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Everything Is The Same

Welcome to my Coursera class Everything is the Same: Modeling Engineered Systems. I hope you are looking forward to the class!1 One of the most fundamental goals of this class is to train you to synthesize different aspects of engineering skills. In particular, good engineers typically employ a combination of Analytical Reasoning, Computational Skills, and Physical Knowledge to solve problems. The more critical the engineering problem issuch as making sure that the power grid does not experience failuresthe more important it becomes to combine these skills rather than just using one. By Analytical Reasoning, I mean the ability to write down mathematical expressions that represent a physical system. By Computational Skills, Im referring to the ability to use a computer to either evaluate or predict characteristics of a model that are too challenging to solve analytically. And by Physical Knowledgepossibly the most important of the threeI mean the crucial ability of an engineer to think critically about analysis and computations in the context of real, physical knowledge about the world. This last piece can only come from experience, so in this class Im going to rely on examples that you either already have experience with or examples that you can easily reproduce on your own. For those of you that saw the promotional video for this class, you saw the examples of the power grid (a snapshot of which is in Fig.3) and the biomechanics of the hand.

Figure 3: A snapshot of the powergrid animation from the class promotional video. Both of these examples are, of course, very complex to understand. Using physics-based modeling, we can use analysis to come up with a model of the hand and we can use computations to make predictions using that model, seen on the left in Fig. 4. But what happens when we compute something that doesnt make sense, like on the right of Fig. 4? When I look at this numerical simulation of the hand, I certainly dont think that I ever want my hand to behave that way! The reason we know that there is something wrong is because of our physical experience we simply know that a real hand doesnt behave the way this movie suggests, despite the fact that the analysis and computation was all done carefully. This physical knowledge tells us that
If you are reading these notes after listening to the rst lecture, you will notice that the class notes nearly perfectly follow the online lecturesthis is intentional! However, these class notes will have many additional footnotes, like this one, to explain and/or clarify concepts as we go.
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Figure 4: A simulation of the hand from the class promotional video. The simulation on the left looks plausible, but the simulation on the right doe not! there is something wrong with our analysis or our computations or possibly both, and synthesizing physical knowledge into our engineering judgement is a critical aspect of engineering safe, reliable systems. One of the challenging things about physical knowledge is that we all have different experiences, so learning together is critical. Because of that, I really encourage you all to participate in online discussions andif at all possibleI hope you will participate in in-person meetings with other students taking the class. You can do this through organized meetups or other ways of arranging to meet with each other, and we will be hosting a meetup here at Northwestern University every other week while the class runs.2 This social aspect of learning is, I think, critical to becoming uent in modeling engineered systems and, simultaneously, thinking critically about that modeling process. In this class, you will learn different aspects of engineering modeling techniques. You will learn Analytical Reasoning, including the importance of linear models, that differential equations are nearly universal in engineering models, and that mathematical analysis of those models can both help you understand systems better and make your life quite a bit easier. To be prepared for this analytical part of the class, you should have had some pre-calculus; in particular, you should know that position and velocity are related by the time derivativethat the velocity v is the time derivative of the position x.3 Aside from that, you really only need to be prepared to do some algebra. You will learn Computational Skills, including numerical integration methods that you will implement in either MATLAB or Python and the use of vector representationsthese also make your life quite a bit easier. You dont need any experience with programming for this part of the class, but you will need to either purchase a MATLAB license or download Python, which is free. We will provide short tutorials to help you get started and provide sample code to guide you through the class. Lastly, you will learn Physical Knowledge, which will help you internalize when you can use the mathematical modeling tools we are learning, when you cannot, and improve your engineering judgment as a result. Whatever experience you already have will prepare you for this part of the
The meetups will be organized through the Coursera website. If you havent already, you should look at the calculus review we have posted to make sure you are familiar with the ideas that are there.
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class. Throughout the class, you will test the development of these skills by trying out the exercises directly following the lectures and the homework. These will help you investigate the material in more depth and solidify the material presented in the lectures. Combining analytical reasoning, computational reasoning, and physical reasoning is an essential part of being an engineer, and I hope that as you take this class you learn how to synthesize these skills for your future as engineers.

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