Welcome to the Get by in Mathematics blog for engineers by Mike Tierney and Becky Selwyn. Mike Tierney is a Chartered Engineer with 11 years experience working in the nuclear industry and 27 years experience lecturing. Becky Selwyn completed both her MEng and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol and has been teaching here for 9 years. Mike and Becky both specialise in Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer related topics, and Becky is excited to be part of the teaching team for your Thermofluids and Lab units this year. In the next few weeks we seek to:
- demonstrate how maths is used in engineering;
- show some ways Mathematics is used by University of Bristol students, graduates in industry and researchers;
- refamiliarise you with common mathematical operations (e.g. BIDMAS and trigonometry) and methods of communicating calculations;
- introduce key concepts that will be helpful when you arrive at the University of Bristol
This site presents videos, spreadsheets and homework files. If (and only if) you want to go into great detail our Get by in Maths Manual contains lots of further details about the worked examples, and website links. Each week we’ll offer a talk about applying mathematics in the real world, three content sessions, and a homework assignment. The homework should take no more than one hour, but feel free to dig deeper if you wish. We suggest that you use an A4 log book to record answers to questions we raise in the videos, and answers to homework.
You will need to download the following from our site:
• The Get by in Maths Manual
• The Maths Summer School Examples (spreadsheet)
• The Maths Summer School Homework (spreadsheet)
Maths in engineering
Please start by watching a video by Jemma Rowlandson, one of our current post-doctoral researchers, talking about how she finds the surface area of nanomaterials.
Introduction
To orient yourself to the course, please watch this introductory video
Estimation
The key message for this week is about estimation. Not only must we produce some algebra and numbers, we must also state what is in our minds eye when we solve the problem. Do we really understand what is going on? Are we using the right scientific principles? Can a colleague check our calculation? How does the result conform with experience? This video explains seven parts of a calculation layout.
Examples
Trigonometry and exponential decay/ recovery very frequently in engineering. Please watch the video of three examples (13 minutes) and (when asked) pause the video and jot down any parts of the calculation layout we have omitted.
Time to have a go
This homework pdf file, explains homework in detail and offers hints. (A) Record your response to a multiple choice test in your log book (5 questions). (B) Visit and experiment with this geometric visualisation . Produce your own drawing, meaningful to you, showing the relationship between angles of latitude, solar declination and solar altitude. (C) Calculate the five missing latitudes shown in the pdf file. (D) We automate our calculations for the course challenge the Excel homework workbook. And … whoops, we got it wrong! Please correct our calculation.