -Duane R. Kullberg, Partner Arthur in Latin American studies and so on. The in work-study programs. The primary Andersen & Co. minor requires 21 semester hours of cultu- goals are to have students learn Korean ral and language studies in the area of through intensive language study and gain A great deal of foresight is not neces- concentration. The student must also work experience. sary to conclude that corporate success in spend eight weeks working or studying in Additional information on these and the fuuire will very much be related to the the geographical area of concentration. other programs is available at 207 En- intemational experience posessed by a The Summer Opportunity in China gineering Hall. particular individual or firm. Even today, Program was developed to introduce stu- Although the future is seldom clear in many growing businesses are realizing dents to Chinese culture and to give them the volatile world of business, the fact that their continued prosperity is depen- a reasonable proficiency in the Chinese that globalization will be important in the dent on their ability to adapt to a world language. Students participating in the nineties and in the coming century is defi- market. program complete an intensive Chinese nite. Students at the University of Illinois We are now on the forefront of a new language course on campus in the spring, have the opportunity to become a part of age in business and the American ignor- which is then followed by six weeks at a this future. The choice is clear. ance of foreign cultures is no longer Chinese university and two additional acceptable. As great American companies weeks touring China. such as Arthur Andersen & Co., Caterpil- The college has an exchange program v^ with the Technische Universitat Munchen lar, and IBM ( to name only a few ) ex- /f/f^/y. pand both nationally and internationally, in Munich and Technische Hochschule in the extent of intemational exposure of Darmstadt, West Germany. Eligibility re- Kiefer K. Mayenkar their employees is critical to their survival quirements include completion of universi- and success in foreign lands. ty-level German and an outstanding Illinois Tcthnograph inviles letters in response to its articles and Unfortunately, American education in academic record. editonals. or any other items of interest to its readership Ailicles. photographs, and other contnbutions are also welcome. Letters must be general fails to take into account the great signed, but names wiii be withheld on request. importance of an intemational education. Some high schools require a semester or two of a foreign language. Engineering universe The Septillion Ton String string thin. I remember as a little boy staying outside This is comparable to the common phase what keeps the extremely The at night looking at the stars in the night transition of water to ice. No one actually strings with the most symmetric vacuums sky and wondering why they were in such knows how many phase transitions took (the fewest phase transitions) are the thin- random positions. I later learned that stars place at the time of the Big Bang, but it nest. The vacuum also causes the string to were really only components of a much is believed that they all occurred before be extremely massive. A string approx- larger object, a galaxy. Galaxies, like the universe was lEE—35 seconds old. imately 16 kilometers long would have stars, also seem to be distributed at ran- These phase transitions caused the "de- the same mass as the Earth. dom. Or are they? For many years, scien- fects" that occur within the equations that Newton concluded many years ago tists have searched for the reason that model our universe. that mass is the main component of grav- galaxies are distributed as they are. Now Astrophysicists such as Albert Einstein ity. As mass increases, so does its gravita- they may have found one: theoretical en- created equations to describe the creation tional force. A cosmic string, with its ex- tities, called cosmic strings. These are su- and expansion of our universe to a reason- treme mass, can actually bend the space perthin, supermassive strands which were able degree. These equations give the first surrounding it. This can be proven by created a fraction of a second after the support for the theory of cosmic strings. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. If Big Bang. The solutions to these equations gave rise a cosmic string were to pass between two it set the two A little over twelve years ago, to three types of defects: domain walls, objects at rest, would ob- T.W.B. Kibble, from the Imperial Col- monopoles, and cosmic strings. In our jects in motion towards each other at lege in London, concocted the concept of universe, we might have any combination 60,000 meters per second. In the bending cosmic strings. The response to his paper of these defects.