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Humour CHECKLIST - A very different checklist but it's very useful to the beginners ;)Christmas in an Engineer's MindThere are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times he normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas. Why don't chemical engineers write cookbooks?
This may be the reason why :^) Chocolate Chip Cookies Ingredients:
In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by
three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally,
add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be
taken at this Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piecemeal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in
agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS,
21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the
sheet on a
Wisdom from AboveA man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?" The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field." "You must be an engineer," says the balloonist. "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?" "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone." The man below says, "You must be in management." "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault." Q: What is the difference between
Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: "Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer." One student replied: This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows: "Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. he height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H =3D 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer." "Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper." "But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =3D 2 pi sqrroot (l / g)." "Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up." "If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building." "But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'." The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel prize for Physics. Clever
Engineer The mathematician persists and explains that the game is real easy and lots of fun. He explains, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $5." Again, the engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The mathematician, now somewhat agitated, says, "Okay, if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50!" This catches the engineer's attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The mathematician asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The engineer doesn't say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five-dollar bill and hands it to the mathematician. Now, it's the engineer's turn. He asks the mathematician "What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down on four?" The mathematician looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers – all to no avail. After about an hour, he wakes the engineer and hands him $50. The engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep. The mathematician then hits the engineer, saying, "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?" The engineer calmly pulls out his wallet, hands the mathematician five bucks, and goes back to sleep. The Top 10 Reasons I
Became a Chemical Engineer 10: Those marks left on your face after wearing goggles for four hours are so becoming. 9: Always wanted to design my own still. 8: I wanted to learn how to use one letter to mean ten things. 7: Didn't have a social life anyway. 6: Wanted to be able to read food labels. 5: Philosophically speaking, "I design reactors, therefore I am." 4: The Perry's Handbook makes a great doorstop. 3: Someone has to save the world. 2: Fluidized bed......sounded kinky. 1: I wanted to take a class involving heat, pumping
and head. Engineering Terminologies1. A number of different approaches are being tried. (We don't know where we're going, but we're moving.) 2. Close project coordination. (We should have asked someone else.) 3. An extensive report is being prepared on a fresh approach to the problem. (We just hired 3 guys. We'll let them kick it around for a while.) 4. Major technological breakthrough. (Back to the drawing board.) 5. Customer satisfaction believed assured. (We're so far behind schedule that the customer is happy to get anything at all from us.) 6. Preliminary operational test were inconclusive. (The darn thing blew up when we threw the switch!) 7. The test results were extremely gratifying. (It works and boy are we surprised.) 8. The entire concept will have to be abandoned. (The only guy who understood the thing quit.) 9. It is in the process. (It is so wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.) 10. We will look into it. (By the time the wheel makes a full turn, we will assume you have forgotten about it.) 11. Please note and initial. (Let's spread the responsibility for this job.) 12. Give us the benefit of your thinking. (We'll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn't interfere with what we have already done.) 13. Give us your interpretation. (Your warped opinion will be pitted against our good sense.) 14. See me, or Let's discuss. (Come down to my office, I'm lonesome.) 15. All new. (Parts not interchangeable with previous design.) 16. Rugged. (Too heavy to lift.) 17. Lightweight. (Lighter than rugged.) 18. Years of development. (Finally got one that worked.) 19. Energy saving. (Ok we are going actually to Make an Economic Optimization,so save money, but in the report we will not mention it but instead we will report the Ecological Advantages so you may do a good impression with the community.) 20. No maintenance. (Impossible to fix!) A chemist, an engineer and a mathematician were all asleep in a hotel when several fires broke out in their respective rooms. The chemist woke up, saw the fire, ran over to his desk, pulled out his CRC (chemistry handbook), and began working out all sorts of fluid dynamics equations. After a couple minutes, he threw down his pencil, got a graduated cylinder out of his suitcase, and measured out a precise amount of water. He threw it on the fire, extinguishing it, with not a drop wasted, and went back to sleep. The engineer woke up, saw the fire, ran into the bathroom, turned on the faucets full-blast, flooding out the entire apartment, which put out the fire, and went back to sleep. The mathematician woke up, saw the fire, ran over to his desk, began working through theorems, lemmas, hypotheses, you-name-it, and after a few minutes, put down his pencil triumphantly and exclaimed, "I have proven that I can put the fire out!" He then went back to sleep. Top Signs You Might
Be a Chemical Engineer
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