On the three-legs and four-legs engineers by Dr.

Airil Sametok


The best way to begin this article is for me to pose the Hamblys paradox
(Hambly, 1985). If one, who is weighing 600N, sits ideally at the centre of
gravity of a stool and if the stool has three legs, the reaction force at each legs
would be of course 200N (note that this is a paradox so all the ideal state of
symmetricality and so on has been taken for granted). Now, if the stool has
four legs, instead of three and by taking into account the reality that there
could never be a smooth surface beneath the legs, at least one of the legs
must be tilting (not in contact with the ground). This leaves three legs
supporting the stool. However, since one of the leg must be diagonal to the
tilted leg, satisfying the static moment equilibrium requires that the force in
this leg is zero. What this amounts to is that there are actually only two legs
supporting the stool thus the reactions in each legs must be 300N instead of
the intuitive 200N. A good engineering sense would have realized all these
and assist the engineer to decide on the construction of three-legs stool
instead of the four-legs stool. He or she should have realized that the
construction of the four-legs stool not only uneconomic but also lacks of
safety. But, the bigger picture to this is the appreciation of the fact that what
seems trivial is not sufficiently necessary intuition is sufficient but technical
intuition is what sufficient and necessary. Thus, from this paradox, I propose
the following conjecture:

i) To be an engineer, one must have a good engineering sense
ii) A good engineering sense, on the other hand, requires a good
understanding of scientific notions
iii) But, science is understood and delivered through mathematics
iv) So, engineers must know, at least, their so called engineering mathematics

Those who shy away from mathematics run the very real risk of becoming
functionally illiterate..Indeed, it is this mastery of mathematics and
science that distinguishes the engineer from the engineering technologist or
technician - (Duderstadt, et. al., 1982, p. 136)

Applying the above quotation to the Humblys paradox, we can address those
who end up with the four-legs stool as mere technicians instead of real
engineers as intuition belongs to the technicians but technical intuition
belongs to the true engineers. Lets quote further from the father of
engineering mechanics:

Wanting to do work on strength of materials, I had to broaden my knowledge
in this area,I needed to go on elasticity theory. I decided to tackle the most
thorough courses in this field, the book by A.E.H Lovein addition I read
Lames book and several chapters from a book by Saint-Venantbut my
mathematical knowledge was insufficient. I read Riemanns book Partial
Differential Equations, in the Hattendorf edition. I learned something about
Fourier series (Timoshenko, 1968, p.83-84).

Also, Karl Terzaghi, another great figure of engineering and widely known as
the father of soil mechanics is quoted as:

To predict the effective stress at any time was the problem Terzaghi had set
out to solve. He understood the physics wellHe had been unable to make
headway on formulating this physical behaviour until he thought to study the
books on the mathematics of heat conduction. This suggested to him
simplifications that led to the derivation of a differential equation completely
analogous to the well-known diffusion equation governing the time dependent
flow of heat in solids- (Goodman, 1999, p.83).

Had not Timoshenko and Terzaghi, the two greatest figures of engineering
turned to mathematics, both of them would ended up as mere technicians
according to both Hamblys paradox and my conjecture. Have they not,
engineers of today would still be in the dark ages, rhetorically speaking.

But, what if one argues we, engineers never despise our mathematics, we
have been learning and applying mathematics our whole life. To such an
argument, I would like to response, time changes everything thus it can
change the status of the three-legs engineer to a four-legs engineer simply if
the former does not keep up with the wind of change. In regard to this, it is
again very tempting to tell another story of Timoshenko.

There I presented my paper on stress concentration.an evaluation of my
paper, prepared by the well-known Harvard Professor G. F. Swain, was read.
The reviewer obviously had extremely limited knowledge of strength of
materials and had never even heard of the high stresses at the edges of
round holes. This did not prevent him, however, from vigorously attacking my
paper, from branding my theoretical research on stress concentration as a
useless fantasy of theoreticians, divorced from any practical application.
(Timoshenko, 1968, p.255).

Based on the above story, the change of the status of the Harvard Professor
G.F. Swain i.e. from a three-legs to the four-legs is made obvious by his
ignorance about the stress concentration. But such a change of status is not
exclusive, anybody even Timoshenko himself (if he still alive today) would
become a four-legs if he fail to keep up with the wind of change.

But there is another important point that deserves a note. Based on the
above, we should learn the danger of ignorance. The four-legs can not only
endanger himself but most likely the three-legs as well especially if the
former has the authority (in this case, it was Professor Swain) . Due to the
ignorance, there is a possibility for the former retarding any novelty of the
latter. Therefore, this calls for open-mindedness from everybody.