I just got finished answering a recent post and started thinking about CR4.
This is such a great service because it give us "old farts" a chance to pass on our 35, 40, or more years of experience to the next generation in a way that goes WAY beyond what they learned in school. It also lets us keep our mind from getting fuzzy. I often jump to CR4 after several hours of number crunching to refresh my mind and clear up my thought process. I often still learn something new- engineers are supposed to continue learning and practicing forever.
Relative to us "old farts"- Virtually ALL of us could probably pick up a slide rule and get a correct answer (most of us still have our old slide rules sitting in a drawer not that far away) to most of the problems we deal with on computers (just not quite as fast). The greatest thing that the slide rule taught me is that "close enough" really is.
Watching today's young engineers, who grew up with programmable calculators and computers work out problems where they are REALLY concerned abut the material that a duct is fabricated from so they can apply the correct Reynolds number or seeing someone calculate a heat transfer load to the tenths of a BTU or determine flow to a hundredth of a GPM and not see anything wrong with that process is frustrating because they do not understand the SYSTEMS that they are working with- just the calculations.
We need to take all engineering Senior, before they graduate, to see the movie- Apollo 13. Watching a team of VERY smart engineers grab slide rules to figure out how to get that broken ship home- and watching the astronauts do rapid manual / in their head calculations to assist the ground should be a great learning experience.
Thanks to CR4, we are able to show these rising stars that knowledge of SYSTEMS is far more important than plugging some numbers into a program. We are also able to show them that the "correct" answer is reasonable close (and totally adequate) to the exact answer.
Any way, guys, keep up the good work.
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