How to Solve Engineering Problems

These Instructables have been created in order to help young, aspiring engineers develop a critical skill set that will help them through their schooling and throughout their careers.  This skill set will become a repetitive process that can be applied over and over again to any problem that they may encounter at any time.  These instructions are not limited to only engineers however, as many professionals or other students can find these useful for solving problems in their respective fields.  For the purpose of this Instructable, I will walk you through the generic steps that should be taken in this process and then I will solve an engineering related problem using these steps.

The picture below shows how complex a design can be, but using the following method can take something this complex and break it into simpler parts while keeping it a beautiful design.  Thanks to http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2383/2518751632_53119dfd58.jpg for providing the picture!

Step 1 Materials Needed

For a majority of these problems, only a few things are needed to help you solve them.  They are a calculator, scale, paper, and pencil.  This may sound like very little supplies but it really is all that one needs.  I would recommend a scientific calculator for these problems since they will most likely contain equations that are too difficult to be handled by a simple calculator.  Any kind of paper will work but grid paper is generally the most useful so you can keep things organized vertically and horizontally.  If you do not have a scale, a plain ruler will suffice.  The scale/ruler will help you keep your schematic drawings neat and easy for both you and your professor/boss to follow.

Comments

[Phil B]

Once I believed I wanted to be an electrical engineer, but decided against it in favor of becoming a pastor. Thank you for a glimpse of what is involved in solving engineering problems, although this is not from anything electrical. I was especially interested in the latter parts dealing with verifying the solution. In many situations I am distressed at myself for doing something too quickly and arriving at an erroneous solution to a problem.

[zulukabongelani]

Wow! Amilte, This is one of the problems I solved on my Heat and Mass transfer course at the technikon. Thanks, I do my continous practice almost everyday where I select at least 3 problems per day.

Thanks once again