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Saturday, January 30, 2016

Prompt #1 Understanding of Chemical Engineering

Every time, when I tell people my major, they always give me a surprised face and show their awe to me. This is a biggest preconception of chemical engineering that people always thought my major has little connection with people's daily life. Truly, at first, even me thought maybe I will spend my rest of my career time in laboratory. But now, since I am officially a pre-chemical engineer, I realized that how ridiculous the prejudice it is.

My textbook "Thinking Like A Engineer" said "Chemical engineers are involved in the research and development, manufacture, sales, and use of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronic components, food and consumer goods, petroleum products, synthetic fibers and films, pulp and paper, and many other products." As we can see, chemical engineering actually refer to almost everywhere.

Images from url

As chemical engineers, we not only need master chemistry knowledge well but also require physics and mathematics knowledge. Mathematics plays a significant role in all engineering field. It just likes a tool to help us and allow us to solve problem. A lot of formula is discovered with the help of mathematics. Conversely, we cannot get an answer if we only know the formula. Physics is also important. Actually, a lot of chemical things cover physics field. The boundary of this 2 subjects is unclear. So, if a person only know the chemistry, he cannot be a chemical engineer.

Also, in engineering filed, everything we act should be derive from a engineering perspective. In fact, it is impossible that engineers have unlimited resource. Our time, research funds and etc are restricted by different factors. Hence,  the ability of  how to do project more effectively, how to do project with the lowest cost and how to arrange research time optimally is indispensable.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Atmospheric Pressure

No matter where and when you are, the gas always surrounds us. For a really long time, people just thought gas didn't have weight. But the truth is wrong. The gases actually have weight and press on our body all the time. More specifically, how much exactly the pressure are we people hold all the time?

Let us do a simple calculation. The formula of pressure(P): P=F(Force)/A(Contact Area)
Force is the gravity of all the gases and the area is the surface of a object that contact with gases.
Assume that the mass of air in rectangular below is 10000kg, so the Force=mass*gravitational force=
9.8*104 N. And the contact area of this rectangular is 1 m2.
Hence the Pressure=9.8*104/1=9.8*104 N/m2=98kPa
                                                                                                

image from url

So, our body sustain such a huge pressure all the time, but we just didn't realize it. Is that sounds inconceivable?

Searching for more information about atmospheric pressure?
Check out this website!
http://education.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/atmospheric-pressure/