This Engineering Topnotcher Failed Thermodynamics 1

Studying for the licensure exams is one task best done with your full attention.

After all, it can be challenging to focus on anything else while youre knee-deep in books and reviewers.

However, this isnt always the case for every taker, just like Engr. Karlo S. Ornieta.

In our interview with him, we found out how he managed to ranked 5th on the Mechanical Engineer licensure exam, all while working at a trucking company.

Growing up in a family of engineers, 24-year-old Karlo has always been into mathematics, especially Geometry.

He loved solving problems involving shapes, and he became especially passionate about it when he worked with a hydraulic turbine design for a science investigatory project in high school.

That was why in choosing a college course for college, he did not hesitate to pick Mechanical Engineering.

He enrolled in Ateneo de Davao University straight out of high school and faced college life with a brave heart.

For the first few semesters, things were going rather well with Karlos studies.

He was acing his math tests and doing great with his laboratory work.

But here comes Thermodynamics 1, the Devil within mechanical engineering, it went a bit downhill for him.

The topics in this subject got increasingly difficult throughout the entire semester and he got a failing mark in Thermodynamics 1.

He was incredibly disappointed in himself, but he didnt let that one failure stop him.

As a matter of fact, it only motivated him to put more effort in.

He buried himself in books, dedicated more time to practice problem-solving, and even took part in group studies to become more focused.

Karlo managed to pass Thermodynamics 1, but things didnt become easier as he progressed through college.

Fortunately, he was braver and better after that challenging subject, and when his final year in university rolled around.

It was no longer surprising that he managed to graduate with flying colors.

He was named a cum laude!

His parents couldnt be prouder of his achievement.

After getting his degree, Karlo went on to overcome another big hurdle in his dreams: the licensure examinations.

He decided it was best to enroll in a review center, so he did just that.

However, at that time, a series of cancellations of licensure exams took place because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hence, there was no assurance of the mechanical exams taking place.

Karlo worried that he might end up wasting too much time only studying when he could start gaining work experience already.

Thats why he applied for a job and fortunately got hired as a Tire Monitoring Assistant in a logistics company.

But dividing his attention between two important things wasnt a walk in the park.

During the day, Karlo was exhausted from overseeing the tire maintenance activities of the companys fleet of trucks.

He typically spent most of his time under the scorching sun, inspecting the condition of all the tires. He did this for six days a week, only resting for one day.

At night, Karlo pored over his review materials.

He followed his study plan diligently and spent his night taking notes of unique problems and making mnemonics.

Despite his busy schedule, he made sure that he still got enough sleep to prevent burning himself out.

During his spare time, he would hang out with his family and friends to destress.

A month before the Mechanical Engineering Licensure Examination (MELE), his line manager was kind and considerate enough to reduce his workdays, so he can focus better on reviewing.

He only came to work three times a week, and the rest of the time was spent preparing for the upcoming exam.

On the day of the MELE, Karlo was confident enough in his preparation.

And sure enough, he found two of the subjects, Mathematics, Engineering Economics, and Basic Engineering Sciences (MESL) and Power and Industrial Plant Engineering (PIPE), quite average.

However, Machine Design, Material, and Shop Practice (MDSP) was a bit difficult for him.

Still, by the end of the two-day exam, he believed that he would end up on the topnotchers list, as a form of the law of attraction.

He and his family waited patiently for the results to come out and after eight days, the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC) finally posted the results on its website.

Karlos girlfriend, who used to be his study partner in college, was the first person to inform him of the good news.

While he was confident of himself, he was still in disbelief and couldnt really fathom that his name was actually on the topnotcher list with a rating of 89.05%.

Karlo immediately informed his family, and they gushed over his success while also thanking God for such a blessing.

He was also flooded with numerous public congratulatory messages from his university, review center, and friends.

Right now, Karl is already working for San Miguel Brewery Inc., Davao Plant as a Process Engineer in the Packaging Department and hopes to stay in the company for the years to come.

Heres the full transcript of GineersNows interview with Engr. Karlo.

I decided to take Mechanical Engineering because of my interest in Mathematics, and Geometry.

My younger self thought that this was the course that would have the most application to the said subjects.

I was also urged by my older sister to take this line of career expecting that it would be in demand in the near future, which it certainly did after hearing from my acquaintances.

Moreover, my Science Investigatory Project back in high school inspired me in choosing this course.

It was about the design of a hydraulic turbine.

This topic is inclined to mechanical engineering matters which I believed was a key factor that piqued my interest more.

My favorite subjects in my engineering study are the following:

On the contrary, my least liked subjects are

Yes, it was Thermodynamics 1 when I got a failure mark for one term.

It was heartbreaking and alarming especially since Thermodynamics 1 was known to be one which many fail.

This did not discourage me, however, to put in more effort.

I pushed myself to read more references, solve more Thermodynamics 1 problems, practice a lot, and join class group studies.

My most difficult experience occurred during Thermodynamics 1.

It was a near-miss event where I almost failed the subject.

The Thermodynamics 1 topics got much harder and harder throughout the entire semester.

Study smart.

Master the basics but also anticipate unique and alien problems.

Moreover, I continued spending quality time with my family and friends despite the busy schedule.

Most importantly, I never forget to rest and pray.

Develop and practice an effective, efficient, and healthy study habit early on.

Also, seeking help from others will do more good than bad.

I was working, at the same time, preparing for the licensure exams in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adding to my mental stress from studying, I was also most of the time physically stressed from work.

All these with no assurance whether the exams would take place or be postponed.

I combated these by taking enough rest.

I worked as if the exams would 100% continue on the scheduled date to avoid myself from doubting and overthinking.

It is better to be safe than sorry.

Yes, I enrolled with PRIME Review Center. I recommend doing so.

This review center is proven and tested; without of course taking the credit away from the exam taker himself.

We have three subjects in the MELE: MESL, PIPE. and MDSP.

In my opinion, MESL and PIPE were average and MDSP was difficult.

Yes. I strongly believed that all five of us, Ateneo de Davao University Mechanical Engineering takers, will respectively occupy a place in the top 10.

My now-girlfriend informed me of the results.

I was in disbelief.

I immediately informed my family, and we talked on the phone.

I owe this success to myself, my family, and our Almighty Father.

None. I received, however, public congratulatory messages from them which flattered me after I was given recognition.

I am really grateful as they were key factors that helped me with this achievement.

I enjoy taking down notes. I dedicatedly invest enough time into it.

My notes contain not only the lesson itself but also my insights with respect to the topic at hand.

Additionally, I put much effort into note-taking to the point that I would use colored ball pens for writing.

I felt that I had to write them creatively or else I would have difficulty retaining details of what I studied.

Moreover, I regularly answer problem-solving types of questions.

I find joy and satisfaction whenever I come across challenging problems, more especially when I get the correct answer.

This is a way of evaluating myself.

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This Engineering Topnotcher Failed in Thermodynamics 1 - GineersNow

When it comes to battery developments, there's no shortage of news. From a battery design that could last up to 100 years to a water-based batterythat's produced at half the cost of lithium-ion ones, it seems there is always something new and exciting happening in the field.

Now, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have engineered novel energy-packed lithium-ion batteries that perform optimally at freezing cold and scorching hot temperatures, according to a statement by the institution released on Monday.

You need high-temperature operation in areas where the ambient temperature can reach the triple digits and the roads get even hotter. In electric vehicles, the battery packs are typically under the floor, close to these hot roads, explained Zheng Chen, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and senior author of the study.

Also, batteries warm up just from having a current run through during operation. If the batteries cannot tolerate this warmup at high temperature, their performance will quickly degrade.

Chen's team ran tests with the prototype batteries and found that they retained 87.5% and 115.9% of their energy capacity at-40 and 122 F (-40 and 50 C ), respectively. Better yet, the researchers reported that the prototypes had high Coulombic efficiencies of 98.2% and 98.7% at these temperatures, which means the batteries can undergo more charge and discharge cycles before they cease to function.

However, developing the new batteries was no easy task.

If you want a battery with high energy density, you typically need to use very harsh, complicated chemistry, said Chen. High energy means more reactions are happening, which means less stability, more degradation. Making a high-energy battery that is stable is a difficult task itselftrying to do this through a wide temperature range is even more challenging.

In order to bypass these hurdles, the team invented a dibutyl ether electrolyte and engineered the sulfur cathode to be more stable by grafting it to a polymer preventing more sulfur from dissolving into the electrolyte.

The end result was batteries with much longer cycling lives than a typical lithium-sulfur battery. Our electrolyte helps improve both the cathode side and anode side while providing high conductivity and interfacial stability, said Chen.

The new batteries could nowenable electric vehicles to travel further on a single charge in cold climates while also alleviating the need for cooling systems to keep the vehicles battery packs from overheating in hot climates. But first, the team needs toscale up the battery chemistry, optimize it to work at even higher temperatures, and further extend its cycle life.

The study is published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Abstract:

All-climate temperature operation capability and increased energy density have been recognized as two crucial targets, but they are rarely achieved together in rechargeable lithium (Li) batteries. Herein, we demonstrate an electrolyte system by using monodentate dibutyl ether with both low melting and high boiling points as the sole solvent. Its weak solvation endows an aggregate solvation structure and low solubility toward polysulfide species in a relatively low electrolyte concentration (2 mol L1). These features were found to be vital in avoiding dendrite growth and enabling Li metal Coulombic efficiencies of 99.0%, 98.2%, and 98.7% at 23C, 40C, and 50C, respectively. Pouch cells employing thin Li metal (50 m) and high-loading sulfurized polyacrylonitrile (3.3 mAh cm2) cathodes (negative-to-positive capacity ratio = 2) output 87.5% and 115.9% of their room temperature capacity at 40C and 50C, respectively. This work provides solvent-based design criteria for a wide temperature range Li-sulfur pouch cells.

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Engineers develop lithium-ion batteries that work well in extreme cold and heat - Interesting Engineering

What is Engineering?

What do Scotty on the Starship Enterprise, Neil Armstrong, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Bill Nye all have in common? They're all engineers! Engineers are capable of doing some amazing things: they solve problems in society that might seem impossible at first, like designing and building the first suspension bridge, assembling the equipment to put man on the moon, or creating the steam engine. In fact, that's where the word 'engineer' comes from: engineers are the individuals responsible for building everything from the steam engine to the engine in your car. But, what exactly is engineering?

Engineering is a scientific field and job that involves taking our scientific understanding of the natural world and using it to invent, design, and build things to solve problems and achieve practical goals. This can include the development of roads, bridges, cars, planes, machines, tools, processes, and computers. The things engineers build are called technology. Without technology, the modern world simply wouldn't exist. We're surrounded by the work of engineers practically every moment of our lives.

There are many different types of engineering. The most significant ones are civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering.

Civil engineering is probably the first one that comes to mind when people think about engineering. These are the roads, bridges, dams, buildings, and canals that make up our human communities and infrastructure. All of those structures are designed and built under the supervision of civil engineers.

Mechanical engineering is what puts the 'engine' into engineering. This is often where the problem-solving cleverness of engineers is most on display. Mechanical engineers can turn one type of energy into another one, or one type of motion into another, to solve problems. They're responsible for cogs and levers, joints and belts, cams and wheels, and shafts and pulleys. These basic structures, when taken to a highly complex level, lead to things like steam engines and the internal combustion engine of cars. Mechanical engineering, therefore, encompasses everything from car mechanics, to air-conditioning systems, to military aircrafts and robotics.

Electrical engineering might be less acknowledged than other types of engineering, but it's probably the most central to the modern world in which we live. It's hard to imagine a world without electricity and electronics. From computers to televisions, to digital cameras to cell phones, each of these technologies is a product of electrical engineering. It began with simple electrical systems like the telegraph, telephone, and light bulb, and advanced more and more from there.

Chemical engineering is perhaps the least well known, but it's a no less important part of the field. It involves producing chemicals, such as man-made and space-age materials, and fuels for human use. The gas you put in your car exists thanks to chemical engineering. So do polyester clothes, plastic toys and bottles, and even treatments for diseases, which often involve chemical engineering processes.

When you put all of these pieces together, you see that the modern world we live in would be completely impossible without engineering; and even into the future, the problem-solving skills of engineers have the potential to solve many problems.

With every new century comes new challenges. We have many problems still to solve, and engineers can help us solve them. How many problems can you think of that engineers might be able to solve in the 21st century?

One of the most significant problems humanity is currently facing is the threat of climate change. It's engineers who will figure out how to improve sustainable sources of energy, making it easier for people to use them. It's engineers who will work on ways to provide plenty of clean water for the growing human population without using too much energy in the process. Engineers might even find viable ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reversing the process of climate change, or find ways to capture the carbon dioxide we're currently producing. Many of these tasks are feasible already, but the cheaper and easier they are to do, the more likely people will do them.

Other problems humanity faces are the issues of poverty and world hunger. Already, things are much better than they would be without engineering. The farming technology we use today, for instance, allows us to create huge quantities of food with relatively little effort. There is no way we could have so many people alive on Earth without it.

There are dozens of additional problems that engineers may solve over the next century. Maybe we'll have automatic irons, fully solar-powered cars, household robots, virtual-reality computers, advanced medicines, cheap and easy-to-build bullet trains, or fusion power. Whatever we learn from scientific research, engineers will be there to put it to use in our lives.

Let's review what we've learned. Engineering is the means by which we take our scientific knowledge of the world and use it to invent, design, and build technologies to solve problems in our lives. Engineering includes civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering.

Together, these fields of engineering have shaped the modern world and will continue to do so in the future. Whether it's household robots or advanced medicines, engineers will put science into practice.

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What is Engineering? | Engineering Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript ...

By Michele McDonaldCommonwealth Cyber Initiative

TheCommonwealth Cyber Initiativehas aided in funding three new test beds at Virginia Commonwealth UniversitysCollege of Engineeringto help researchers and industry partners analyze the security of medical devices, NextG applications and smart city operations.

The test beds were developed under the leadership ofErdem Topsakal, Ph.D., director of the CCI Central Virginia regional node and a professor and chair of VCUs Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

These test beds will benefit researchers both faculty and students as well as the commonwealth at large, Topsakal said. They help support and inspire entrepreneurship and spin-off companies that will bolster CCI's goal of supporting workforce development throughout the commonwealth."

The new test beds are:

Cybersecurity must be woven into the devices that connect our lives from hospital beds to the cars we drive, said Luiz DaSilva, Ph.D., executive director of theCommonwealth Cyber Initiative, a network of industry, higher education and economic development partners that serves as an engine for research, workforce development and innovation at the intersection of cybersecurity, autonomous systems and intelligence.

The test beds complement VCUs newDreams to Reality Incubator, which recently launched two companies. Both new companies received early stage funding from CCI.

Symple Solutions Inc.is innovating the next generation of safe and secure instrumentation and control systems for critical infrastructures, including nuclear power, autonomous systems and more. The company was founded byCarl Elks, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and VCU engineering alumni Rick Hite, Ph.D., and Christopher Deloglos, Ph.D.

Virtual PLC mimics programmable logic controllers used in industry settings to collect threat intelligence on physical processes in the U.S. critical infrastructures, such as nuclear plants and gas pipelines. Virtual PLC was founded byIrfan Ahmed, Ph.D., an associate professor of computer science, and Syed Qasim, a graduate research assistant.

The new test beds at VCU add to the CCI networks capability to evaluate technology and applications from industry and government partners before theyre commonly used, DaSilva said. The test beds also will provide meaningful experiential learning opportunities for students to prepare them for a career in cybersecurity.

A 1:12 scale model, OpenCyberCity is a smart city test bed where students can learn about several aspects of modern smart cities. The test bed consists of data collection and processing units, database management, distributed performance management algorithms, and real-time data visualization, saidSherif Abdelwahed, Ph.D., project director and VCU electrical and computer engineering professor.

The test bed provides a near real-life platform to allow students to learn about the unique features of smart cities and explore the supporting technologies, he said. Six graduate students are working on OpenCyberCity-related projects.

The smart city test beds Intelligent Transportation System includes autonomous cars and intelligent infrastructure.

Students and researchers will be able to experiment with algorithms that ensure safety, efficiency and security across these systems, saidPatrick Martin, Ph.D., VCU electrical and computer engineering assistant professor. In the future, we also plan to add micro-unmanned aerial vehicles to expand the transportation use cases to include urban air mobility as well as emergency response.

The OpenCyberCity test bed connects to the Medical Device Security test bed through a firewall. Wearable devices, beds and other gear equipped with sensors could help more people age in place, said Lauren Linkous, a VCU electrical and computer engineering doctoral student who is working in the universitys Medical Device Security test bed along with fellow doctoral student Erwin Karincic. However, these devices must have cybersecurity incorporated into the design from the beginning. Thats not always the case, Linkous noted.

Security is sometimes patched on at the end, she said. This leaves an opening for bad actors to hack into sensitive systems, possibly spoofing or faking what is actually happening to a person or putting them in danger.

The NextG test bed is the place to evaluate the networked underpinnings of many of the advanced applications in smart cities and medical devices. Researchers are working on characterizing the emitted signals of medical devices under attack, which will help create detection systems to secure medical devices in networked health care environments.

In addition, researchers in the NextG test bed are building and characterizing new magnetic materials, which may prove useful for radio frequency shielding and power dissipation as applied to telecommunications, security, medical and smart city applications, said Jonathan Lundquist, a VCU electrical and computing engineering doctoral student.

Subscribe to VCU News at newsletter.vcu.edu and receive a selection of stories, videos, photos, news clips and event listings in your inbox.

Continued here:

New VCU engineering test beds will boost security of state's NextG, medical devices and smart cities - VCU News