David Baker - A Degree in a Book: Electrical and Mechanical Engineering: Everything You Need to Know to Master the Subject - in One Book!

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Dawn of Ideas the Empirical Age

Chapter 2: Understanding Forces the Scientific Age

Chapter 3: Manipulation of Forces

Chapter 4: Mechanisms

Chapter 5: A Choice of Materials

Chapter 6: Keeping the Machines Moving

Chapter 7: Engineering the Systems

Chapter 8: What is Reliability?

Chapter 9: Nuclear Engineering

Chapter 10: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Chapter 11: Power Production and Generation

Chapter 12: Electromechanics

Chapter 13: Computing Machines and Artificial Intelligence

Glossary

Suggested Reading

Introduction

Preceded by the era of toolmaking and the introduction of farming, engineering has been the third age of humankind in its evolution from the Stone Age to the world of machines, industrialization, telecommunications and transportation. Engineers have made the world we live in today and created the technology that informs the lives of people around the globe. It is the purpose of this book to show how that has come about, to examine the various disciplines within the field of electrical and mechanical engineering, and to introduce the reader to the basic principles that underpin an activity that links physics, chemistry, mathematics and technology.

An important part of understanding this world of complex and sophisticated machines is the way the entrepreneurs of the past forged natural materials into compounds and alloys, reforming them and exchanging levels of energy and producing heat engines. From this came an industrial revolution, founded in Britain and exported to the developed and developing world, making possible previously unimagined opportunities for all. In the following pages, several separate steps in the development of electrical and mechanical engineering are discussed with their respective origins and development paths. But this is not a history book.

The field of electrical engineering is growing fast, changing according to the evolving texture of human society. The extraordinary growth in human population levels is borne out by the unanticipated demands made on all these aforementioned capabilities, supporting a world in which it has taken all of human history to reach a population of billion and the span of a human lifetime to quadruple that number. This has placed stress on the existing infrastructure and forced new and innovative technologies, to come out of research and development in all fields of engineering.

With ever-demanding environmental concerns, the challenges now are immense. Issues that can translate into outstanding opportunities for new and aspiring engineers can be seen as daunting, or they can be grasped as routes to professional career fulfilment and a stimulus to ingenuity and innovation. Opportunities today are greater than they have ever been. There are new and highly specialized career development paths involving almost every facet of life, and the demand for improved and more efficient machines has never been greater. The retail and manufacturing worlds demand increasingly more sophisticated and effective solutions, and it is the task of the modern engineer to meet those demands in full.

The pioneering days are not over and in some respects are only just beginning. What in a previous generation took several decades to emerge can now be realized in weeks or months, and what corporations and big companies controlled in the past is now delivered by new start-up companies and truly creative thinkers. Be it in transforming the wasteful ways of the past into efficient and sustainable solutions for the future or in satisfying the needs of an environmentally conscious society, engineers will continue to contribute as enablers in a future world, building a better place for humans to occupy.

Examples of engineering ancient and modern: A model of the ancient Greek antithykera (pages and the Space Shuttle taking off.

Early engineering

Invention and discovery have gone hand in hand from the dawn of abstract thinking activities buried deep in the ancient past. From the Palaeolithic stone toolmakers of more than million years ago to the application of known principles of engineering and science in the 21st century, the observation and use of natural laws and mechanical practicalities have underpinned all aspects of modern society. The collective application of laws, principles and ideas have forged new ways of working through a process of test and evaluation. In fact, for several millennia that was the only way of fashioning natural materials into tools and working machines.

Long before the scientific application of calculation and extrapolation, hand tools were shaped to improve the ability of primitive humans to survive the rigours of a hostile environment and outwit predators. In fact, defence against a wide range of aggressive animals must have played a significant part in the development of those parts of the brain responsible for nurturing creative thinking. In turn, that would lead to a level of cognitive development where observation, experimentation and evaluation served as a prerequisite for stored learning. And when that was achieved, humanity put its running shoes on!

Stone tools from Skorba in Malta show the diversity of creative ingenuity.

A stone axe head and Clovis spear point, perhaps the earliest examples of refashioned natural materials.

However, the development of engineered structures and engineering per se relied on need: the necessity to improve all aspects of the human condition, including the need for food, water, warmth, protection and a means of defence against predators and other humans. In no specific order or sequence, six essential tools, or engineered items, were developed.

The precise order of application of these in terms of time is unknown, although some were given functional attributes as machines more than 2,500 years ago.

The wedge or ramp

The wheel and the central axle

The screw

The lever

The pulley

The crane

Neolithic farmers designed for a new and more settled existence.

The rudimentary tools and goods found in roundhouses fabricated from wattle and daub techniques developed through abstract thinking.

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