@@engineerguyvideo Bill, thank you so much for doing these videos. I've missed them dearly. I'm very much liking this series as I never thought of the engineering method, but what you're saying makes so much sense. Brilliant series. Once again, thank you!
Even in situations where full scientific understanding _IS_ something we have, reality is messy. Just because you fully understand a process doesn't mean it's _easy_ to control it. The machinery to do the job perfectly may be far too expensive to construct, maintain, or train operators to use. So instead we engineer something that's _good enough,_ because it's cheaper than perfection, and we don't actually need perfection.
@@riveradam Yep, even if you have all the data to generate a perfectly correct model of some situation, a slightly less correct model will probably calculate much faster. You don't need a weather model that predicts tomorrow perfectly, but takes a decade to run. By the time it delivers results you could just look at historical data.
I've been studying engineering for 2 years now and at no point was this distinction between engineering and science made. Here I was, thinking of engineering as an application of the scientific method to real world problems. I am both frustrated with myself and amazed at how well these past two episodes have portrayed engineering in a new and much more interesting light.
@@itheuserfirst3186 I think every profession has this to some degree. People in general like to hold themselves in high esteem, thats only occasionally a bad thing. An engineer can be a scientist and use the scientific method to find solutions to their problems. This and the earlier video have not so much altered my view of what an engineer does but rather expanded it.
@@itheuserfirst3186Scientists tend to get tomorrow to explain what an engineer had to do yesterday lol. Seriously though pure and applied both have value.
@@billschlafly4107 Yeah, that's the whole thing with this series. Scientists research things, engineers apply knowledge. Both are valuable resources that improve our lives daily.
Strikes me that a lot of what’s happening in the field of Machine Learning today is not science but engineering. As with the discovery of the formula for what makes turbulent flow, it might take decades more to understand the principles behind it.
Machine learning is a field of computer science. ... Which is a total misnomer. Since it's not about computers - those are the subject of computer engineers, who are electrical engineers. And it's also not a science, since it doesn't reveal fundamental truths of nature, it's a field of engineering. It's data processing engineering.
@@EebstertheGreat Software engineering is about architectural decisions in software design. Computer science is about algorithmic decisions in software design. So we're in the domain of computer science rather than software engineering. Of course computer science is not a science but I've said that before.
@@SianaGearz Computer science is a science sort of like statistics or economics is a science. It's largely formal and theoretical, but I don't think that disqualifies it from science status. I don't think fiddling with an AI is really computer science at all, though.
Directed evolution has been used by humans to develop specific traits in plants, birds, animals etc since before recorded history. Arnold's application to enzymes may have won her a nobel prize, but the basic process has been understood by farmers, dog breeders and mate-seekers for years.
I've always shied away from using the terms "audio engineer" or "computer engineer" to describe the jobs I do, but that's come from a misunderstanding of what an engineer is or what makes an engineer. This new series helps me better understand that I have been using the engineering principal all along and don't need to be a lab-coat wearing scientist to be an engineer. Looks like I've got a new book to buy. Thanks, Bill, and welcome back!
Do you remember a cartoon called Dexter's Lab? His catchphrase was "For Science!" I would shout back "no, what you're doing is *engineering*!" Such is the propagation of misunderstanding in our society.
I just took a class called “scientific computing”, which funnily enough focuses entirely on approximating solutions to real world problems. In the class we learned how to evaluate a bunch of equations like optimization problems (essentially solving for x when an equation is traditionally impossible), and things like approximating the solution to second and n-order systems of differential equations which model different real-life systems. Although the pure math hasn’t quite gotten where it’d need to be in order to do these things, we can approximate a solution to them with nearly perfect accuracy using computing techniques developed long before computers ever were, by mathematicians like Euler and Newton. Thanks for coming back Bill!
Thank you for this. I work in an engineering department where our needs are outpacing our certainty. I have felt guilty pushing for us to catalog our rules of thumb instead of waiting for guidance or more data. I feel much better about it now.
So glad you're back. I got your book on the R101 (both audio and paper) had have referred to it often as an example of using completely non-intuitive solutions for problems (like the use of bovine intestinal tissue to make hydrogen gas bags). Another use of Reynolds number, is that it makes wind tunnel testing of scale models possible. The air flowing over a small model will act quite a bit differently than on a full size aircraft at the same speed, so aero-engineers make sure to test at the same Reynolds number (Rn) to take into account the differences in size, which usually means running the air past at higher speeds. This only works up until the transonic region, though (Rn is different at supersonic speeds), so NASA devised a clever way of increasing Rn other than the speed of the airstream. At their Ames Research Center, they build a pressurized wind tunnel where the whole thing is pumped up to two atmospheres. To have access to the test subjects without venting the whole tunnel (which takes several days to pressurize), they built the world's largest ball valve with the test section being the hole in the center. When they want to access the test subject, they rotate the ball 90° so that the center faces outwards and the rest of the tunnel stays sealed.
I have a degree in electrical engineering and only now I understood engineering is not (just) an application of science. It could predate science. It's hard to get this when they say you need to go through 4 semesters of calculus before starting to study electronics, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand the equationing of a RC circuit...
Fascinating as always. People like Frances Arnold should be household names by now, and our kids should grow up hearing their stories. And once again, thank you very very much for explaining these concepts.
Engineering is just brute forcing nature to my will regardless of how the science works. I'd never thought of the relationship between those two methods like that... Mind blown, thx Bill.
Hi Bill, Glad you're back here, here ! Just a quick side note: 4 min 50 to 5 min 20 is correct, but very confusing, because we normally work with a fixed flow rate (m³/s) and not a fixed velocity (m/s). This means that normally, one increases the diameters to get back in laminar flow, because the increased diameter drops the velocity squared. Doubling the diameter, means dividing the velocity by 4, effectively halving the Reynolds number with a fixed flow rate.
Thanks for analyzing that and noticing the fixed velocity! I was super confused until I saw this comment as I hadn't noticed the fixed velocity instead of the flow rate and like you said was saying in my head doesn't increase in diameter lower the velocity and hence turbulence..
I'm an immortal highlander who has been studying liquid flows since 530BC (Heraclitus stole the whole river thing from me) & doing flow rate calculus for about 250 years, and I learned more from this video than during my entire cursed existence.
Dude, I've been a fan ever since you stepped into the limelight with a a shiny aluminum can. I'm bummed whenever you don't post for a few years, and I'm happy to see you back. I sure wish you'd just become a full time TH-camr.
Being an aerospace engineer working primarily in aerodynamics, it’s one of the most captivating parts of the field knowing you’re working around something that is not fully understood and cannot be perfectly modeled based on equations that are currently impossible to solve.
I have been watching your videos since the first semester of college and on the 20th of this month I will be a chemical engineer like you sir! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
A mathemetician, a physicist, and an engineer are all drinking together in a hotel bar. As the night gets late, first the mathemetician, then the physicist, and then the engineer go to their rooms. As the engineer goes up to the floor they're all staying on, he finds a waste paper bin on fire. He fetches a nearby ice bucket and douses the flames, then goes to bed. The next morning, at breakfast, he asks the physicist if he saw the fire. The physicist says yes, and he went to bed thinking about why a waste paper bin would burn, and how such a fire might have started. As he's saying this, the mathemtician sits down to eat, and the engineer asks him if he also saw the fire. The mathemetician says yes, he saw it. The incredulous engineer asks why he didn't put it out. The mathemetician says "There was a fire and an ice bucket. The solution _obviously_ existed!"
I enjoy your videos, but I don't understand how what Reynolds did was not science. He did various tests and recorded the results to build a theory. Maybe he didn't dig down to find out 'why' and only dealt with the 'how', but I don't believe that forgoes it being a scientific study. As other commenters have mentioned, I'd be curious to know how you define the scientific method.
As a scientist (in training) I agree fully with the ideas in this video. The real world is so incredibly complex that it would be hubris to assume we could ever calculate the world from first principles.
In the early 90s when I was still a child, hearing about enzymes in laundry detergents being the hot new thing. Even as a child I found the idea amazing, how enzymes were integrated in order to "digest" stains, so to speak. That's how I imagined it. It's great to hear the context around this, and learn about Frances Arnold and her excellent method.
What a treat to have not just one, but 3 new Engineerguy videos to enjoy! Thanks for posting these Bill, it's always a treat when a new one comes out :)
This example of enzymes reminds me of Gregory Mendel and how people in early eras somewhat understood inhereted traits without knowing about genes just by planting and raising animals.
Great video! The task of a scientist is to understand the problem to the core. The task of the engineer is to make it work even if the scientists don't fully understand it.
Scientific Method: "The odds of successfully altering an enzyme to work in paint thinner is approximately 200 trillion to 1!" Engineering Method: "Never tell me the odds."
There's simply not a better way to fall asleep than to listen to your podcasts in the bed, accompanied of some low-warm light, your mesmerizing voice and the beautiful thoughts about engineering and some on mind developing of the next little engineering challenge...
Hi Bill! Great videos, but something is irking me here. After watching these two, I still don't understand what an engineering method *IS*. Taking Reynolds example, how did he know, which variables to account for, and which were irrelevant (like temperature etc)? Why should they enter the formula with power of +1 or -1 (and not squared, or cubed etc)? Hard for me to believe it was just a guess, because naively it's counter-intuitive that fast-flowing water will result in turbulence. Indeed, if turbulence is a deviation from a "straight" flow, shouldn't faster, stronger flow encourage dye particles to flow straight with it? Reynolds must have understood something about this phenomenon, he didn't just guess the formula. Same with protein activity. I will grant the idea to test with diluted paint thinner as part of "engineering method", but otherwise the explanation of "employing nature's own ways to find the solution" isn't quite as simple. If have to pass a narrow funnel in the solution space, you're out of luck. Guessing a single mutation will take 19*275=5225 tries. If two or more simultaneous mutations are required, it becomes completely impractical. Nature, on the other hand, employs evolution concurrently in billions and billions of organisms, and thus is able to explore the solution space much more thoroughly. It's hard to believe that Arnold was just lucky to get something working in her first 20 (or however few) tries. There must have been more to it, e.g. understanding how solvent changes protein's conformation or interferes with reaction center configuration. But then I start thinking, wait, isn't it the same as a scientific method? Isolating crucial factors and throwing away everything else to build a model, that's how science works, isn't it? Sorry for a wall of text!
The main distinction he's making is that the scientific method seeks to understand the mechanisms behind how something works, while the engineering method seeks to use those mechanisms to solve problems but without the need to understand how they intrinsically work. Like with the enzymes, sciences isn't really sure why they work, while engineering isn't too concerned with the why but only with the way in which they can be applied.
At least for the Reynold's Number you can look up his exact paper where he broke down how he figured out that particular formula with the reasoning behind each part: "An experimental investigation of the circumstances which determine whether the motion of water shall be direct or sinuous, and of the law of resistance in parallel channels"
For any science to make the leap from hypothesis to theory a scientist will always be faced with the practical 'real world problems' of a suitable experiment, which in most cases necessitates the involvement of engineering and in many of those cases professional engineers. Outside of the mathematics in science, and rote application in engineering, the two areas are inextricably linked. E.g. Without context I would have thought Reynolds experiment, equation and numbers _were_ science. It may not get to deeper aspects, but most laws of physics (which this is similar to) also dont. It may not be of the highest precision, but all science is only ever proven within error bars. Ultimately his experiment seems indistinguishable from many scientific experiments going on the world over; It seems that whether this is engineering or science is primarily depending on whether the person looking at it is an engineer or a scientist.
I agree that Reynolds' experiment is much closer to science than engineering. As alluded to in the reply below by Daniel Horton, the turbulent transition mentioned above is for the limited case for flow in a smooth tube. I think a different fluid mechanics example would have been more apropos to the series, perhaps dealing with sailing ships. But fluid mechanics is a field that has been rather difficult to apply using only heuristics.
@@dhorto27 The Reynolds number is effectively the ratio of the inertia stresses to the viscous stresses in the flow. Turbulent flow (high Re) is where the inertia stresses (kinetic energy) dominate over the friction/viscous stresses. So there is a physical meaning, though not a precise physical law.
I saw your aluminum can video so so many years ago. It's good to see your videos again, you make it really simple for any of us to understand. Thank you engineering guy.
I am in the mentoring phase to other engineers where I work.. I keep your clear, direct and professional presentation methods in mind whenever we talk. Thank you for sharing!
My mind is blown. Should be shown to intelligent design espousers who doubt the efficacy of evolution. Looking forward to watching all of engineerguy's fantastic videos.
Holy cow! It's good to see you're uploading again! I'm an Engineer now! Thank you, I used to watch your videos when I was working retail and they gave me hope.
I watched the steam turbine video first, then the magnetron video, then this video. I haven't watched this video's immediate predassesor yet. Even watching these out of order they still each teach an important lesson.
Love the video!!! You made the wonderful point that engineering can still happen in the scientific unknown, but I’d like to point out that it doesn’t exclusively have to happen in the unknown. The cutting edge will often be in the unknown but there are a near infinite number of problems that need solving, many of which no one has thought to solve or no one has thought to come up with the creative solution that you have. There’s a bunch of low hanging fruit is what I’m saying.
The story about Frances Arnold is amazing. What a perfect example that encapsulates the way in which we can manipulate real world scientific principles (in her case, evolution) and harness the end result w/o having any clue as to how it works. It’s like discovering fire w/o knowing how matter is being transformed into energy. We’ve been using fire for thousand of years, and yet it’s only been relatively recently where we could observe and understand it scientifically. We’ve built tools to use and manipulate fire in more efficient ways, or used materials that have allowed us to create fire more easily, effectively and in new technologies (think of wood, coal, pitch, crude oil, etc.).
I had learned about Reynolds formula in fluid mechanics chapter, but was not knowing about how intelligently he formulated it through this experiment. Thank you Bill Sir.😊
You tube must have been listening to me this morning when I was saying I can do x, y and z but would never have made an engineer. And here up pops your channel. And I find out ive been doing basic engineering, planning and digging, fencing and generally making stuff in my family's kitchen garden for years. My dad and sisters and I would use string, marked sticks, eye, to do all sorts of little jobs. Dad used to like to check our fence posts etc when we'd hammered them into the ground with a plumb bob. And say with no trace of irony, 'bob on' if it was perpendicular. I still would never have come up with the idea of cogs though.
This is a great video, and combined with the next video teach a very important lesson. Much of our current understanding of medicine and biology is due to outcome based experiments, not an understanding of first principals. I wanted to engineer microbes to do whatever task we needed when I started my PhD, and thus worked with a lot of labs that worked on applied microbiology. I took a of classes on structural biology and gene editing, hoping to get a good understanding of how to use the sequence and structure of gene networks and proteins to alter them for use. Turns out everyone was just using large directed evolution projects to see what would stick to the wall. This is the same way we test medicine. We have huge libraries where we have something we know works, and we alter it in thousands of ways and screen them, then advance what works. Unfortunately at the end of the day, we usually only have guesses about what actually happened to improve the medicine, and then we find out about other unintended side effects a few years after that (see the history of coxibs for one example). Luckily, knowing how something works isn't necessary to use it (think about your computer or phone). Luckly, engineering allows us to make biology do things, without much of an understanding of how the system works.
thanks for explaining where exactly the Reynolds number comes from. It was basically explained to me as just the unit-less number you use. And being a unit-less number, it's magic and great!
Hi Bill! Long time fan of your channel, so glad to see you back!! One note: I suspect some viewers might be confused when you use the term "scientific method," and it might be worthwhile in your next video to define what you are referring to when you use that term (perhaps this is already planned). As I'm sure you know, the typical "scientific method" is a cyclical process of testing and refining hypotheses through experimentation, which is a process that can presumably be applied to any sort of discovery - including within engineering. I'm not sure that's the scientific method you are intending to illustrate in contrast with your "engineering method," so it might be good to clearly define the concept and how you are using it for this comparison. You could draw the distinction that the scientific method is purely about *observations* of causal realities, as opposed to engineering's practical results; or maybe explain that the "scientific method" you're talking about is not the cyclical process of hypothesis and experimentation itself, but rather the obsession with purely physical, chemical, or mathematical realities. I want you to know I do agree with your conclusions in these videos - an engineer can find a solution without necessarily knowing all the gritty "scientific" details - but in arguments of definition, it's first important to clearly set up the terms being used on either side to prevent confusion. Wish you the best luck on all your content moving forward, can't wait to see what's next!!!
(Crashes through door, stumbles into room). Did someone say LAMINAR FLOW?
😂 glad you heard and came
I was scrolling through the comments just to see if you were going to chime in.
And here you are. 😁
Certified Destin moment
OH YEAH! Got your smooth FLOW right here!
Destin!
Ah. The David Attenborough of the engineering world. Could listen to you for hours. 😊
That's quite the compliment ... and I hope I can work into my 90s!
@@engineerguyvideo Bill, thank you so much for doing these videos. I've missed them dearly. I'm very much liking this series as I never thought of the engineering method, but what you're saying makes so much sense. Brilliant series. Once again, thank you!
@@engineerguyvideo Bill you have a tone and cadence of voice that just keeps your attention.
I was in public radio for this … did 200 pieces … in radio voice and words are all you have!
@@engineerguyvideo We are forever grateful for your contributions ❤
Even in situations where full scientific understanding _IS_ something we have, reality is messy. Just because you fully understand a process doesn't mean it's _easy_ to control it. The machinery to do the job perfectly may be far too expensive to construct, maintain, or train operators to use. So instead we engineer something that's _good enough,_ because it's cheaper than perfection, and we don't actually need perfection.
Spot on
This reminds me of "all models are wrong, but some are useful" (George Box).
@@riveradam Yep, even if you have all the data to generate a perfectly correct model of some situation, a slightly less correct model will probably calculate much faster. You don't need a weather model that predicts tomorrow perfectly, but takes a decade to run. By the time it delivers results you could just look at historical data.
Chase perfection, achieve excellence
@@AverageAlien Just make sure you're not so busy chasing perfection that you don't notice you've achieved excellence.
I've been studying engineering for 2 years now and at no point was this distinction between engineering and science made.
Here I was, thinking of engineering as an application of the scientific method to real world problems. I am both frustrated with myself and amazed at how well these past two episodes have portrayed engineering in a new and much more interesting light.
Engineers tend to overvalue their knowledge and think they are scientists.
@@itheuserfirst3186 I think every profession has this to some degree. People in general like to hold themselves in high esteem, thats only occasionally a bad thing.
An engineer can be a scientist and use the scientific method to find solutions to their problems. This and the earlier video have not so much altered my view of what an engineer does but rather expanded it.
@@itheuserfirst3186Scientists tend to get tomorrow to explain what an engineer had to do yesterday lol. Seriously though pure and applied both have value.
Science is the endeavor to understand reality using the scientific method. Engineering is the endeavor to apply that knowledge to improve life.
@@billschlafly4107 Yeah, that's the whole thing with this series. Scientists research things, engineers apply knowledge. Both are valuable resources that improve our lives daily.
glad you found time to make more videos. each one of your episodes is a true joy to watch and learn from.
Strikes me that a lot of what’s happening in the field of Machine Learning today is not science but engineering. As with the discovery of the formula for what makes turbulent flow, it might take decades more to understand the principles behind it.
I was struck by that similarity as well. No need to discover every possibility, just keep expanding the ones that work best.
Machine learning is a field of computer science.
... Which is a total misnomer. Since it's not about computers - those are the subject of computer engineers, who are electrical engineers. And it's also not a science, since it doesn't reveal fundamental truths of nature, it's a field of engineering. It's data processing engineering.
Isn't this what "software engineering" is supposed to be about?
@@EebstertheGreat Software engineering is about architectural decisions in software design. Computer science is about algorithmic decisions in software design. So we're in the domain of computer science rather than software engineering. Of course computer science is not a science but I've said that before.
@@SianaGearz Computer science is a science sort of like statistics or economics is a science. It's largely formal and theoretical, but I don't think that disqualifies it from science status.
I don't think fiddling with an AI is really computer science at all, though.
Directed evolution has been used by humans to develop specific traits in plants, birds, animals etc since before recorded history. Arnold's application to enzymes may have won her a nobel prize, but the basic process has been understood by farmers, dog breeders and mate-seekers for years.
I've always shied away from using the terms "audio engineer" or "computer engineer" to describe the jobs I do, but that's come from a misunderstanding of what an engineer is or what makes an engineer. This new series helps me better understand that I have been using the engineering principal all along and don't need to be a lab-coat wearing scientist to be an engineer. Looks like I've got a new book to buy. Thanks, Bill, and welcome back!
Do you remember a cartoon called Dexter's Lab? His catchphrase was "For Science!" I would shout back "no, what you're doing is *engineering*!" Such is the propagation of misunderstanding in our society.
I just took a class called “scientific computing”, which funnily enough focuses entirely on approximating solutions to real world problems. In the class we learned how to evaluate a bunch of equations like optimization problems (essentially solving for x when an equation is traditionally impossible), and things like approximating the solution to second and n-order systems of differential equations which model different real-life systems. Although the pure math hasn’t quite gotten where it’d need to be in order to do these things, we can approximate a solution to them with nearly perfect accuracy using computing techniques developed long before computers ever were, by mathematicians like Euler and Newton. Thanks for coming back Bill!
Thank you for this. I work in an engineering department where our needs are outpacing our certainty. I have felt guilty pushing for us to catalog our rules of thumb instead of waiting for guidance or more data. I feel much better about it now.
Very clear speaker! Very talented, and thank you for the post/content.
So glad you're back. I got your book on the R101 (both audio and paper) had have referred to it often as an example of using completely non-intuitive solutions for problems (like the use of bovine intestinal tissue to make hydrogen gas bags).
Another use of Reynolds number, is that it makes wind tunnel testing of scale models possible. The air flowing over a small model will act quite a bit differently than on a full size aircraft at the same speed, so aero-engineers make sure to test at the same Reynolds number (Rn) to take into account the differences in size, which usually means running the air past at higher speeds.
This only works up until the transonic region, though (Rn is different at supersonic speeds), so NASA devised a clever way of increasing Rn other than the speed of the airstream. At their Ames Research Center, they build a pressurized wind tunnel where the whole thing is pumped up to two atmospheres. To have access to the test subjects without venting the whole tunnel (which takes several days to pressurize), they built the world's largest ball valve with the test section being the hole in the center. When they want to access the test subject, they rotate the ball 90° so that the center faces outwards and the rest of the tunnel stays sealed.
I'm so happy that you're back making videos again. Excited to watch more!
I have a degree in electrical engineering and only now I understood engineering is not (just) an application of science. It could predate science. It's hard to get this when they say you need to go through 4 semesters of calculus before starting to study electronics, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to understand the equationing of a RC circuit...
Fascinating as always. People like Frances Arnold should be household names by now, and our kids should grow up hearing their stories. And once again, thank you very very much for explaining these concepts.
Engineering is just brute forcing nature to my will regardless of how the science works. I'd never thought of the relationship between those two methods like that... Mind blown, thx Bill.
I'm so happy you're back!!
Hi Bill, Glad you're back here, here !
Just a quick side note: 4 min 50 to 5 min 20 is correct, but very confusing, because we normally work with a fixed flow rate (m³/s) and not a fixed velocity (m/s). This means that normally, one increases the diameters to get back in laminar flow, because the increased diameter drops the velocity squared. Doubling the diameter, means dividing the velocity by 4, effectively halving the Reynolds number with a fixed flow rate.
Thanks for analyzing that and noticing the fixed velocity! I was super confused until I saw this comment as I hadn't noticed the fixed velocity instead of the flow rate and like you said was saying in my head doesn't increase in diameter lower the velocity and hence turbulence..
Thank you, that was what was bordering me, did not think of a fixed v...
(Does nobody think of the poor pump?!)
Salute to this guy.... TheEngineerGuy
I'm an immortal highlander who has been studying liquid flows since 530BC (Heraclitus stole the whole river thing from me) & doing flow rate calculus for about 250 years, and I learned more from this video than during my entire cursed existence.
I ❤ your channel and presenting style! I noticed the slower pace here too, an improvement for me - easier to digest. Thank you sir.
Dude, I've been a fan ever since you stepped into the limelight with a a shiny aluminum can. I'm bummed whenever you don't post for a few years, and I'm happy to see you back. I sure wish you'd just become a full time TH-camr.
I will always be slow but I’d like to be continuous!
Wonderfull to see you again here on yt!
Bill, you're by far my favorite educational channel on youtube. Happy to have you back. Cheers!
Being an aerospace engineer working primarily in aerodynamics, it’s one of the most captivating parts of the field knowing you’re working around something that is not fully understood and cannot be perfectly modeled based on equations that are currently impossible to solve.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR RETURN! I wish I could convey properly in a such a comment my gratitude for the work you do here.
I have missed this channel so much. Glad to see more content from you, Bill!
I have been watching your videos since the first semester of college and on the 20th of this month I will be a chemical engineer like you sir! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Wait. This is daily series!?!?
Feels like Christmast!
A mathemetician, a physicist, and an engineer are all drinking together in a hotel bar. As the night gets late, first the mathemetician, then the physicist, and then the engineer go to their rooms.
As the engineer goes up to the floor they're all staying on, he finds a waste paper bin on fire. He fetches a nearby ice bucket and douses the flames, then goes to bed.
The next morning, at breakfast, he asks the physicist if he saw the fire. The physicist says yes, and he went to bed thinking about why a waste paper bin would burn, and how such a fire might have started.
As he's saying this, the mathemtician sits down to eat, and the engineer asks him if he also saw the fire. The mathemetician says yes, he saw it. The incredulous engineer asks why he didn't put it out.
The mathemetician says "There was a fire and an ice bucket. The solution _obviously_ existed!"
I enjoy your videos, but I don't understand how what Reynolds did was not science. He did various tests and recorded the results to build a theory. Maybe he didn't dig down to find out 'why' and only dealt with the 'how', but I don't believe that forgoes it being a scientific study. As other commenters have mentioned, I'd be curious to know how you define the scientific method.
As a scientist (in training) I agree fully with the ideas in this video. The real world is so incredibly complex that it would be hubris to assume we could ever calculate the world from first principles.
This video is excellent! A 12 minute masterclass!!! Thanks, Professor!
Wait what? another one, what a treat!
In the early 90s when I was still a child, hearing about enzymes in laundry detergents being the hot new thing. Even as a child I found the idea amazing, how enzymes were integrated in order to "digest" stains, so to speak. That's how I imagined it. It's great to hear the context around this, and learn about Frances Arnold and her excellent method.
What a treat to have not just one, but 3 new Engineerguy videos to enjoy! Thanks for posting these Bill, it's always a treat when a new one comes out :)
This example of enzymes reminds me of Gregory Mendel and how people in early eras somewhat understood inhereted traits without knowing about genes just by planting and raising animals.
Wow, he's back. Awesome👍
THE RETURN OF THE KING
Welcome back! You have been missed! I hope all is well with you and yours.
Great video! The task of a scientist is to understand the problem to the core. The task of the engineer is to make it work even if the scientists don't fully understand it.
He is BACK!
Scientific Method: "The odds of successfully altering an enzyme to work in paint thinner is approximately 200 trillion to 1!"
Engineering Method: "Never tell me the odds."
Great series so far - fascinating to see the engineering method conceived as being so independent from the scientific method - quite convincing
There's simply not a better way to fall asleep than to listen to your podcasts in the bed, accompanied of some low-warm light, your mesmerizing voice and the beautiful thoughts about engineering and some on mind developing of the next little engineering challenge...
SmarterEveryday: Laminar flow
Veritasium: Turbulent flow
EngineerGuy: I'm back
Hi Bill!
Great videos, but something is irking me here. After watching these two, I still don't understand what an engineering method *IS*. Taking Reynolds example, how did he know, which variables to account for, and which were irrelevant (like temperature etc)? Why should they enter the formula with power of +1 or -1 (and not squared, or cubed etc)? Hard for me to believe it was just a guess, because naively it's counter-intuitive that fast-flowing water will result in turbulence. Indeed, if turbulence is a deviation from a "straight" flow, shouldn't faster, stronger flow encourage dye particles to flow straight with it? Reynolds must have understood something about this phenomenon, he didn't just guess the formula.
Same with protein activity. I will grant the idea to test with diluted paint thinner as part of "engineering method", but otherwise the explanation of "employing nature's own ways to find the solution" isn't quite as simple. If have to pass a narrow funnel in the solution space, you're out of luck. Guessing a single mutation will take 19*275=5225 tries. If two or more simultaneous mutations are required, it becomes completely impractical. Nature, on the other hand, employs evolution concurrently in billions and billions of organisms, and thus is able to explore the solution space much more thoroughly. It's hard to believe that Arnold was just lucky to get something working in her first 20 (or however few) tries. There must have been more to it, e.g. understanding how solvent changes protein's conformation or interferes with reaction center configuration. But then I start thinking, wait, isn't it the same as a scientific method? Isolating crucial factors and throwing away everything else to build a model, that's how science works, isn't it?
Sorry for a wall of text!
The main distinction he's making is that the scientific method seeks to understand the mechanisms behind how something works, while the engineering method seeks to use those mechanisms to solve problems but without the need to understand how they intrinsically work.
Like with the enzymes, sciences isn't really sure why they work, while engineering isn't too concerned with the why but only with the way in which they can be applied.
At least for the Reynold's Number you can look up his exact paper where he broke down how he figured out that particular formula with the reasoning behind each part:
"An experimental investigation of the circumstances which determine whether the motion of water shall be direct or sinuous, and of the law of resistance in parallel channels"
For any science to make the leap from hypothesis to theory a scientist will always be faced with the practical 'real world problems' of a suitable experiment, which in most cases necessitates the involvement of engineering and in many of those cases professional engineers. Outside of the mathematics in science, and rote application in engineering, the two areas are inextricably linked.
E.g. Without context I would have thought Reynolds experiment, equation and numbers _were_ science. It may not get to deeper aspects, but most laws of physics (which this is similar to) also dont. It may not be of the highest precision, but all science is only ever proven within error bars. Ultimately his experiment seems indistinguishable from many scientific experiments going on the world over; It seems that whether this is engineering or science is primarily depending on whether the person looking at it is an engineer or a scientist.
I agree that Reynolds' experiment is much closer to science than engineering. As alluded to in the reply below by Daniel Horton, the turbulent transition mentioned above is for the limited case for flow in a smooth tube. I think a different fluid mechanics example would have been more apropos to the series, perhaps dealing with sailing ships. But fluid mechanics is a field that has been rather difficult to apply using only heuristics.
@@dhorto27 The Reynolds number is effectively the ratio of the inertia stresses to the viscous stresses in the flow. Turbulent flow (high Re) is where the inertia stresses (kinetic energy) dominate over the friction/viscous stresses. So there is a physical meaning, though not a precise physical law.
The world missed you! Thx for every video.
So glad to see you back on TH-cam!!! Smiles all around!
i love the parallels you could easily draw between the second half of this video and the current stage in machine learning evolution.
I was not expecti g this so soon after the last one
I saw your aluminum can video so so many years ago. It's good to see your videos again, you make it really simple for any of us to understand. Thank you engineering guy.
And in this video, the transition from fluid mechanics to chemistry is still uncertain 🙂
I am in the mentoring phase to other engineers where I work.. I keep your clear, direct and professional presentation methods in mind whenever we talk. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for your kind words
Spread out those videos! Haven't even had time to watch the one from yesterday!
My mind is blown. Should be shown to intelligent design espousers who doubt the efficacy of evolution. Looking forward to watching all of engineerguy's fantastic videos.
Seems like so many pharmaceuticals in use today say "Mechanism of Action: unknown". You've just explained that for me. THANK YOU.
So glad to see there is an audiobook, can't wait to listen on a long drive
It’s not read by me …
Engineering and science aid one another, each pushing the boundaries of the other and inspiring new knowledge, inventions, and techniques
just a fun little fact, so it's estimated that the number of atoms in the observable universe is about 10 to the 81st. so 20 to the 270 is uh, yeah.
This channel is amazing.
No one has shown that turbulent flow transition so clearly
Well glad you are back and giving some real purpose to TH-cam. Thanks Bill!!
Other video?! SO SOON!!?! This is a real treat!
Glad to see you back Bill, congratulations for another great video!
Thank you
love how ur recent videos have focused on the science vs engineering misconception of being the same.
Been waiting for a new one for a while
I wish you were my teacher at school! You are so easy to follow and understand.
Thanks for the amazing content.
Thanks for making subtitles!
Holy cow! It's good to see you're uploading again! I'm an Engineer now! Thank you, I used to watch your videos when I was working retail and they gave me hope.
I watched the steam turbine video first, then the magnetron video, then this video.
I haven't watched this video's immediate predassesor yet.
Even watching these out of order they still each teach an important lesson.
Really great series. As an engineer with a physics degree, I couldn't agree more.
SO GLAD this channel is back!
Love the video!!! You made the wonderful point that engineering can still happen in the scientific unknown, but I’d like to point out that it doesn’t exclusively have to happen in the unknown. The cutting edge will often be in the unknown but there are a near infinite number of problems that need solving, many of which no one has thought to solve or no one has thought to come up with the creative solution that you have. There’s a bunch of low hanging fruit is what I’m saying.
Excited to see new videos on the channel. These videos embody in educational content a crowning feature of quality engineering: impeccable simplicity.
The GOAT is back! Gonna have to come check this out after I get off of work.
The story about Frances Arnold is amazing. What a perfect example that encapsulates the way in which we can manipulate real world scientific principles (in her case, evolution) and harness the end result w/o having any clue as to how it works. It’s like discovering fire w/o knowing how matter is being transformed into energy. We’ve been using fire for thousand of years, and yet it’s only been relatively recently where we could observe and understand it scientifically. We’ve built tools to use and manipulate fire in more efficient ways, or used materials that have allowed us to create fire more easily, effectively and in new technologies (think of wood, coal, pitch, crude oil, etc.).
The soothing voice of Bill and learning at the same time.
This video single handility reignited my passion for engineering. Thank you.
I had learned about Reynolds formula in fluid mechanics chapter, but was not knowing about how intelligently he formulated it through this experiment. Thank you Bill Sir.😊
It’s about time you posted again! I have been waiting for years! Your videos are some of the best!
Absolutely lovely as always, Bill! Fascinating perspective
I’ve had a bad day. seeing this was posted has fixed that almost immediately.
These feel like coming back home. Reading the book now and loving it!
Awesome video, I was excited to find a video for the second day in a row - looking forward to the next ones too!
yay! you're back. Very excited!!!
Fascinating! Clear description of the difference between engineering and scientific endeavour, plus great delivery
You tube must have been listening to me this morning when I was saying I can do x, y and z but would never have made an engineer. And here up pops your channel. And I find out ive been doing basic engineering, planning and digging, fencing and generally making stuff in my family's kitchen garden for years. My dad and sisters and I would use string, marked sticks, eye, to do all sorts of little jobs. Dad used to like to check our fence posts etc when we'd hammered them into the ground with a plumb bob. And say with no trace of irony, 'bob on' if it was perpendicular.
I still would never have come up with the idea of cogs though.
This is a great video, and combined with the next video teach a very important lesson. Much of our current understanding of medicine and biology is due to outcome based experiments, not an understanding of first principals. I wanted to engineer microbes to do whatever task we needed when I started my PhD, and thus worked with a lot of labs that worked on applied microbiology. I took a of classes on structural biology and gene editing, hoping to get a good understanding of how to use the sequence and structure of gene networks and proteins to alter them for use. Turns out everyone was just using large directed evolution projects to see what would stick to the wall. This is the same way we test medicine. We have huge libraries where we have something we know works, and we alter it in thousands of ways and screen them, then advance what works.
Unfortunately at the end of the day, we usually only have guesses about what actually happened to improve the medicine, and then we find out about other unintended side effects a few years after that (see the history of coxibs for one example). Luckily, knowing how something works isn't necessary to use it (think about your computer or phone). Luckly, engineering allows us to make biology do things, without much of an understanding of how the system works.
Glad you're back Bill.
I used to think engineering was just applied physics, but you've shown me otherwise. And I appreciate that. - Love your videos!
Best Engineering/science learning channel again
thanks for explaining where exactly the Reynolds number comes from. It was basically explained to me as just the unit-less number you use. And being a unit-less number, it's magic and great!
Holy moly! So glad you are back!!!
Hi Bill! Long time fan of your channel, so glad to see you back!!
One note: I suspect some viewers might be confused when you use the term "scientific method," and it might be worthwhile in your next video to define what you are referring to when you use that term (perhaps this is already planned). As I'm sure you know, the typical "scientific method" is a cyclical process of testing and refining hypotheses through experimentation, which is a process that can presumably be applied to any sort of discovery - including within engineering. I'm not sure that's the scientific method you are intending to illustrate in contrast with your "engineering method," so it might be good to clearly define the concept and how you are using it for this comparison. You could draw the distinction that the scientific method is purely about *observations* of causal realities, as opposed to engineering's practical results; or maybe explain that the "scientific method" you're talking about is not the cyclical process of hypothesis and experimentation itself, but rather the obsession with purely physical, chemical, or mathematical realities. I want you to know I do agree with your conclusions in these videos - an engineer can find a solution without necessarily knowing all the gritty "scientific" details - but in arguments of definition, it's first important to clearly set up the terms being used on either side to prevent confusion.
Wish you the best luck on all your content moving forward, can't wait to see what's next!!!
Beautiful piece!! Best of the bests. Thank you, Professor Hammack!! I learned something today.
Thank you for methodically engineering new pathways for our thoughts
That was quick. 2 videos back to back! Awesome. Happy me now
Excellent presentation and a worthy subject. Thank you.
So glad to have you back❤️