• Question: what maths is involved in engineering?

    Asked by branflakes123 to Al, Emma, Ivanka, James, Omar on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by missalice.
    • Photo: James Vokes

      James Vokes answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      In software engineering I use a lot of arrays and matrices. I also use a lot of operators called “bitwise” operators which can play around with numbers because in the machine they’re all 1s and 0s.

    • Photo: Al Bartlett

      Al Bartlett answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Hello Branflakes123,

      Maths is in every field of engineering possible – In my field, aircraft engineering, maths is used a great deal to calculate temperature, speeds, pressures etc – It could be to calculate how much fuel an engine uses in an hour or calculating the distances between two places and working out the flight time at different speeds – it can be comlicated sometimes but other times its as easy as adding some numbers together!

      Hope this helps

    • Photo: Omar Mustufvi

      Omar Mustufvi answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      A lot of the software programmes we use as engineers have a lot of maths ‘built-in’ to them, which means we are quite lucky in that we don’t actually have to deal with the heavy duty maths a lot of the time. But it is useful in general to be able to deal with facts and figures and to understand how different engineering metrics are measured and compared with each other.

    • Photo: Emma Bould

      Emma Bould answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      I don’t use lots of complicated maths very often in my job (which is good I think!) but occasionally I have to remember something I did at school or university and use it.

      Thinking about what I use most often….. probably Algebra (rearranging equations is a given!) Fractions, Percentages, Statistics. I also do quite a lot of producing and analysing graphs to help me figure out how my equipment is performing

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