Engineering Calculation Fundamentals: Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 1
Engineering Calculation Fundamentals: Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 1
Fundamentals Page 1
Engineering Calculation Fundamentals
Introduction
This document is meant to help you attain (or review) some basic skills that physicists
and engineers should have like using significant figures or converting units. In courses
in your Engineering Physics curriculum it will be assumed that you have these
fundamental skills described in this document, but very little mention will be made of
these fundamentals unless you make mistakes and sometimes not even then. The point
is that these skills may get overlooked by you for the moment, but will inevitably come
back to haunt you. Now is as good a time as any to deal with these skills that are often
viewed as the picky details. So lets get started.
Engineering Calculations
The first skill that is important is the subject of calculations. This may include order of
magnitude approximations (sometimes called back of the envelope calculations), using
your calculator for a homework problem, or your own computer program to crunch data
from research. Each of these calculations are very different and may require very
different resources, precision, and total time to complete. Although it is an important
skill to be able to differentiate the requirements to perform a calculation, this is not the
subject covered by this document. This document is instead intended as an introduction
to the techniques you should use to perform the calculations. It is also intended to serve
as a reference for you when confronted with problems in more advanced courses.
2006 Evan C. Lemley
Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 2
Engineers and scientists make many calculations and estimates and base decisions on
these calculated or estimated values. Often these skills are overlooked as trivial, but are
probably the most common source of errors even for experienced engineers. As an
example the rules determining the proper number of significant digits for a measured
value are really not that difficult to follow, but if these rules are either not known or are
forgotten then errors may be made. Even if these errors are small (i.e. one digit) the
consequences may still be significant since most values are used for subsequent
calculations. Another reason a single digit error may be important is that the one digit
may mean additional costs to your company or a client.
Scalar values
This part of the document is focused on numerical calculations so the starting point
should be numbers in particular we should deal with scalars. Scalars are pure
numbers like 5 and as such represent only a magnitude. Many quantities in physics and
engineering are scalars such as temperature, distance, or energy so it must be
important in physics and engineering to be able to deal with scalars. There are other
types of entities in physics and engineering that are not just magnitudes, but also include
directions (vectors) or directional components in other directions (tensors). A brief
discussion of vectors is included here, but tensors are left for advanced work in fluid
mechanics and other areas.
The basic terminology of scalars is given in Table One.
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 3
Table 1Mathematical nomenclature for scalars.
Scalar Type Definition Comments
Natural
Numbers
The numbers 1, 2, 3.
Integer
Numbers
All Natural Numbers plus 0, -1,
-2.
Rational
Numbers
Any scalar that may be written as
p/q (q 0 and p and q both
integers).
All rational numbers may be
written as a repeating decimal
fraction.
Irrational
Numbers
Decimal fraction representations
never repeat.
Examples:
e = 2.71828
= 3.141592
Real Numbers Includes all Rational and
Irrational that do not include i
2
=
-1
1, 1.0,
Complex
Numbers
May be written as a + bi a and b are real numbers, where
i
2
= -1.
When a scalar represents a physical quantity like temperature, then the scalar will have
units in this case degrees Celsius would work. Units will be discussed more
thoroughly in a subsequent section.
To wrap up this initial discussion of scalars several comments are in order. First, it will
be assumed that arithmetic operations with scalars are familiar to you and that
evaluating a more involved string of arithmetic operations is an easy process for you. So
the following should be a simple evaluation (3
2
x 2 + 4 )/ 11 = 2. Second, this document
for the moment deals only with decimal or base-10 scalars. Number systems with other
bases are certainly of use, but are left to other courses. Finally, you should be able to
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 4
perform the scalar operations one a series of one-digit scalars without the use of a
calculator. It turns out estimating the result of a somewhat complicated calculation can
be an efficient way to check a calculator result (calculator errors are common). This
process of estimating the result of a complicated equation amounts to performing simple
arithmetic operations on single digit scalar values. This proficiency with single digit
scalars should include dealing with non-decimal values i.e. fractions.
Scientific and Engineering Notation
Since many scalar values are either very large or very small (relative to a single digit) a
convenient way to express scalar values is to use scientific notation. You may already be familiar
with scientific notation, but this section will serve as a brief review. As an example lets say we
wanted to write the length 123 cm in scientific notation. The result would look like
1.23 x 10
2
cm
Of course 10
2
is the same as 100, so multiplying the value 1.23 times 100 gives the
correct number of centimeters. Note, it is standard to write numbers in scientific notation
in the form
m.nop x 10
q
There is one digit before the decimal and the remaining significant digits (discussed
thoroughly in a subsequent section) are placed after the decimal. The exponent q may
be any integer (as described in a previous section). As another example note that 123
cm is the same as 0.00123 km. So in scientific notation this would be
1.23 x 10
-3
km
Engineering notation is similar to scientific notation, but different in that the exponent
must always be a multiple of three (3) (this includes zero). This rule for the exponent
means that many numbers may not be able to be written in the format of scientific
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 5
notation where one writes only one digit before the decimal and the remaining digits
after. Instead, in engineering notation, the first number is always written between one
(1) and 1000 to accommodate writing the exponent as a multiple of three. For example
if a radiation counter registers 15,255 counts in a one minute period, then the resulting
count rate in engineering notation would be
15.255 x 10
3
counts / minute.
Most likely your calculator can be set up to display in either scientific or engineering
notation. If I enter the above radiation counter measurement in my Casio fx-115W the
display appears as
1.52550000
04
when the calculator is set to display in scientific notation. When the calculator is
changed to engineering notation the display shows
15.255
K
The superscript suffix K means times 1000 on my calculator. If a significantly more
sensitive detector is used and a measurement of 15,255,000 counts are observed in
some time period, then the value entered on my calculator would appear as
Scientific: 1.5255
07
Engineering: 15.255
M
Here the superscript suffix M means x 1,000,000. The value entered as 0.000325 will
display on my Casio as:
Scientific: 3.25
-04
Engineering: 325
Defining the g
c
as follows
2
174 . 32
s lb
ft lb
g
f
m
c
,
_
Most physics and engineering textbooks include tables of conversion factors in an
appendix or elsewhere. You might get familiar with a particular conversion table in one
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 16
of your textbooks. When you are in front of a computer you can always use
http://www.onlineconversion.com/, which will perform many conversions.
Dimensional Analysis
Physics and Engineering Equations must be dimensionally consistent that is each side
and each additive term must have the same dimensions. Dimensions are just mass,
length, time, etc. Consider the equation for position versus time with uniform
acceleration in one-dimension
Equation 2
Now lets examine the dimensions of each quantity
] ][ [ ] ][ [ ] [ ] [
2
2
T
T
L
T
T
L
L L + +
where dimensions of length, L, and time, T, are represented in square brackets. Clearly,
each additive term in the equation has the same dimensions L. The fact that physical
relationships must satisfy the criterion of being dimensionally homogenous actually
allows one to determine the nature of a complicated physical relationship. This process
is called dimensional analysis and is a very valuable tool to understand complicated
multivariate relationships. There are textbooks completely devoted to this subject, but
for the moment lets consider a simple engineering problem and attempt to arrive at a
solution using dimensional analysis.
2006 Evan C. Lemley
2
0 0
2
1
) ( at t v x t x + +
Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 17
Consider the flow of a fluid over a smooth sphere as shown in Figure One. The basic
problem of drag on a smooth sphere has been studied in detail. The variables of interest
in this problem are shown in Figure One.
The variables in the above figure have the following meaning:
= density of fluid [kg/m
3
],
= absolute viscosity of fluid [N-s/m
2
],
V = velocity of fluid [m/s],
D = diameter of sphere [m], and
D
f
= drag on sphere [N].
The method of dimensional analysis involves analyzing the dimensions of all of the
variables involved and developing dimensionless parameters that describe the problem.
Following the Rayleigh Method the drag force D
f
is related to the other variables as
follows:
2006 Evan C. Lemley
Df
V
D
Approaching Fluid
Figure 1 Defining variables for drag due to external fluid flow over a smooth
spherical object.
Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 18
Equation 3:
Where
A
1
= an arbitrary constant, and
a-d = arbitrary exponents.
It may be shown that the functional relationship that arises from Eq.(3) is
Equation 4:
Where
C
D
= the coefficient of drag, and
Re
D
= Reynolds number.
Equation 5:
Equation 6:
Note that in Eq.(5), A is the projected area of the object (i.e. area normal to the flow). So
in the case of the solid sphere
2006 Evan C. Lemley
d c b a
f
D V A D
1
) (Re
D D
f C
A V
D
C
f
D 2
2 / 1
VD
D
Re
Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 19
Equation 7:
The Reynolds number has many physical interpretations, but these will be explored later
in your curriculum.
The importance of Eq.(4) is twofold: a many-variable problem has been simplified to one
independent variable (hence considerably fewer experiments have to be performed to
establish a relationship), and experiments may be performed with different fluids (even
at different conditions) or different dimensions to allow for modeling and prototyping.
These facts are termed dimensional and dynamic similarity.
Basic Statistics
Frequently in your academic career you will need to know some basic statistics; whether
it is to determine if the difference between two measured values is statistically significant
or to find your grade point average. In general statistics are just numerical ways of
expressing facts concerning data. The primary ways of expressing these facts are
through several quantities. To begin with one must assume that you have a perfect set
of data. This data is really imaginary because it requires that an infinite number of
measurements be made. One quantity of interest is the mean, x , which is just the
average value or centroid of the numerical data is calculated as
2006 Evan C. Lemley
2
4
D A
N
i
i
N
x x
N
1
2
_
2
) (
1
lim
Equation 9
Since in real circumstances one makes a finite number of measurements, Eqs.(1 and 2)
have to be modified to the sample mean and the sample standard deviation, which
are defined as
N
i
i
x
N
x
1
_
1
,
Equation 10
2006 Evan C. Lemley
)
1
( lim
1
_
N
i
i
N
x
N
x
Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 21
2
_
1
2
) (
1
1
x x
N
N
i
i
.
Equation 11
So when one makes another measurement, you could say that most of the time the
value will be within of x . To make all of this a little more concrete lets consider the
example of measuring the length of a table with a meter stick. Lets say you have
repeated the measurement nine times and recorded the lengths shown in Table 1
Table 6Measured lengths of a table.
Trial # Length
(meters)
1 1.022
2 1.024
3 1.023
4 1.021
5 1.022
6 1.024
7 1.020
8 1.025
9 1.026
The associated statistics for this data and how they are calculated are shown in Table 7.
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 22
Table 7Statistics calculations for table data.
i x
i
(meters)
x (Eq.
3)
(meters)
d
i
= x - x
i
(meters)
(d
i
)
2
(meters
)
2
(Eq. 4)
(meters)
1 1.022 1.023 0.001 1E-06 0.001936
2 1.024 -0.001 1E-06
3 1.023 0.000 0
4 1.021 0.002 4E-06
5 1.022 0.001 1E-06
6 1.024 -0.001 1E-06
7 1.020 0.003 9E-06
8 1.025 -0.002 4E-06
9 1.026 -0.003 9E-06
9.207 3E-05
So the meaning of these statistics is that if you measure the length of the table again
(call this measurement x) you will most likely find the length to be
x - < x < x +
or
1.021 meters < x < 1.025 meters.
So how do you know how many digits are significant in a given value? There are two
ways. First, one may use statistics to determine the precision of a given value that has
been measured multiple times. The precision just specifies which decimal place
contains the last significant digit and the minimum value of that digit. For example if one
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 23
measures the length of a table with a meter stick several times the result might be stated
as
1.2550 0.0005 meters
where the precision of the measurement is 0.0005 meters. If one has not made multiple
measurements, then an estimate of the precision may be made by considering the
precision of the device that was used to measure the value. Making multiple
measurements is the preferable way to find the precision, but often the second
technique is acceptable if multiple measurements (in the range of less than ten
measurements) will not dramatically increase the precision.
In the case where you made a measurement of a value or you know the details of a
measurement, then determining the number of significant digits is a matter of statistics.
For example if you are counting objects (lets say the number of cars in a parking lot)
and you count 128 cars in a parking lot, then how many significant digits does 128
have? The answer is probably three (3), but it may depend on how carefully you
counted or if you checked yourself by counting multiple times. Lets say you counted the
cars five times and came up with the numbers shown below in Table 8.
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Engr. Calc. Fundamentals Page 24
Table 8 Car counting results.
Trial # # of cars
1 128
2 125
3 128
4 129
5 130
How many cars are in the parking lot? Well now one has to do a little statistics to find
out. The average number of cars using Eq.(3) is 128, but is 128 three (3) significant
digits? To know one must know the standard deviation for the calculation. As calculated
using Eq.(4) the standard deviation is 2. Note that the standard deviation is only
specified with one digit, and that digit must be able to be added to or subtracted from
128. So the proper answer to the question how many cars are in the parking lot? is 128
2 . The last digit shown (i.e. the 2) is significant, since we know that there is a good
chance (around 68% in fact) that if we do the counting many times that the average will
fall between 126 and 130. So the last digit is important and may be specified with
confidence; thus 128 2 has three (3) significant digits. You will learn the specifics of
how to estimate the precision without making multiple measurements when you take
PHY 2014L Physics for Scientists and Engineers I Laboratory.
2006 Evan C. Lemley