Engineering Quarterly VOL.I. . . No.2
University of Mary
FREE
WINTER 2019
W ELCOME ! By TERRY PILLING
Welcome to our second issue of the newsletter of the University of Mary Engineering School. Since our last issue of the Engineering Quarterly back in November 2018, we have finished the Fall semester of courses and started the Spring semester. Our curriculum is continuing its development with numerous new engineering courses and labs being actively taught in the four degrees we are currently offering on campus. These degrees are Construction Management, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. This semester also marks the completion of our development of these degrees up through Junior year and we are currently conducting a faculty search for new professors in each of the engineering disciplines to join our team to teach and develop the senior level courses starting next fall. We anticipate the successful completion of the search later this month and we will announce our new hires as well as introduce you to them in our spring issue of EQ in May. We sincerely hope that you are enjoying our newsletter and we plan to continue to publish an issue every three months corresponding to each season: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. If you have any suggestions, or you have any important news that would be of interest to engineers and engineering students please don’t hesitate to contact me. Terry Pilling, PhD University of Mary
N EW FACULTY The School of Engineering has hired a new faculty member for the Construction Management program. Professor Matthew Scerbak is a registered professional architect licensed in two states, Michigan and Alaska. Matthew Matthew earned his Bachelor of Science in Architecture at the University of Michigan in 1983, his Master of Architecture with distinction at the University of Michigan in 1986 with concentration in Design Theory, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography and Related Media at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Matthew has 13 years of experience in construction and architecture and he taught at the Immaculate Conception Parish in Fairbanks, Alaska, until 2014 when he moved to New
York and taught further courses and labs in Construction estimating, planning, DesignBuild management, Commercial Detailing, and Architectural Design at the State University of New York and the Parsons School of Design. Matthew joined the University of Mary Engineering School as a professor of Construction Management starting in January 2019 and will be helping us design the Construction Management program as well as teaching and advising students in Construction Management and Architecture. Professor Scerbak is passionate about architecture and construction management and has been working to bring back the role of the Master Builder. According to Matthew, “The most significant accomplishment in my career, and more important than any degree, was the pioneering of a new paradigm in construction project delivery. For 13 years with my own business, I acted as both the architect and construction manager, concurrently, on all of my projects (all commercial work). This was, and still is, unheard of, except in residential construction. I did applied research, in real time, to see if it was possible to restore the ancient Master Builder concept in a contemporary context, assuming all of the liability and risk that this entailed. It was a very bold move, but I was successful in this ‘dual’ role, managing upwards of 70 different trades while designing buildings, and delivering projects at less cost and in half the time of my competition by overlapping design and construction by over 80%. Architect, after all, comes from the Greek archi+tekton, which means master builder. I was just bringing the concept back into the contemporary world, something that could only be explored by actually doing it.” In his teaching role Matthew wants to show students how to manage both construction and design, “I want to teach my Construction Management students what it means to work in a highly collaborative environment, in an essential role that is not separate from design, but overlaps with it in a continuous, interdependent, process. It is a skill and mindset that will position them on the leading edge of industry.”
W ORKFORCE D EVELOPMENT I NITIATIVE By BRIAN OPP
In January the University of Mary launched a Workforce Development Initiative with the immediate objective of helping employers attract new employees, and retaining and developing current workers. Workforce is repeatedly identified as the number one barrier to economic growth in North Dakota. The topic has been researched at length, now is the time to take action and the University of Mary is eager to make an impact. Workforce development and training are hardly new at University of Mary. In fact,
we’ve been doing this in some fashion since our founding in 1959. What is new is the University’s laser-like focus on increasing our impact in this all-important area. A newly established University of Mary workforce development team will lead efforts to grow and expand the University’s relationships with employers, to identify the critical needs of employers, and to collaborate with those employers to develop and deliver the exact education and training opportunities they need to their employees. Already we’ve added new workforce development partnerships with MBI Energy Services, The North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, and McKenzie County Healthcare System. These employers join over 50 entities already partnering with the University of Mary for workforce development training. Partnerships with the University of Mary provide various benefits to employers including scholarships for their employees, the ability to pursue skill-specific certificates in as few as 15 weeks, and more. Perhaps the greatest value we can provide employers and their workforce is offering the flexibility to meet their needs. Education and training opportunities can be delivered in-person, online, or as a hybrid. They can be employer-specific or open to public enrollment. They can be offered on a “for credit” basis or simply as a means to further develop the skills and knowledge of a workforce. In short, University of Mary is willing and able to tailor education and training opportunities to meet the need of any employer. Please contact Brian Opp, University of Mary Workforce Development Strategist, for more information and to explore how the University of Mary’s workforce development initiative can benefit you. blopp@umary.edu (701) 355-3798
N EW E NGINEERING B UILDING By LUKE SEIDLING
The University of Mary is preparing to begin construction of our engineering building, which we plan to complete by Fall 2020. The engineering faculty, along with Luke Seidling, the Director of the University of Mary Physical Plant, Tyler Atkinson the Maintenance and Project Manager, and Vaughn Rhodes the Campus Architect, have been working with Registered Architect Joe Larrivee from Bartlett & West, Mike Van Dyne, P.E. from Bartlett & West, Chris Wentz, P.E. from CW Structural Engineers, and John Klein, P.E. from Apex Engineering Group on the floorplans, building materials, equipment purchases, classrooms, laboratory facilities, machine shop, woodshop, technology needs, etc., for the past eight months. The plans are now nearly ready and construction is planned to begin in May of this year for a grand opening for the Fall 2020 semester.
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S PRING E NGINEERING S OCIAL By KEVIN ALLAN
The first ever engineering social was held on Thursday, Jan. 31 from 11:00am to 12:30pm on the University of Mary campus where the Career Services office along with the Engineering Department Faculty welcomed 14 engineering organizations from around the local area and state to campus to speak with our students about engineering, their organization, a day in the life of an engineer, as well as job and internship opportunities.
Engineering Social We had approximately 30 students attend the event. Afterwards, when visiting with the employers, they were pleased with the event and the caliber of students that are being produced in our Engineering School. They were also delighted with how well the students engaged them. The companies that attended were: Applied Engineering, Barr Engineering, Bartlett & West, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Braun Intertec, City of Bismarck, KLJ, City of Mandan, Bobcat/Doosan, Great River Energy, Killdeer Mountain Manufacturing, MDU Resources, North Dakota Department of Transportation, and Western Area Power Administration. This was an excellent event for students to interact and network with employers while learning more about local engineering companies and we will look to build on the success of this event and make it an annual occurrence as our engineering school continues to grow. Please contact us if you would like representatives from your company to attend. We would like to thank all who helped to make the day a success, starting first with the faculty in the Engineering Department, catering/dining services staff, facilities, and hospitality staff. The success of the event couldn’t have been achieved without the overall collaboration of all groups involved. kallan@umary.edu
S ENIOR D ESIGN P ROJECTS
Starting in fall 2019, our senior level students will be starting their senior design projects. The projects are separated into two parts: during the first semester of their senior year the students are required to work on a design project within their own discipline and work with other engineering students from within that discipline. However, we have structured the program so that in the second semester of their senior year the
students are required to work on cross disciplinary design projects that involve at least one student from each of the branches of engineering that we offer. It is our contention that most projects that students will encounter in their future careers will involve engineers from differing areas and so it is important for our students to understand how to work together with a diverse team in accomplishing a common goal. They should be able to explain their ideas to engineers who have a different background from their own and they should also be able to divide a project into subprojects that lend themselves to the various skill sets. This division of labor will involve leadership and cooperation and it will also show them how to maximize the group productivity by understanding the different educational backgrounds as well as the individual strengths of each of the members. We are very interested in receiving project requests from companies so that our students can work on a project of relevance to the real world. If you work for a company that might be interested in having our senior level engineering students help them with a project please contact us. We plan to collect as many projects as we can from local engineering related companies and allow our students to choose one of them to work on and form groups according to individual interest in the project. The type of projects that we are looking for are ones which require engineering skills and knowledge to solve and have current relevance to your company. The best projects are ones which are important and useful to you and which will give the students the opportunity to impress you with their abilities.
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Braun Intertec was on campus with their drilling rig and students from the ECI 412
Braun Intertec Drilling Rig Soil Mechanics course were able to observe the sub-surface exploration soil boring. The borings were being done for the Engineering School expansion and remodel that is currently in the design phase. The soil borings will enable the foundation design for the Engineering Labs and, in particular, will allow the design of a strong floor for the Civil Engineering Lab’s 200,000 lb load capacity apparatus rack and overhead crane. It is very important to us that our students get as much exposure as possible to actual engineering work such as this. Observing construction projects, working on design projects supplied by engineering companies, and doing summer internships and semester co-op’s with engineering related companies is essential to preparing them for their future careers and to help them overcome any intimidation they may have to working on important projects with professional engineers.
N ORTH DAKOTA R EGIONAL H IGH S CHOOL S CIENCE B OWL T HE E NGINEERING C LUB
By NANCY KELLY
By RODRIGO DA COSTA APARECIDO
The University of Mary Engineering Students Club is an organization that was started by the students and involves undergraduate engineering students from all of the disciplines. Their goal is to serve the campus and the community and at the same time tackle fun and educational projects requiring engineering skills. Currently, the students in the Engineering Club are writing a proposal to the University in order to use CAD to map and design the sprinkler system lines on the campus. The proposal includes the methods, materials, work breakdown, resources, and project budget. The students involved include Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman levels from each of the different engineering majors. This project will give the students experience in engineering, design, and management, and is a wonderful opportunity. It is our hope that the University will consider these students’ proposal and give them the opportunity to show off their skills.
B RAUN I NTERTEC VISITS CAMPUS By ANTHONY WALDENMAIER
The 28th annual North Dakota Regional High School Science Bowl, hosted by Western Area Power Administration, was held at the University of Mary on Saturday, February 2, 2019. This event, a math and science competition for high school students, is an academic competition that tests students’ knowledge in all areas of science and mathematics and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. University of Mary faculty and students in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering participated in the Science Bowl as judges and other officials. Twenty-two teams of students representing schools from throughout North Dakota vied for first place and a free trip to the National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C., April 25-29. The fast-paced quiz format of the competition challenged the students’ knowledge of biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, energy and mathematics. After a morning round-robin format, there was an afternoon double-elimination round to determine the competition champion. The 2019 North Dakota Regional Science Bowl Championship was awarded to a team from Magic City Campus High School in Minot, ND. The regional and national events encourage student involvement in math and science, inspire the next generation to pursue careers
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in science, technology, engineering and math fields, and reward superior academic achievement. Additionally, students with strong interests in science, technology and engineering had the opportunity to meet University of Mary Engineering students and faculty to learn more about our program.
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if the divided power signal is lower than the input signal, the op amp saturates to ground setting the output of the op amp to ground and allowing current to flow through the light emitting diode attached to it. If the input signal is lower than the divided power signal the
Temperature measurements
T HERMODYNAMICS By DANIEL BARR
Mechanical engineering students Jeremy Leintz, Peter Collart, Ian Cease, and Blake
Sensor on the Grotto concrete slab Emmel did a project in their EME 341 Thermodynamics course for professor Daniel Barr which involved taking temperature measurements of the hot water heating system that runs underneath the concrete slab on the west side of the Lumen Vitae University Center at the location of the Warford Grotto. The heating system is designed to keep snow and ice clear from the Warford Grotto and is adjusted manually by University of Mary Physical Plant employees as the temperature changes over the course of the year. The Physical Plant wanted the students to study the temperature of the slab, the air temperature, the outgoing water temperature, and the return water temperature over time to see if things were working efficiently. The temperature differences would allow an estimate of both the effectiveness of the heating system as well as the cost over time of keeping the concrete floor in the Grotto clear. The students used a waterproof DS18B20 digital temperature sensor connected to the
The students then wrote analysis software to study the fluctuations in the data and used the equations and theory from their thermodynamics course to study the net heat flow. The graph they obtained shows the changes in the temperatures over time including the four hour cycle of the heat exchanger valve in the Lumen Vitae University Center. They also observed the increase of the temperature of the air, the pipes, and the concrete slab during the day followed by the decay of the temperature at night following Newton’s law of cooling. The result shows that the heating system keeps the concrete slab approximately 10 degrees warmer than the air temperature at all times. The students wrote up a scientific report of their findings and also gave a presentation which was attended by members of the University of Mary Physical Plant as well as Engineering professors.
General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins on several Raspberry Pi computers and they wrote control systems and data collection software in Bash shell scripts which collected data points of the temperatures every five minutes for a four day period.
op amp saturates to rail and no current will flow through the attached LED. The students added a band-pass filter to this and combined a bunch of them corresponding to each frequency range of the display.
G RAPHIC E QUALIZER S PECTRUM D ISPLAY By TERRY PILLING
F LUIDS AND S TRUCTURES By ERIC GARCIA
The junior electrical engineering students built an equalizer display using eight operaStudents in EME 306: Fluid Mechanics tional amplifiers and some LED’s. The in- and ECI 351: Structural Mechanics worked put signal causes the LED’s to light up as the amplitude of the signal increases. They made seven of these and then combined them with low-pass and high-pass filters so that each display measures the output of a different frequency band. The final project used a cell phone audio jack as the input so that you can play a song on your phone and the equalizer display will show the different frequenEME 306 Student Project cies and amplitudes of the signal.
Assembling the equalizer spectrum display
Sensor on the hot water feed
Circuit diagram for volume meter
They also wrote SPICE simulations of all of it and performed all of the theoretical circuit analysis calculations required to determine the capacitor and resistor values required to filter the various frequency ranges. The resulting equalizer display will be used on future electrical engineering display tables at various events so that people passing by can try it out. You can see by the circuit diagram that it works by comparing the input signal amplitude with the power rail after the voltage has been reduced through a series of steps and
on a collaborative project which involved designing and building an infrastructure that housed a hydraulic system. Students from each class had to design systems to meet specific requirements. The civil engineering students, taking ECI 351: Structural Mechanics, had the primary task to design and build a truss bridge that had to span 10 feet without deflecting more than 0.3 inches when at least three team members walked across it. Each team was provided with less than $60 of materials. $15 worth of 1×2 furring strips, $36 worth of 0.75 thick plywood, and wood screws. The design process included calculations to make sure the forces that the truss members experienced did not exceed the materials strength and to make sure the truss structure did not deflect more than allowed deflection, 0.3 inches (length of the bridge divided by 400). In addition to the bridge, each group in ECI 351 was tasked to design and construct
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ROCKET L AUNCH T ELEMETRY
Truss bridge supporting the whole class another structure of the infrastructure which was used for the water system designed for EME 306. This included a water tower, a building with multiple elevated water outlets, and an open channel. The mechanical and civil engineering students, taking EME 306: Fluid Mechanics, were tasked to develop a steady-state hydraulic system which involved having a water tower provide the necessary pressure to the system. The pressure from the water tower needed to provide water flow to outlets on multiple floors of the building structure and provide a high enough velocity to run an impulse turbine. The design work required of the students involved pressure and flow calculations for pipes, open channels, pumps, and impulse turbines to ensure that the integration of all parts would result in a stable steady water flow of the entire system.
The x and y components of the velocity vector can be extracted from a knowledge of the speed and the time, along with the altitude. The students have labeled the places where the speed is clearly changing which indicates that something special is happening at that time. When comparing with the commentary of the video they were able to label the events that occur at those times. Finally, using the velocity curve they are able to find the derivative (numerically) of that curve and thereby find the acceleration curve. This indicates the forces that are acting on the vehicle over the course of the flight. They were very gratified to see that the major flight events can be clearly seen in the acceleration curve. For example the side boosters throttling down, the Booster Engine Cutoff (BECO), the Main Engine Cutoff (MECO), the Second Stage Engine Start (SES), and finally the Side Engine Cutoff (SECO) at the top (not labeled on their diagram). This was a fun way to use their programming and data analysis skills to show how much information one can gather by us-
an engineer to extract much more interesting By TERRY PILLING information and our clever engineering students did exactly that. The numbers they show are the speed (km/h), As an interesting project for their data and the altitude (km). The students used a analysis class, our engineering students ana- python script to extract those telemetry data from the YouTube video frame-by-frame and then wrote Bash scripts and C programs to extract much more from them. Knowing the Altitude (i.e. the ycomponent of the distance) over time along
Falcon Heavy Launch lyzed the YouTube video of the Space-X Falcon Heavy test flight. You might also like to try sometime as well and, if you haven’t seen it, we highly recommend watching the entire YouTube video here: https://youtu. be/wbSwFU6tY1c Lately, Space-X has been including something a little extra on the YouTube videos of their rocket launches in that they show a small display window (see the screenshot above) in the top right corner of the video which gives the real time telemetry data of the launch! Unfortunately, Space-X only includes the altitude and the speed over time in their display, but fortunately, those numbers are enough for
ing a bit of physics and data analysis. One can extract a complete history of the launch from two simple numbers provided on the screen during the video. Watching a Space-X launch is a lot of fun for anyone to enjoy, but as Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman always said, having scientific curiosity and technical ability enables one to delve deeper in to it and thereby enjoy it even more.
BAT G UANO C RAZY By TERRY PILLING
Here is a story about scientific ethics, war, famine, death...and bat guano. The subject came up during an assignment the students did where they modeled the population growth of the United States since 1610 using the logistic differential equation: dx = dt x rx 1 − K . where x is the population over
Altitude and Downrange Distance with the speed (i.e. the magnitude of the velocity vector) allowed them to extract the x-component, or downrange, distance. The figure is taken from the report submitted by Philip Springsteen and Josef Sollmann who are Junior level Electrical Engineering students.
time, r is the growth rate which depends on things like reproduction, disease, immigration, war, etc., and K is the Carrying Capacity, which is the maximum population that can be supported. The Carrying Capacity depends on things like space and resources. In particular – food. The graph shown below was provided by sophomore engineering students in their solution to one of the problems in an assignment this semester and shows the maximum Carrying Capacity of the United States at somewhere around 450 million people. Before we get to the bat guano, we need to first go back to the year 1798 and an English cleric named Thomas Malthus. Malthus wrote a book containing an essay on the Principle of Population wherein Malthus observed that an increase in a nation’s food production improved the well-being of the populace, but that the improvement was a temporary one because it led to population growth, which then restored the original per capita production level. In other words, mankind had a propensity to utilize abundance for popula-
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tion growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living and that populations had a tendency to grow until the poorer classes suffered hardship and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is now referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthusian models have the form: x(t) = x0 ert where x0 = x(0) is the initial population size, r is the population growth rate, and t is the time parameter. The model can also been written in the form of a differential equa-
= rx and is often referred to as the tion: dx dt exponential law. It is widely regarded in the field of population ecology as the first principle of population dynamics, with Malthus as the founder. The exponential law is therefore also sometimes referred to as the Malthusian Law. Malthus wrote that all life forms, including humans, have a propensity to exponential population growth when resources are abundant but that actual growth is limited by available resources. The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. Population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increases, and, the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery. Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand. The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and premature death. Among mankind, misery and vice. Thomas Malthus, 1798 After Malthus, everyone agreed that the Earth had a maximum intrinsic Carrying Capacity and that we would reach it very soon. However, it did not happen. The population of the planet is at least three times larger than anyone predicted it could be back in Malthus’ day. What happened? Was Malthus wrong? Is the logistic model of population growth
Engineering Quarterly WINTER 2019 wrong? To answer these questions we need to start with bat guano. The word ‘guano’ originates from the Andean indigenous language Quechua, which refers to any form of dung used as an agricultural fertilizer. Archaeological evidence suggests that Andean people have collected guano from small islands and points located off the desert coast of Peru for use as a soil amendment for well over 1,500 years. Spanish colonial documents suggest that the rulers of the Inca Empire assigned great value to guano, restricted access to it, and punished any disturbance of the animals producing the guano with death. In November 1802, Alexander von Humboldt first encountered guano and began investigating its fertilizing properties at Callao in Peru and found that massive deposits of guano existed on some islands, in some cases more than 50 m deep. Guano from cave bat deposits contain nitrates and was used not only to fertilize crops all over the world but also to produce gunpowder, and, in 1856, the United States passed the Guano Islands Act, which gave U.S. citizens discovering a source of guano on an unclaimed island exclusive rights to the deposits. Control over guano was needed around the world both for fertilizing crops and for producing explosives and it played a central role in the Chincha Islands War (1864-1866) between Spain and a Peruvian-Chilean alliance. This was the state of the world in the late 1800’s. A population explosion fueled by bat guano that was heading for a Malthusian Catastrophe. Which brings us to 1909 and a German chemist named Fritz Haber. Fritz Haber was a German chemist who worked at University of Karlsruhe from 1894 to 1911 where Haber and his assistant Robert Le Rossignol invented the Haber-Bosch process, which is the catalytic formation of ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under conditions of high temperature and pressure. To further develop the process for largescale ammonia production, Haber turned to industry. Teaming with Carl Bosch at BASF, the process was successfully scaled-up to produce commercial quantities of ammonia. The Haber-Bosch process was a milestone in industrial chemistry. The production of nitrogen-based products such as fertilizer and chemical feedstocks, previously dependent on acquisition of ammonia from limited natural deposits such as bat guano, now became possible using an easily available, abundant base atmospheric nitrogen. The ability to produce much larger quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizers in turn supported much greater agricultural yields and prevented billions of people from starving to death and effectively postponed the predicted Malthusian Catastrophe. The discovery of a new way of producing ammonia caused the naturally extracted nitrate production in Chile to fall from 2.5 million tons (employing 60,000 workers and selling at US $45 per ton) in 1925 to just 800,000 tons, produced by 14,133 workers, and selling at $19 per ton in 1934. The annual world production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is currently more than 100 million tons and the food
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base of half of the current world population is based on the Haber-Bosch process. Haber was awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. Now here is the problem: In 1914 the world became engulfed in World War I. Haber greeted World War I with enthusiasm, joining 92 other German intellectuals in signing the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three in October of that year. Haber played a major role in the development of the non-ballistic use of chemical warfare in World War I, in spite of the prohibition of their use in shells by the Hague Convention of 1907 (to which Germany was a signatory). He was promoted to the rank of captain and made head of the Chemistry Section in the Ministry of War soon after the war began. In addition to leading the teams developing ammonia and chlorine gas along with other deadly gases for use in trench warfare, Haber was on hand personally when it was first released by the German military at the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April to 25 May 1915) in Belgium. A special troop was formed for gas warfare (Pioneer Regiments 35 and 36), under the command of Otto Peterson, with Haber and
Fritz Haber Friedrich Kerschbaum as advisors. Haber actively recruited physicists, chemists, and other scientists to be transferred to the unit. Future Nobel laureates James Franck, Gustav Hertz, and Otto Hahn served as gas troops in Haber’s unit. Gas warfare in World War I was, in a sense, the war of the chemists, with Haber pitted against French Nobel laureate chemist Victor Grignard. Regarding war and peace, Haber once said, “During peace time a scientist belongs to the World, but during war time he belongs to his country.” This was an example of the ethical dilemmas facing chemists at that time. Haber defended gas warfare against accusations that it was inhumane, saying that death was death, by whatever means it was inflicted. During the 1920s, scientists working at his institute developed the cyanide gas formulation Zyklon A, which was used as an insecticide, especially as a fumigant in grain stores. The next iteration, called Zyklon B, later emerged as the preferred killing tool of Nazi Germany for use in extermination camps during the Holocaust. So here is the ethical question that we asked our students: was Haber a hero or a villain? Haber developed the process in order to produce large quantities of ammonia and nitrogen which were used in fertilizer but were also used to build weapons and poisonous gas
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during World War I. His process resulted in the horrible deaths of countless people in the trenches of France and Belgium. At the same time, his process of producing ammonia resulted in the aversion of the Malthusian Catastrophe and has since saved countless lives, the world over, from starvation and death1 . You are free to make up your own mind as to the moral lessons in this story and hold your own ethical judgments. But, as far as Haber is concerned, our sophomore engineering students concluded that scientific truth, and the progress of technology, are independent of the particular scientist who discovers them and that the Haber-Bosch process would have eventually been found without Haber’s involvement. They believe that the ends do not justify the means and that handing out a Nobel Prize to a guy like Fritz Haber is just bat guano crazy.
Engineering Quarterly WINTER 2019 In each of our issues of EQ we devote a section to problems and games that we believe our readers will enjoy. Since this is a newsletter designed for engineers and scientists our games are perhaps a bit more involved (and a lot more nerdy) than one might find in other newsletters. However, no offense, but we think you might be nerdy enough to enjoy them.
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Here is a problem from Dr. Anthony Garcia’s EEL 405 Control Systems course. Note that, in the diagram, e is the voltage EMF, τ is the torque, and θm is the direction of positive rotation. For the electromechanical sys-
K EN K EN P UZZLE By NANCY KELLY
Here is the KenKen puzzle for this edi- tem given, determine the following: tion of the Engineering Quarterly. As a reminder for those of you who are new to our (a) The Transfer Function for an input voltpublication, KenKen and KenDoku are a style age va and output angular position θm . of arithmetic logic puzzle invented in 2004 (b) The State-Space representation for an input voltage va and angular position θm . The solution is at the back of this newsletter.
S CHOLARSHIPS - P LEASE H ELP E LECTROMAGNETIC F IELDS P ROBLEM By NANCY KELLY
If you or your company is interested in sponsoring a scholarship for engineering students please contact us. At the moment the only scholarship specifically available to engineering students is the annual scholarship generously awarded by the North Dakota Society of Professional Engineers. Scholarships are important to both the student and the sponsoring entity for the following reasons:
This problem is from Dr. Nancy Kelly’s EEL 316 Electric and Magnetic Fields course. A capacitor consists of two hollow thinwalled concentric conducting tubes of length L. The inner tube has a radius Si = K and the outer tube has a radius So = 3K. Charges of +Q and −Q are placed on the inner and outer tubes, respectively. The charges are uniformly distributed on the surfaces. We will ignore the fringing effects of the electric field near the cylinder ends.
by Japanese math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto. • they help students financially and re- KenKen derives from the Japanese word for duce the amount of student loans they cleverness. As in Sudoku, the goal of each need to take out. puzzle is to fill a grid with digits 1 through • they are valuable additions to the stu- 4 for a 4 × 4 grid, 1 through 5 for a 5 × 5, dent’s resume when they start applying 1 through 6 for a 6 × 6, etc. so that no (a) Determine the electric field for radial distances s < Si , Si < s < So , and for engineering positions and are often digit appears more than once in any row or s > So . more meaningful than grades in deter- any column. The grids are divided into heavmining the abilities and character of an ily outlined groups of cells called cages and the numbers in the cells of each cage must (b) Compute the electric potential difference applicant. between the two tubes. produce a certain ‘target’ number when com• they are an added incentive for achiev- bined using the specified mathematical operaing the highest level of academic excel- tion. Digits may be repeated within a cage, as (c) Compute the capacitance of this system of conductors. lence and excellence of character and long as they are not in the same row or column service. and a single-cell cage is a free space. The solution is at the back of this newsletter. • the sponsoring person or company DATA P ROBLEM is prominently mentioned and praised By TERRY PILLING S TATICS P ROBLEM every year when the scholarship is By JIM CARRICO granted. Sometimes you need a quick and dirty So please consider helping our engineer- way to do simple things to a data set and you Here is a problem from Dr. Jim Carrico’s ing students by sponsoring a scholarship. don’t feel like putting it all into Excel or writ- ENR 201 Statics course. It is known that a Scholarships can be of any amount and they ing a program to do it. Here is a shell script force with a moment of 960 Nm about the can have a variety of conditions for determin- written in Bash. Can you figure out what it ing who is selected each year. They can be set does to a data file? up as one time awards or they can be offered #!/bin/bash every year. You can even endow a scholartouch result.dat ship so that it continues to fund itself in perwhile read line; do petuity - a minimum of $25,000 is required to echo $line > tmp set up an endowment for a permanent scholarcat result.dat >> tmp ship. Please note that the University of Mary mv tmp result.dat is a non-profit university and all donations are done point D is required to straighten the fence post tax deductible. rm tmp CD shown in the figure. If the capacity of The solution is at the back of this newsletter. the winch puller AB is 2400 N, determine the minimum value of the distance d to create the specified moment about the point D. C ONTROLS P ROBLEM F UN S TUFF The solution is at the back of this newsletBy ANTHONY GARCIA ter. 1
For a more in-depth story about the ethics of Fritz Haber do a Google search for Haber German Dr. Evil and read the article in Handelsblatt.
Engineering Quarterly WINTER 2019
VOL.I. . . No.2
O H ROMEO , ROMEO , WHEREFORE ART THOU ROMEO ? By PATRICK KELLY
In one of the lesser-known drafts of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio are students at the Verona Institute of Technology. In this version of the famous balcony scene [ACT II, scene 2], Romeo vaults (in a sprightly manner) over the railing with the aid of a trebuchet that he and his friends had built as a class project. Our task, in aid of the star-cross’d lovers, is to calculate the launch parameters within the context of the model presented below. ♥ The balcony railing is 8 m above ground and along the wall’s edge. The trebuchet arm releases its projectile at an initial height of 2 m. There are no obstacles, and the ground is level adjacent to the structure. ♥ Take the acceleration due to gravity, g = 10 m/s2 , directed straight downward. ♥ The effects of friction and drag are negligible. ♥ Romeo is moving horizontally, with speed 1 m/s, as he clears the railing.2 (a) Determine the launch speed and the initial angle that satisfy the design constraints, and how far, horizontally, away from the wall Romeo’s launch point should be. (b) Romeo is accelerated from rest to his launch speed by the trebuchet arm. Let’s say that the distance through which he moves while accelerating is 2 m (the height at which he is released). Estimate the average acceleration that Romeo must endure to be launched at the speed computed in (a). The solution is at the back of this newsletter. T HE 196 P ROBLEM By TERRY PILLING
Problem: Write a computer program to explore the 196-problem. One possible solution is given at the end of this article. A palindromic number is a number whose reverse looks exactly the same as the original number. For example the number 121 is a palindromic number because if you reverse the digits you get 121 back again. Let’s begin by defining an iterative algorithm: 196-algorithm • Choose a positive integer with two digits or more and reverse the digits. • Then add the reversed number to the original number. • Now repeat this with the new number and continue in this fashion until you reach a number that is the same both forward and backward. I.e. until you reach a palindromic number. 2
For example if you start with 23 you get 23 + 32 = 55 and the reverse of 55 is 55 again and so you are finished. Now, the reason that the problem is called the ‘196 Problem’ is because 196 is the first number for which it is unknown whether the algorithm ever produces a palindromic number. 196-Problem: Starting with the number 196 does the algorithm ever produce a palindrome? The program listing palindrome.c given at the end of this article is a program written in the C programming language that takes numbers or lists of numbers and performs the 196algorithm on them until they produce a palindromic number or reach the maximum number of iterations without hitting a palindrome. Note that the program is written so that numbers are represented as strings of digits and the addition and carrying of digits is done by hand. This is to avoid the limitations of your computer regarding the size of numbers it can deal with. In the C program we have relegated the actual computations to the functions reverse, iterate and add. The first one takes a string as input and returns the reverse of the string. The second one takes the original number and performs the 196-algorithm on it until it either gets a palindromic number or it reaches the maximum number of iterations. Finally the last function adds two strings by adding each digit and keeping track of the carry-overs. It has to increase the length of the string representing the sum in the case that a carry-over occurs in the last addition and this is done with the final else statement in the function. We compile the program using gcc -o palindrome palindrome.c
7
we get the following output: 189 191 193 195 197
--> --> --> --> -->
1881 191 233332 9339 881188
190 --> 45254 192 --> 6996 194 --> 2992 196(no solution) 198 --> 79497
which shows that the program found palindromic numbers for all of them except for 196. In that case it reached the specified maximum number of iterations and then just returned whatever number it had at that point. You could try letting the program do more iterations, but we must warn you that the program is quite a memory and disk space hog. It is very likely that if you try to go too high the computer will kill the program. But you can definitely do more iterations than 50. As I mentioned in my previous article on the Collatz Problem in the last Engineering Quarterly, one of the first things that you should try when playing with unsolved problems like this is to search for patterns. As an example of what I mean, let us look at a sort of pattern that I have found in 196-algorithm. To find it, you merely need to look at how often non-palindromic numbers like 196 appear. Here is something I found after 50 iterations of the following numbers: 196 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 295 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 394 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 493 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 592 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 691 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628 790 (no solution) --> 925153265399993573340628
First notice that numbers like 295 and 592 are to create an executable program called really the same thing since they are the reverse palindrome which we can then run from of each other and when you apply the algothe command line. Here is an example: rithm you begin by reversing the number before adding them. So, for example, there is echo "155" | ./palindrome no essential difference between starting with applies the algorithm to the number from 155 196 or starting with 691. Also notice that all which results in the above numbers give the same result after 50 iterations and each of these ‘no solu155 --> 4444 tion’ numbers is 99 away from the previous which says that, in less than 50 iterations, the one! These starting points can all be considstarting number 155 arrives at the palindromic ered the same sequence since they reach the number 4444. Another example if you are same number at some point as you iterate. In running a form of Linux like Ubuntu and are other words, solving the problem for 196 auusing the Bash shell is: tomatically solves it for the other ones. It turns out that there are numbers that for i in {155..160}; don’t seem to give palindromic number but do echo $i | ./palindrome are also not the same as the sequence generated by 196. For example, for numbers up to which outputs 8000 there seems to be three different gener155 --> 4444 ators. These are 196, 879 and 1997. All of 156 --> 6666 the big ‘no solution’ numbers that occur up 157 --> 8888 to 8000 are equivalent to one of these three. 158 --> 11011 It turns out that the ‘no solution’ numbers are 159 --> 1221 called Lychrel numbers and the three numbers 160 --> 343 above are called ‘seeds’ since they are the start There are many other ways to run a command of new sequences of equivalent Lychrel numline program like this which is designed to bers. It would be interesting to know if these be used in a pipeline. For one more exam- three remain independent up to arbitrary iterple if we had a file called ‘numbers’ which ations. Perhaps the nth iteration of 879 will contained all the numbers from 189 to 198 we give the same result as the (n + k)th iteration of 196 for some k. If that occurs then the numcould run the program like this: bers will lead to the same palindromic number cat numbers | ./palindrome (if one exists).
He’d rather it not be said (of him): But soft! What bloke through yonder window breaks?
Engineering Quarterly WINTER 2019
VOL.I. . . No.2
Exercises (1) Find all of the different sequences up to 11000. Are there any new ones other then the ones resulting from 196, 879 and 1997 that we already found? Note: going to higher iterations will slow down the computer very quickly. Perhaps you can find a better way to write the program so that it runs faster and takes up less computer resources? Answer: The numbers 7059, 10563, 10553 and 10877 all supposedly form new sequences of Lychrel Numbers according to various websites. (2) Compare iterations of the separate ‘no solution’ numbers to see if any of them join. Maybe you could plot the value at each iteration versus the iteration number and see if the lines join at any point. Can you find a mathematical proof that they will never join? Even a mathematical plausibility argument based on the slopes of the length vs. iterations plots would be interesting. Perhaps you can show that the mathematics involved in the 196-algorithm implies that the slopes will always be different and the lines will never join thereby proving that they are separate non-palindromic numbers from 196. (3) When dealing with the natural numbers we have essentially been looking for palindromes in a sequence of numbers (the digits) base 10. We could use a favorite trick of mathematicians and look at a different base system for the numbers other than 10. For example if we work in base 2 (i.e. binary numbers) the number 196 translates into 11000100. Performing the 196-algorithm on this number proceeds as follows: 11000100 + 00100011 = 11100111, which is therefore a binary palindrome after only 1 iteration. You can spend hours working out the palindromes in various bases, both less than 10 and also larger than 10. Doing this may give you much greater insight into the workings of these numbers. If you can find properties of palindromes that are invariant under a change in the base, you may be able use these properties to determine whether 196 ever reaches a palindromic number in base 10. I hope you enjoy playing with this problem. If you are interested in the latest news on the problem you can do a Google search for “Jason Doucette World Records�, also, if you manage to solve the problem and become famous don’t forget to mention our humble publication as your original inspiration ;)
char ∗ r e v e r s e ( char ∗ number ) ; char ∗ add ( char ∗ number1 , char ∗ number2 ) ; i n t main ( i n t a r g c , char ∗∗ a r g v ) { char ∗ i n ; i n = m a l l o c ( BUFSIZ ) ; w h i l e ( s c a n f ( �%s � , i n ) ! = EOF ) { i n = i t e r a t e ( i n , MAXSTEPS) ; p r i n t f ( � −−> %s � , i n ) ; p r i n t f ( �\n� ) ; } return 0; }
# d e f i n e MAXSTEPS
50
char ∗ i t e r a t e ( char ∗ number , i n t max ) ;
S OLUTIONS TO P ROBLEMS Data manipulation problem: The shell script reverses the order, from top to bottom, of the lines in the file. This may seem pretty anti-climactic, but it is sure trivial to write and you didn’t need to use anybody’s software package. This is often called rolling your own solution to a problem. Controls problem: (a)
char ∗ i t e r a t e ( char ∗ number , i n t max ) { int step = 0; char ∗ r e v e r s e d ; r e v e r s e d = m a l l o c ( BUFSIZ ) ;
G(s) =
Kt s ((Js + b)(Ls + R) + Ke Kt )
(b) 
    θm θm 0 1 0 d  Kt   θ̇m  =  0 − Jb θ̇m  J dt Ke R 0 − L −L ia ia   0 +  0  [va ]
p r i n t f ( �%s � , number ) ; s t r c p y ( r e v e r s e d , number ) ; w h i l e ( s t e p ++ < max ) { r e v e r s e d = r e v e r s e ( number ) ; i f ( ! s t r c m p ( number , r e v e r s e d ) ) r e t u r n ( number ) ; number = add ( number , r e v e r s e d ) ; } p r i n t f ( � ( no s o l u t i o n ) � , s t e p −1) ; r e t u r n ( number ) ;
1 L

 θ m θm = 1 0 0  θ̇m  ia
} char ∗ add ( char ∗ number1 , char ∗ number2 ) { int i , carry , d i g i t ; char ∗ tmp ; tmp = m a l l o c ( BUFSIZ ) ; carry = 0; i = s t r l e n ( number2 ) ; w h i l e (−− i >= 0 ) { d i g i t = ( number1 [ i ] − ’ 0 ’ ) + ( number2 [ i ] − ’ 0 ’ ) + carry ; carry = 0; i f ( d i g i t < 10 ) number2 [ i ] = ( d i g i t + ’0 ’ ) ; e l s e i f ( i != 0) { d i g i t = d i g i t − 10; number2 [ i ] = ( d i g i t + ’ 0 ’ ) ; carry = 1; } else { d i g i t = d i g i t − 10; number2 [ i ] = ( d i g i t + ’ 0 ’ ) ; s t r c p y ( tmp , r e v e r s e ( number2 ) ); s t r c a t ( tmp , � 1 � ) ; number2 = r e v e r s e ( tmp ) ; } } r e t u r n ( number2 ) ;
Electromagnetic fields problem: (a) E = 0, s < Si Q sĚ‚, Si < s < So E= 2Ď€ 0 Ls E = 0, s > So (b) Vo − Vi = −
Q ln(3) 2Ď€ 0 L
(c) C=
2Ď€ 0 L ln(3)
Statics problem: Solution: The minimum distance required is d ≈ 517mm Romeo problem: √ (a) v0 = 11m/s, θ0 = tan−1 2 30 ' 1.48 rad ' 84.78â—Ś , D0 ' 1.095m (b) aav ' 30.25m/s2 âˆź 3 g
} char ∗ r e v e r s e ( char ∗ number ) { char ∗ r e v e r s e d ; r e v e r s e d = m a l l o c ( BUFSIZ ) ; s t r c p y ( r e v e r s e d , number ) ; w h i l e (∗++ r e v e r s e d ) ; ∗−− r e v e r s e d = ∗ number ; w h i l e (∗++ number ) ∗−− r e v e r s e d = ∗ number ; return ( r e v e r s e d ) ;
palindrome.c # i n c l u d e <s t d i o . h> # i n c l u d e < s t d l i b . h> # i n c l u d e <s t r i n g . h>
8
}
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