Mechanics Corner
Where Would You Publish It?
Since long before my time, there has been a desire to have important results published where they become accessible to many others. Some of the great names, such as Newton, Euler, Bernoulli, and others, we know primarily because of what they published. Their work formed the fundamentals upon which modern engineering and science is built. Publication of research results has long been particularly important to faculty members; it is often take
Where Will I Find A Job??
As I read over the questions that readers post here on ME Forum and elsewhere, I sense a common theme in many of them. There seems to be a wide, dare I say almost universal, concern about where those currently in college will find employment after graduation. To a degree this is entirely understandable; we all wonder what is in our future. Even so, the level of anxiety that I sense in many of your postings strikes me as extraordinarily high. Let us consider this a bit.
Does anyone recognize where this video is shot? Is it a group of students at a school (what school?), or is it an industrial site (what company)? I am anxious for someone to locate this for me, please.
DrD
Saurabh Jain, our host, has identified this location for me, and that is much appreciated.
When I watched the video, I was aghast at all those nearly bare feet in a machine shop! I can appreciate that in Indian culture, the simple sandals are socially quite acceptable, bu
What/Where to Study
Introduction
I do not have the definite statistics available, but it appears to me that the majority of the readership of ME Forums is made up of students, with a much smaller number of readers at other points in their careers. By far the greatest part of these students appear to be in India, with a number in Southeast Asia and the Middle East; there are of course a few folks scattered all over the globe. It has been very interesting to me to learn about all of you, to gain
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, #47
What Makes a Ship Move?
One of the problems that often confronts engineers is the description of large, interconnected systems. Engineers tend to specialize, so that one is very knowledgeable on gears, another knows bearings, a third knows pumps, but none of them are comfortable with the whole system. In the automotive context, this is often exp
The following is a verbal description of a Doonesbury cartoon of unknown date by Garry Trudeau. Doonesbury has long been one of America’s major cartoon strips, with a very dry wit and a decidedly left-of-center outlook. I found this today in going through some old files.
SCENE: A college classroom, the teacher lecturing in a rather absent minded fashion, the students silently bent over, taking notes and keeping their heads down.
TEACHER: Of course, in his deliberations on American capi
A toothpaste factory had a problem. They sometimes shipped empty boxes, boxes without the tube inside. This challenged their perceived quality with the buyers and distributors. Understanding how important the relationship with them was, the CEO of the company assembled his top people. They decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, and third-parties selected. Six months (
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, #40
July, 2017
Two Short Math Problems
Do you ever read the ads that appear on ME Forum? I try to avoid them as much as possible, but an organization called BRILLIANT has put up some interesting math problems of late that have caught my eye. Two of them are the subject of today's post.
The first problem that I want to discuss is actually more recent than the other, but it gives us a good plac
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, # 37
29 April 2017
Two Balls Rolling On An Incline
A Problem Where I Learned Something New
Introduction
In previous articles, I have mentioned another web site called Physics Forums (PF) where people post problems for which they need help. In this note, I want to present to you one such problem and it solution, along with a new insight that came from another commenter at PF, one of the advi
Twenty One Rules for Tech Writing
Introduction
One of the things that has surprised me about the readers of ME Forum is the number of folk who want to publish technical papers. When I was an undergraduate (a very, very long time ago), publishing papers was the farthest thing from my mind. I knew that publishing was a concern for some of the faculty, but it was certainly no concern of mine! To my even greater amazement, most of those desiring to write want to write in English, even though this
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD
July 31, 2017
Triple Rocker
Over at the Kinematics of Machines club, I recently ask if anyone could show me an example of a four-bar linkage that would be classed as a triple rocker. In the terminology of four-bar linkages, a link is classed as either a crank or a rocker:
Crank - can rotate in a complete circle
Rocker - cannot rotate in a complete circle]
Thus my question was for an example
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, # 22
(c) Machinery Dynamics Research, 2016
Torsional Stiffness of a Shaft -- Part I
Introduction
A shaft is a common machine element, used to transmit rotational motion and torque from one component to the next. It is clear that the length of the shaft must be sufficient to span the distance from the first component to the second, but what should the diameter be? The answer to this quest
The VEProject --- Shifted Levers A Critical Assessment
Introduction
The subject of this article is the VEProject Shifted Lever video, as found at the following URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TniRMwL2Vg
The video shows a "Shifted Lever" mechanism, a device that appears to be perpetually off balance. It is presented as a perpetual motion mechanism, that is, a machine that will run forever without any energy input other than, perhaps, an initial push. This presentation c
1. Team building is very popular in industry these days, so here is a team building joke.
A group of mathematicians are attending a weekend seminar on team building. During the night, a fire breaks out in the room of one of the mathematicians. He quickly tears pages out of his notes and lights them on fire, one by one. He then runs down the hall, shoving burning sheets of paper under the doors of all the other mathematicians.
In the morning, after the building is burnt to the ground, the fire
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, #38
Machinery Dynamics Research, 2017
Rocket Homework Problem
Introduction
Most engineers find problems involving rockets to be exciting. There is something about a rocket that fires our imagination, whether we think of going to the moon or one of the planets, or simply of shooting down an incoming missile. The subject of this post involves a rocket on a mobile launcher. The rocket is i
The response here at Mechanical Engineering Forums, or should I say, the lack of response, has left me puzzled. There was a modest response (as indicated by comments) to my first post, but the number of comments has dropped to almost nothing since then. I am only aware of one person who has actually worked on one of the challenge problems that I have posed (but I hope that there are more who have). In the previous poll, there have been a good number of views, but an extremely small number of peo
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD
Machinery Dynamics Research, (c) 2016
Professional Societies -- Or Not?
Introduction
This post is written in response to questions raised by one of our regular participants, a young engineer in Australia. What I have to say here is based entirely on my own, very American, experience, and others may have different ideas. I would encourage a general discussion in the comments, so that we may see
Professional Responsibility — Do The Right Thing
In Western culture, three professions are recognized. They are medicine, the law, and theology. The practitioners of these professions have long been accorded a special status in society in recognition of their special knowledge. The physician is expected to use his knowledge of healing only for good, and never to murder or maim a person. The lawyer is expected to give correct legal advice to his clients, to keep them free from legal entangle
As most of us know, the Internet is a fantastic resource for information. You can find information on almost any topic you can imagine by doing an Internet search on the appropriate keywords. The flip side of this capability is that you can also find mis-information on almost any topic because there is no one to monitor the Internet for correctness. Wikipedia is a classic case in point. Many of the Wikipedia articles are highly informative and very valuable. Some, however, are highly biased and
Mechanics Corner
A Journal of Applied Mechanics and Mathematics by DrD, # 31
Machinery Dynamics Research, 2016
ODE Solution --- Fail!!
Introduction
Digital computation has become a major tool for engineers, and it is a great benefit. It can also lead to many pitfalls for the unwary. This note is about the latter, a potential pitfall that many engineers risk on a daily basis, most of them with little awareness of the danger.
Early in the developme
