Category: PPTtopics

The Video Links Technical PPT presentation provides you with mostly YouTube video links which illustrate lots of equipment and systems encountered by mechanical engineers in their careers. Lots of the videos are down-right fun to watch, and can be educational as well. It’s a way to see “what does it look like”, going beyond textbook material.

General Colin Powell was a tremendous leader, both in the military and in government service. He leaves a legacy and inspires the best from all who are interested in his ideas. This PPT presentation is a summary of one of his books.

If you are taking thermodynamics, or if you are working in industry, you’ll need to learn how to interpolate between values in tables. This PPT presentation How to Interpolate gives you the methods for interpolating, coupled with helping you see if your result makes good common sense.  See Appendix B for specific examples for thermodynamics property evaluations requiring interpolation.

A daunting process path in thermodynamics is: PV^k = constant, where k is a number between 0 and 2. This PPT presentation Polytropic Process Notes gives you tips on how to work with performing integrals on polytropic processes, and why it’s so important that you understand what you’re doing.

This PPT presentation summarizes the graph that many people think was the “greatest graph ever made” because it communicated so much information in such a small space. And you’ll learn a little history as well. The graph was created by a young engineer working for Napolean on his march to and from Moscow during the war of 1812. It’s worth a look into this intriguing story.

Download this PPT presentation to learn how to work with the “general” statement of the first law of thermodynamics (energy balance) for an open system. When an open system (control volume) process is NOT steady state, steady flow, then you must start with the general statement of the first law and include the dE/dt (rate of change of the control volume) term.

This is a PPT summary of a “special case” of water (modeled as an incompressible fluid) flowing through a converging nozzle. The best real-world example of this situation is the nozzle of a fire hose. As a thermodynamics student, you will have the skill to determine the pressure loss (psi) across the nozzle for a known flow (lbm/hr).

This PPT presentation uses “cooking with steam” to illustrate the different phases of water and steam as you go from tap water all the way to boiling all the water out of your steam pot on the stove. It’s a way to relate your textbook material to a real-world situation you’ve observed time-and-time again.

Most young engineers have a tough time grasping the difference between work and power. Work can be visualized as the act of lifting a weight from one position to a higher position (units: ft-lbf or N-m). Power is the RATE at which work is being done (units: ft-lbf/sec or hp or N-m/sec or kW). Even experienced engineers get these confused, much to their discredit. Check out this PPT presentation where work and power are compared and constrasted.

You must quickly understand the difference between (U and u) and (H and h). Many students have a tough time knowing “when do I use u” and “when do I use h”? Check out this PPT presentation where this is explained and example problems are provided. Hint: Practicing engineers call both U and u “internal energy” and H and h “enthalpy” because of using them so much. That’s something that young engineers must pick up quickly and understand the differences.