I could imagine giving a high school or later class the task of designing a circular to indexed-circular mechanism as displayed in the Maltese Cross. For one, it's not a ridiculously complex solution but most importantly I imagine it is also possible via other methods. (that I'm trying to not think of, I want to save that for moments of boredom)
I wonder if mechanical engineering courses have a "machines" subject that attempts to introduce students to all sorts of complex mechanisms. I remember studying Machine Design in robotics but that was a terrible subject that just involved specifying engine powers and appropriate chain pitches, it definitely didn't introduce me to any complex mechanisms.
How valuable would it be? My first guess was very. The knowledge of how complex mechanical problems can be solved must help, right? But then I wondered how many engineers are actually out there designing mechanisms to do things these days. Also, most of these designs would have evolved. Surely there couldn't have been a rotary engine eureka moment but a series of steps from some initial, simple design, maybe the only people who need to know how a mechanism works are people designing evolutions to the current ones. For instance, watch makers need to know how the second hand currently works just in case they need to change it slightly but, for the rest of us, we just need to know that it's possible to generate indexed circular movement... somehow.
I am undecided.
"I wonder if mechanical engineering courses have a "machines" subject that attempts to introduce students to all sorts of complex mechanisms."
ReplyDeleteThe answer to this is no, not really. I think the closest we got to anything like that was designing a gearbox in a subject which I cannot remember the name of. I'd hardly call the application of some simple ratios to get an output speed from a given input speed as 'complex'.
That being said, we did learn a fair bit about the internal combustion engine in Thermo 1.