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Teaching Mathematics to EngineeringStudents*
S. S. SAZHIN
School of Engineering, University of Brighton, Cockcroft Building, Moulsecoomb, Brighton BN2 4GL, UK 
Some new ideas in teaching mathematics to engineering students and the implementation of theseideas into the teaching of mechanical engineering students at Brighton University are discussed.The importance of explaining to the students why knowledge of mathematics is essential for their future practical work is emphasized. Mathematics is a language for expressing physical, chemical and engineering laws and general equations should be illustrated by practical numerical examples inorder to transfer the surface/atomistic approach to learning to the deep/holistic one. Necessarysteps in the manipulation of algebraic equations should be highlighted. Formal lecturers should besupplemented by compulsory reading, handouts, elements of small group teaching and formativeassessment. The analysis of self-assessment forms completed by students show that they learn physical concepts much easier than mathematical concepts.
INTRODUCTION
AN ENGINEERING student once said, `Mathe-matics is when numbers are put into equations'.This statement obviously contains an element of truth. One cannot expect engineering students toperceive mathematics in the same way as pro-fessional mathematicians usually do, yet the pro-fessional engineer must acquire not only empiricalbut also abstract understanding of mathematics. Itseems that the objective of teaching mathematicsto engineering students is to find the right balancebetween practical applications of mathematicalequations and in-depth understanding. In thispaper I discuss this balance and some practicalways of achieving it based on my experience of teaching thermofluids to engineering and energystudents at Brighton University. The achievedresults are discussed based on self-assessmentforms completed by the students.
MOTIVATION
It should not be taken for granted that engi-neering students understand the need to studymathematics in the first place. Although mysubject is not mathematics but thermofluids, itinevitably contains a number of mathematicalequations which I tried to explain in detail.When, after the first few lectures of the course, Iasked my students to complete feedback forms,about 80% of the students complained that mycourse was too academic. One of the students triedto describe this general mood by writing: We aremostly not academics but practical engineers; weforget what we are told but never forget what wesee or discover for ourselves!'It was clear that I made at least two mistakes indesigning my course. Firstly, the theory was indeednot properly balanced with practical applications.Secondly, the need for the theoretical part was notwell explained at the beginning of the course. I hadto put things right in order to complete the coursesuccessfully.There are obvious `natural' limits to the depth of the mathematical analysis. If we don't set theselimits we can, in theory, end up studying topology(the foundations of mathematics)
ad infinitum
. Ourbrain may be working very hard, but its directcontribution to the science of engineering would benegligible. On the other hand, there are not somany objects that can be physically touched inmodern engineering. For example, one cannot`touch' the boundary layer of a supersonic aircraftor the inside of a working internal combustionengine. In order to study them one needs todescribe them as abstract concepts in terms of mathematical equations.This means that mathematics is indispensablefor the engineering community, but the depth of itsstudy is bound to be limited. The best `practical'approach to mathematics is to understand it as alanguage for describing physical and chemicallaws. From this point of view understanding anengineering problem means the conversion of thisproblem into a physical and/or chemical problem,and its formulation in terms of mathematicalequations.Note that the fact that predictions of theoryagree with observations does not necessarilymean that the theory is correct. For example,Ptolemy's theory of the heavens was in goodnumerical agreement with observations over twomillennia. This, however, did not prevent it from
* Accepted 25 September 1997.
145
Int. J. Engng Ed.
Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 145±152, 1998 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00Printed in Great Britain.
#
1998 TEMPUS Publications.
 
being wrong. (This idea was taken from themanuscript `What can we learn from numericalsimulations' by R. A. Treumann.) This means thata `practical' engineer cannot avoid the in-depthstudy of physics, chemistry and `practical' mathe-matics before applying them to engineering prob-lems. One cannot just take a mathematical modelas a `black box' and compare it with experiments.For example, a research engineer can find himself or herself severely hindered if he or she attempts toapply a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codeto the solution of an engineering problem withoutunderstanding the underlying physical phenomenaand/or the limitations of the code [1]. I believe thatthis should be the main motivation for studyingmathematics for engineering students and it needsto be explained to students properly.Sometimes engineering students complain thatthey physically cannot perceive mathematical con-cepts. I believe that in this case the students can begiven the following formula:Result
Ability
Â
WorkEven the low ability students can almost alwayscompensate by hard work. This formula wassuggested to me by one of my own lecturers inmathematics. It can be generalized to:Result
Ability
x
a
Â
Work
x
w
where
x
w
b
x
a
or even
x
w
)
x
a
.What this is trying to say is that increasing theamount of work can easily compensate the limitedability of a particular student. Note that in manyreal-life situations lack of ability is confused withlack of confidence (see [2] for a more detaileddiscussion on confidence in learning). Obviouslyin the rare cases when the mathematical ability isclose to zero this cannot always be compensatedfor by hard work. Another factor which cancontribute to the result of learning mathematicsis the students' orientation to learning [3]. Forexample, students with personal or intrinsic aca-demic orientation, who enjoy exploring new andchallenging material are expected to get betterresults in mathematics than students with avocational or social orientation. The subject of mathematics requires higher levels of concentra-tion compared with other subjects, in general, andits immediate relevance to future students' jobprospects is not at first evident. Hence, studentswith vocational orientation do not have muchstimulus for this concentration and for them thefocus on practical elements of the mathematicalparts of the course is particularly important. It ismore difficult to accommodate students withsocial orientation in designing the course withoutsacrificing scientific and engineering standards.
NUMBERS AND FORMULAE
Ifengineeringstudentsareaskedtosolveasimpleproblem of finding the temperature distributionbetween two parallel plates at temperatures
T 
1
and
T 
2
provided that thermal conductivitybetween these plates is constant, some of themmight find it difficult. On the other hand, thesame problem can be reformulated in numbers:
Two parallel plates are kept at temperatures 200
8
Cand300
8
C6mapart.Thethermalconductivitybetweenthese plates is 10Wm
1
K
1
. Calculate the temperatureat the point which is 3m from the first plate.
In this case, almost everybody will promptlyanswer that the temperature is equal to 250
8
C.The reason for this is very simple. Most engineer-ing students think in terms of numbers rather thanin terms of abstract concepts. For this reason,students who experience difficulties with simpleanalytical calculations, can turn out to be verygood in practical applications.This does not mean that we should avoid dealingwith abstract concepts altogether for the reasonsalready discussed. This means, however, that everynew abstract concept needs to be accompanied byplentiful numerical examples.For example, if one just introduces Wien's lawfor blackbody radiation (
!
T
const) and moveson to the next topic, most students just forget itby the next lecture. On the other hand, if alecturer spends some time illustrating this lawby practical examples then it eventually registers.In other words, referring to referential aspects of students' experience, numbers lead the engineer-ing students from surface to deep knowledge (see[4, 5]). Referring to organisational aspects of theirexperience, numbers help make the transitionfrom an atomistic cognitive approach to a holisticapproach, that is, students start understandingthe problem as a whole, rather than concentrateon its parts [5, 6]. Note that the reverse processtakes place in the mathematical students com-munity: deep and holistic approaches are relatedin most cases to their concentration on formulae,while surface and atomistic approaches appear atthe stage of working with numbers (this obser-vation is based on my own experience as astudent, and the discussion of the matter withother students).
ALGEBRAIC EQUATIONS
When I started my course I assumed that thestudents felt comfortable with algebraic mani-pulations. After the first few lectures, however, Iunderstood that this assumption does not alwayshold. None of the students have problems insolving the equation
ax
b
and obtain the solu-tions
x
b
a
a
. However, if the same equation iswritten in a slightly more complicated way, say, as:
0
2
x
 
x
 
then its solution
x
a
0
2
 
causes diffi-culties among students if written straightaway.
S. S. Sazhin
146
 
Instead the left hand side of this equation needs tobe rearranged as:
0
2
x
 
x
0
2
 
x
 
x
 
where
 
0
2
 
, before its solution
x
a 
iswritten. This normally takes just a few minutes,but if this is not done, then for many students thewhole lecture may be lost.Another problem with algebraic equations is thenotation. Whether we like it or not most studentstend to memorise equations in a particular nota-tion. Say, if the distance is indicated as
s
in onelecture, then this notation should be kept until theend of the course. I tried hard to persuade studentsto understand the structure of the equations ratherthan to memorize the notation (adopt deep ratherthan surface learning) but I had little success withmost of the group. My conclusion is that nota-tion needs to be unified to avoid any confusionespecially among the students who are at a novicelevel of skill acquisition [7].Finally, any sloppiness in the presentation of algebraic equations must be avoided by all means.Students do not easily recognize even the mostobvious printing mistakes and become stuck. Onmany occasions they tend to memorize and repro-duce wrong equations. The best solution to theproblem is to avoid sloppiness altogether. If amistake is found after the lecture it needs to beexplicitly admitted afterwards and not glossedover. The lecturer's handwriting is also veryimportant. One example in my experience iswhen one of my students copied the angle of attack of an aeroplane as 80 instead of 8
8
As aresult, he effectively dropped out of that particularlecture. I believe that the best way to tackle thehandwriting problem is to print formulae usingLatex software and show them to students usingtransparencies.
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
Differential equations, even relatively simpleones, seem to be a stumbling block for manystudents. My experience suggests that the simplestway of tackling this problem is to avoid it alto-gether by guessing the solution rather than solvingthe equation.For example, if we take the equation:d
2
 y
a
d
x
2
0then it should be just proven that:
 y
C 
1
x
C 
2
is its solution by direct substitution of this expres-sion for
y
into the original equation. Anotherapproach to the problem is to rewrite the originalequation as:d
z
a
d
x
0where
z
d
 y
a
d
x
. Then it should be explained tothe students that the derivative of a constant iszero, so that the solution of the equation for
z
canbe written as:
z
C 
1
Remembering the definition of 
z
, this equationcan be rewritten as:d
 y
a
d
x
C 
1
Then students can be explained that derivativeof:
 y
C 
1
x
C 
2
is equal to
C 
1
. Hence
y
C 
1
x
C 
2
is the solutionof the original equation.Based on my experience, this rather lengthyapproach to the problem pays off and the studentsbegin to understand more complicated types of differential equations and their application toengineering problems. Note that on many occa-sions students are not confident in the concept of derivative itself. One teaching method of intro-ducing this concept is based on the discussion of velocity as a `natural derivative' [8, 9].
VECTORS AND TENSORS
Even simple manipulations with vectors, suchas summation and subtraction can cause prob-lems if students are not prepared for them. A one-dimensional problem could be a good startingpoint. One can consider the problem of calculatingthe velocity relative to the platform of two passen-gers in a moving train walking in opposite direc-tions to each other inside this train. This problemcan be easily visualised and students can recalltheir own experience. Students should reallybecome very confident with this simple problembefore they move on to the problem of summationand subtraction of vectors in three-dimensionalspace.The product of a vector and a scalar and thescalar product of vectors do not cause too manyproblems if they are explained in detail. The vectorproduct is often a stumbling point. In practice itseems to be more efficient to deal with the compo-nents of the vector product rather than with thegeneral equation written in vector form (cf. theGestalt theory as discussed by Laurillard [10]).The basic concepts of vector analysis such asgradient, divergence and curl can look ratherintimidating to some of the students. They can beintroduced if necessary, but it seems better to avoidany general manipulations. Instead, the analysiscan be focused on simple limiting (one or twodimensional) cases when the expressions for gra-dient, divergence or curl can be presented in simpleforms.Tensor analysis is normally excluded from theengineering curriculum altogether. This is regret-table since tensor is an essential and powerfulconcept for the analysis of many engineering
Teaching Mathematics to Engineering Students
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