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When I'm meeting most especially with my advisees and they're maybe having some
difficulty in their math course. I try to, I will say that to them it's like a
puzzle. It's suppose to be fun! Try to find the fun in it.
A lot of design has to do with mathematics and computers can do you
know calculations it would take you a lifetime, to do in seconds.
You know so, it just made more accessible to more people. You don't have to be a
Ph.D. in in every different field you know. You can rely on expert systems that
are built into the software so that you have to be an expert in your... you know
narrow field and and then rely on the expertise built into the software in
fields that you're not really familiar with. So it just opens up the
accessibility to a lot more information.
We will always need people. We will always need people to understand
what the outcome should be.
To make accurate predictions and they'll know if something's wrong.
We will always need people to double check other people because we make mistakes.
In doing mathematics we will always need people who understand more mathematics then
they're using. The only way they'll ever be able to see an error is if they
understand the bigger picture.
When technology advances a lot of the classic
ways, calculations were done we see a lot of that being simplified within the
software but in the end when when you do a design and you're trying to determine
whether or not the there's good integrity in that design. You have to
trust the information that the software is giving you so even though the
software might automate some of the map that's required to make engineering
decisions. It's still your call on whether or not that is a good design.
We progressed from the drawing board to AutoCAD and AutoCAD is made by a company
called Autodesk. Then they developed a software program specifically for the
mechanical field called Autodesk Inventor.
So we started teaching Autodesk Inventor in our program. Auto Desk Inventor is
3D modeling. It's not just drafting anymore it's now engineering
design within the software so we're doing 3D modeling of tire mechanisms and
they work like you would expect him to escape something called a parametric
software where we enter parameters for example if I want something to be ten
inches long
or 100 millimetres long or whatever. It takes care of formulas for us.
We just type in the formulas and it does the for us. So we enter these
parameters and if we want to make a change is not starting over again we
just edit that perimeter and it re-models our part for us.
Design software we often see as it advances there's less of a need to do
your calculations in classical style but you still have to know where these
numbers are coming from, how they were generated, and I still feel that having
some exposure to classical methods that taught in a science class taught
mathematics class is very, very, very, valuable.
I'm a person that likes hands-on. I personally do not like a lot of exams.
I prefer to give projects. Show me that I did you got something out of the class and that you
understand the ideas behind design or you understand the ideas how the software
works and what you can do with it.
About four years ago I actually had the students broken up into teams they had a
design what's called a quad cycle, actually a four-wheeled pedal powered
bicycle. They had to design this, their own design. They had to give me a bill
material, they calculated the length of the material they needed plus all the
hardware and material to have to build out of was one inch PVC schedule 40 pipe.
The first year I did that I had six teams and I had six fantastic PVC cars
that we actually rode around, I actually rode them too.
They rode around at the end of the spring semester.
They found mistakes they were surprised to
see that what they go to put things together with what looks good on the CAD
does not go together real good in actuality. They have stopped scratch your
head a little bit about how they run put these things together when he ran them
some of them how to how to keep things tight like we're changing popping off, so on and so forth.
The tolerances or the math came into play and they had to somehow get the chain to
go from the front which is you're peddling with your feet up front in kind of
leaning back to get that chain up-front clear to the back
and the tolerances, the dimensions they come up with.
Ran into problems that actually stopped and had to figure out.
You don't have to be a mathematician but you do have to have the ability to do you know
simple calculations and so long and a understanding of how to apply them.