Idle conversation

[Tom Kochtanek]

So you find yourself at a party with some new folks you don't know well, and they are all pedigreed Engineers from a major University. Pretty interesting group, but not much conversation going on. Your wife tells you in advance "not to talk about cars" and to discuss other things as well (Ouch, that hurts!). The conversations are going no where. So you decide to spice the interactions up with a few select questions. What do you inquire?

Here are some suggestions:

1. How does an automotive differential work? (Note, I did not ask you to explain what it does. Explain how it functions internally).

2. What is the difference between full-time and part-time four-wheel drive?

3. In the worst case, and if the differentials are not limited slip, what is the minimum number of wheels that will be driven with full-time four-wheel drive?

4. How does all-wheel drive differ from four-wheel drive, and what piece of equipment makes a vehicle "all-wheel drive"?

5. Explain the process by which a torque converter, the coupling device used in virtually every automotive automatic transmission being manufactured today, delivers more output torque than input torque.

6. In a single-joint Cardan coupling (commonly called a "universal joint" in automotive parlance), under what condition does the speed of the output not track exactly with the speed of the input?

7. Explain the process by which an unsymmetrical airfoil at zero angle of attack produces aerodynamic lift. (Explain the process in Newtonian terms without referring to Bernoulli's Theorem or utilizing mathematics of any form.)

8. Sketch a sectioned schematic of a turbojet engine and explain where the thrust comes from, then trace its path through the engine case to the engine mounts or pylon. (The schematic must be of a pure turbojet with no fan bypass.)

The premise is that while most "academic" engineers are quite well versed and well educated, many engineers do not understand the technical principles behind commonly encountered mechanisms and physical phenomena. I bet you guys know this stuff all too well

Cheers,
TomK

 

[dq409]

Gezzzz, And I thought you were just another dumb car nut !!! heeee heeee

 

[CDNpontiac409guy]

uuuuhh :? :? :?

 

[Southtowns27]

The premise is that while most "academic" engineers are quite well versed and well educated, many engineers do not understand the technical principles behind commonly encountered mechanisms and physical phenomena.

You couldn't be any more correct with that statetment. I'm a senior Industrial Technology (Industrial Engineering) student and I'm shocked at how mechanically "dumb" 98% of the students in the engineering department are. I think I'm going to print out that list and give it to a few of my classmates just to see what they do. I can do everything on that list with not much problem, the turbojet gets a little complicated though. In one of our buildings at school we have a cross-sectioned GE J78 Augmented Turbojet engine...I think I stood there for about 3 hours one day figuring out how it worked. :? They're actually pretty simple... I'm extremely mechanically adept and have been building, fixing, and working on mechanical stuff since I was big enough to pick up a wrench...But it actually kind of scares me that all of these engineers are graduating having never tightened a bolt. These are going to be the people that design and build the stuff we all use a daily basis - And they don't even know how it works!!!!

 

[CDNpontiac409guy]

I can't say that I personally would be able to handle ( make it through ) an education of that caliber. However, I think I see what you guys are getting at.
I would wager that a certain member of our club here, who he himself has admitted that he can barely write , ... could in fact have some of these school-room technicians sitting huddled in a corner, quietly babbling to themselves
Everybody ( except maybe myself ), can be educated...
A "natural" is born
and THEY are the DANGEROUS ones !

 

[dq409]

It only takes a few minutes looking at most anything today to see what you are talking about.
From the newer cars to the back of a VCR and even some of the software in our computers it`s obvious that these so called engineers don`t have a clue how and why the real world works!
Same can be said of the BA and MA`s coming out of the universities that become the upper managment of many of the corporations today .
Haven`t got a clue how it works or do they even care?
They learned it from a bookor a tech professor that doesn`t have a clue either !!
(Tom excluded)

I have always said that anything designed by an engineer should be disassembled and reassembled before it goes into production by the team that designed it !
Then have a real world workforce worker do the same with the engineering department standing and taking notes. Then back to the drawing board,,,,,, dq

 

[tmracing62]

I was 36 when I finally graduated because I’m not real smart and it’s a hard school. I had to pay my way so I contracted as an engineer then and after I got out. A lot of the companies I consulted to were also companies that some of my professors sometimes worked for. Almost every one of them had reputations in industry as pompous horse’s asses and not well developed as professionals. But to hear them tell it in class the Sun wouldn’t know how to come up in the morning without them. They certainly didn’t like that I was a competitor either.

I appreciated the people on the line or on the rig or wherever the work really happened. I respected them because they knew what was really happening and they were my best teachers. When we did a very large open pit mine design above an underground operation I took it to the miners, not the management, for corrections and insight. My former profs thought such an approach was beneath them. When you’re the one running the jackleg you don’t want some academic or office toad calling the final shots. As the years gathered it was not infrequent that I cleaned up the messes my profs had created in all sorts of industries. Like I said, I am not Einstein either. It was understanding that talking and doing are very different things and it was smart to listen and tuck up the ego.

I still associate with some of these people and I talk about cars more than engineering. I’ve done some interesting stuff, but they still look down their nose at me and are often condescending. You can’t take them too seriously and I view them as cannon fodder. They lead the academic research charge and I get to make it work for real people in the real world. But for some reason they think doing both is somehow lowly. Thanks for the idea Tom. It will provide for some amusement.

We just had a bridge girder fall on a car on C-470 about two miles from my house. Killed a family of three. I’m guessing that it was not improperly secured by the highways guys. We’ll just have to see, but my money’s on harmonics induced by adjacent traffic. Sort of like the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse. Or maybe like the management pressure that caused the disregard for the o-ring seal properties on the shuttle. Somehow though it will be made to look like the guys that are out there in the freezing or baking weather and busting to get the job done are to blame when in fact they are the ones that really know how to go from theory and plans to practice.

-----

Read this later and I came off sounding as bad as those I was complaining about. Sorry. Not that kind of guy and didn't mean to. It's just one of my real hot buttons.

 

[59elcooldsuv]

A few years ago I was working as a contract drafter in one of the major oil-field equipment corporations in the high-pressure valve department. I was working closely with a young Engineer that everyone seemed to like and respect.

One day he was bragging about his brand new Ford Ranger pickup he had just bought. As it happens, my little sister had just bought one a few months earlier. So I says to Young Engineer "My sister chose the V6 version cuz she was expecting to haul stuff, like her furniture and appliances. Which one did you get?"

"Which one what?"

"The V6 or the 4 cylinder?"

"I dunno."

"You don't know whether you have a V6 or a 4 cylinder?"

"No. I don't care anything about that stuff."

"Did you even bother to look under the hood?"

"No."

From that day I started watching his work more closely to be sure I wouldn't get blamed for any of his mistakes. We worked together on a R&D project and I made sure that I would do all the design work and only leave him the number-crunching that he had to sign his name to.