Teaching Engineering Applications

Abstract

Teaching applications means no more than teaching how to apply general concepts and principles to specific and particular ‘hardware’. It goes without saying, therefore, that we must first he well versed with fundamental principles, i.e., systems, their properties — clear definitions, dimensions, units — Laws of Thermodynamics and their application to the systems in their solid, liquid, vapour and gaseous states, basic concepts on Heat Transfer Mechanisms. The teaching of these fundamentals, from the very beginning of any course, can be interwoven with illustrations of their meanings and use in the real everyday environment. Examples can be drawn from our immediate surroundings — an overhead projector, a chair, a lamp, the human body — are these closed or open systems? Of course illustrations of other machinery, turbines, compressors, pumps, heat exchangers, combustion chambers, etc., are used. Properties like pressure and temperature and parameters, fluid velocity and flow rate, torque, rotational speed and power, can all be introduced with demonstrations of ‘hardware’ and/or actual use and calibration of equipment in laboratories.