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Week 1 Assignment

1) Technologies have much shorter life spans now than in the past, with many gadgets becoming outdated within 2-3 years rather than lasting decades. 2) Scientists and engineers are constantly working to advance existing technologies and develop new ones in industries, companies, and universities. 3) Engineers in industry troubleshoot technical challenges to meet customer demands with lower costs and greater reliability, while scientists in labs aim to understand the fundamental science behind material properties and their limits. 4) Having experience in both fundamental science and engineering approaches can greatly benefit materials scientists and engineers in their work.

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100 views

Week 1 Assignment

1) Technologies have much shorter life spans now than in the past, with many gadgets becoming outdated within 2-3 years rather than lasting decades. 2) Scientists and engineers are constantly working to advance existing technologies and develop new ones in industries, companies, and universities. 3) Engineers in industry troubleshoot technical challenges to meet customer demands with lower costs and greater reliability, while scientists in labs aim to understand the fundamental science behind material properties and their limits. 4) Having experience in both fundamental science and engineering approaches can greatly benefit materials scientists and engineers in their work.

Uploaded by

Ben Dover
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Week 1 : Assignment 1

Due date: 2022-09-04, 23:59 IST.


Your last recorded submission was on 2022-08-26, 14:51 IST
Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow:

Engineers and Scientists:

We live in a world that is filled with a wide range of technologies that we use and we take for
granted. The speed with which new technologies appear and disappear is constantly increasing.
These days many of the gadgets we buy get outdated in a time frame of two to three years. This is a
short time frame since many of the technologies in use are robust enough to physically last several
years. However, in terms of features and utility, they get outdated much sooner than that. This is
also a short time frame relative to how long technologies were used two or three decades ago. An
example is the media used to store music. While gramophone records and cassettes lasted decades,
DVDs have fast disappeared. Almost any mobile phone or computer purchased these days become
obsolete in two to three years.

Behind this vast moving world of technologies, is a worldwide army of scientists and engineers. They
are constantly on the prowl for making advances to existing technologies. Many industries,
companies, and educational institutions are filled with scientists and engineers. While there may be
some similarities in the tasks they are involved in, there are also some differences.

An engineer in an industry setting usually faces several technical trouble shooting challenges. Such
challenges, with stiff timelines, require substantial familiarity with information databases, and
characterization techniques, to be successfully addressed. Addressing trouble shooting challenges
are often based on the selection and use of the best available resources and substitutes. The types
of questions the engineer is faced with include questions of the sort:

1) Is there a lighter material readily available which can replace the existing material in the product?
2) Why is a specific batch of the product not as good as another batch?
3) Will it be possible for this product to function with lesser parts than it currently has?

Answers to such questions enable the industry meet the demands of their customers at lower costs
and with greater reliability.

A scientist in a university or laboratory setting faces a different kind of challenge. The questions the
scientist wishes to answer are:

1) Why is the value of any specific property of a material what it is?


2) What is the fundamental science behind the property?
3) What are the limits, if any, to this property?

Answers to such questions enable one to design new materials and to push the capabilities of
existing materials.

Based on the professional setting a materials specialist ends up in, he/she will likely get pulled into
one of the above types of activities. However having both - a good feel for the fundamental sciences,
as well as an understanding of the engineering approach to relate to the real world, can greatly
enhance the value of a materials scientist/engineer to his or her organization.
At the same time, it usually takes considerable experience to fully understand, appreciate, and make
use of the linkages between fundamental science and the world of engineering. Experience and
systematic studies provide us with the insight to make the connections between the real world
inventions and the science behind them. Such insight helps us truly appreciate the contributions of
the scientist as well as the engineer in shaping our interactions with the world around us. Such
insight, also enables us to take our technical pursuits to greater heights and wider reaches, and
hence is desirable.

1. Technologies in use today have life span of decades


 True
 False
1 point
2. Engineers aim to reduce the number of parts in a product
 True
 False
1 point
3. Engineers aim to reduce the number of parts in a product
 True
 False
1 point
4. Reproducibility of parts is an important target in industries
 True
 False
1 point
5. Scientists try to determine the root cause of a property of a material
 True
 False
1 point
6. Engineers cannot do scientific work
 True
 False
1 point
7. Scientists cannot do engineering
 True
 False
1 point
8. It is useful to have both a good feel for the fundamental sciences, as well as an understanding of the engineering
approach
 True
 False
1 point
9. Typically, anyone can quickly and easily understand the relationship between science and engineering
 True
 False
1 point
10. Understanding the relationship between fundamental science and applied engineering is typically useless in most
fields
 True
 False
You may submit any number of times before the due date. The final submission will be considered for grading.

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