You don't want an amateur on the job when you're in the market for good mechanical engineering services. This isn't a game; you need a mechanical engineer who knows not just the basics, but the tricks of the trade.
But the basics of mechanical engineering are nothing to sneeze at. You need a mechanical engineer who won't look baffled when he needs to make unit conversions, or when you talk about the conservation of momentum.
So, with that in mind, here are five questions to spring on a mechanical engineer during an initial interview.
How would you go about determining the mass of this apple? When asking this question, make sure you have an apple handy. If you only have an orange, make sure you change the wording of your question. You don't want your mechanical engineer thinking you're a weirdo. But even if he does, telling you how to determine mass shouldn't be too hard. Simply place the apple to oscillate between a pair of springs in a weightless environment, and measure the resulting oscillation of the springs. Of course, if you don't have a properly calibrated set of mass-measuring springs, or a weightless environment, you could place the object in a scale designed for measuring mass.
But the basics of mechanical engineering are nothing to sneeze at. You need a mechanical engineer who won't look baffled when he needs to make unit conversions, or when you talk about the conservation of momentum.
So, with that in mind, here are five questions to spring on a mechanical engineer during an initial interview.
How would you go about determining the mass of this apple? When asking this question, make sure you have an apple handy. If you only have an orange, make sure you change the wording of your question. You don't want your mechanical engineer thinking you're a weirdo. But even if he does, telling you how to determine mass shouldn't be too hard. Simply place the apple to oscillate between a pair of springs in a weightless environment, and measure the resulting oscillation of the springs. Of course, if you don't have a properly calibrated set of mass-measuring springs, or a weightless environment, you could place the object in a scale designed for measuring mass.
Is acceleration a scalar quantity or a vector quantity? A good mechanical engineer knows his scalars and vectors. He also knows that acceleration (a change in the velocity of an object) is a vector quantity. That means it has two independent variables: Direction and magnitude. Their quantities muse be depicted on a graph. Scalars only have one dimension, and their quantities can be depicted on a line.
Which variables would you multiply to determine the momentum of a moving object? Momentum is a vector like acceleration, so it comprises two independent variables. Determining momentum means multiplying an object's mass by its speed. So a 1974 Chevy Impala moving at 120 kilometers per hour would have more momentum than a cocker spaniel skidding across a linoleum floor.
What's the standard unit of measurement for energy? Or power? Or planar angular measurement? Good mechanical engineering services require a comprehensive knowledge of units of measurement. Energy is measured in joules. Power, in watts. And planar angular measurement is expressed in radians.
What term would you use to describe the quantitative expression of the average kinetic energy an item contains? The answer is temperature. The higher the temperature of an object, the faster its atoms and molecules are moving around.
