Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
This interesting tidbit, from Mechanics by John C. Slater and Nathaniel Frank (both of whom taught at MIT): The existence of fundamental laws underlying the behavior or nature has furnished the guiding principle of natural science ever since. It has also formed the basis of most modern thought in philosophy, political science, economics and the …
Continue reading "The Danger of Oversimplifying Extrapolation from the Sciences"
It's time to mark another anniversary here, in this case the thirty-fifth one of my family business' signing our first contract with the Petroleum Corporation of the People's Republic of China for the sale of pile driving equipment. That may not seem like much today but then we were selling into an economy that was …
Long-time readers of this blog will recall my brief history of the French engineer Barré de Saint-Venant.  I recently gave a more complete treatment of the topic at the Holy Spirit, Science, and Theological Education Conference at Regent University.  You can download the paper here.
The purpose of this project is to examine the Lax-Wendroff scheme to solve the convection (or one-way wave) equation and to determine its consistency, convergence and stability. Overview of Taylor Series Expansions The case examined utilized a Taylor Series expansion, so some explanation common to both is in order. The general expression for a Taylor …
This little tidbit emerged from Geo-Strata's interview with Dr. J. Michael Duncan of Virginia Tech, justifiably characterised as a legend in his (and my) profession: Q. What was it like at Berkeley during the '60's? "Berkeley in the '60's" is typically required reading in U.S. history classes now. A. (Laughs). I'm surprised you ask this …
When starting out on a major research project in science or engineering, the first thing to do is to go through "the literature" (which usually means the peer-reviewed body of articles and published books, although internet stuff is becoming increasingly important) and try to figure out the current "state of the science" (we used to …
Continue reading "The Problem with "Going Dark" in the Technical Literature"
The Holy Father has once again ambushed American Catholics with Laudato Si, his encyclical on the environment and global warming. As was the case with his earlier document on social teaching, we should not be too surprised; there is a great deal of precedent for this kind of thinking. As R.R. Reno points out: In …
A new monograph for my geotechnical readers. Â You can download it here. Â Abstract is as follows: Many undergraduate civil engineering students find their required geotechnical courses strange. They enter into a new world of soil classifications, granular mechanics and porous materials, and a raft of empirical formulae. There seems to be little connection between the …
Continue reading "Stresses and Strains in Soils: Elastic and Plastic"
In the March/April 2013 issue of GeoStrata, the official publication of the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the following was noted in its review of geotechnical (soil mechanics and foundations) education: The national trend of falling credit requirements for the attainment of a bachelor's degree was cited by many as a challenge facing geotechnical …
Continue reading "The Country Where Merit is Run Down, Part II: The STEM Curriculum Dilemma"
Which I must explain for the benefit of my university during the recent American Society of Civil Engineers Southeast Regional student competition:
Positive Infinity 