CE1011 Professional Skills for Chemical Engineers MS Excel – Tutorial 1

BEng/MEng Chemical Engineering, Aston University

1. You are a prestigious engineer that have recently opened a consultancy company.
Despite your eminently altruistic vocation, you decide to have some control over your
earnings and expenses to ensure a certain volume of profit.
a) Build a spreadsheet (formatting in cells and spreadsheet) and fill in the empty boxes in the
following table, using Excel functions:

EXPENDITURE YEAR 2017

TYPE quarter 1 quarter 2 quarter 3 quarter 4 TOTAL ANNUAL
Stationary 104 54 28 62
Telephone 72 92 64 128
Electricity 110 119 51 74
Renting 1082 1082 1082 1082
Wage PA 2705 2705 3606 3606
IChemE fee 120 120 120 120
IT Services 1676 1402 1447 1567
Software 91 142 67 130
Taxes 294 473 230 1,046
Other 320 425 282 224
Subtotal quarter
Percentage quarter

GROSS EARNINGS YEAR 2017

TYPE quarter 1 quarter 2 quarter 3 quarter 4 TOTAL ANNUAL
SMEs projects 15927 14695 12802 16588
Large company projects 1983 2043 3756 4207
Others 1305 2164 861 1503
SUBTOTAL QUARTER
% QUARTER

TOTAL ANNUAL net earnings 2017

b) Using functions, calculate:

- The average cost for each type of expense throughout the year.
- Find the maximum and minimum expense for each quarter.

c) Create two bar graphs (one for each table) representing the individual expenses per
quarter and individual project earnings project per quarter. Label the x and y axes and figure
legend appropriately.
d) Create two circular charts (one for each table) for the percentage of expense per quarter.
e) Highlight in green colour the cells in which the percentage of gross earnings quarterly is
higher than 25% using the conditional formatting function.

1
 CE1011 Professional Skills for Chemical Engineers MS Excel – Tutorial 1
BEng/MEng Chemical Engineering, Aston University

2 - The series of audible sound intensities for a human being ranges from 10-12 up to 1 W/m2.
These intensities are usually specified on a logarithmic scale called 'decibels scale', β (dB).
The mathematical relation between the sound intensity and the decibels scale is very simple:
I
β (dB) = 10·log
I0
Where, I is the intensity of the sound and I0 is the minimum of audible intensity (with a value
of 10-12 W·m-2). From this we can easily deduct that given the decibels you can calculate the
intensity of the sound in a matter of seconds:
β

I = I0 ⋅1010

As a reference to the table below, the most common values in decibels are shown,
measured at different conditions.

Num. of Sound source β (dB)

source
1 Maximum threshold allowed 130
2 Hammer hit on metal at 60 cm 114
3 Street traffic 68
4 Airport terminal 65
5 Railway Station 63
6 Shopping mall 60
7 Car at 50 mph 50
8 Hotel 42
9 House in the outskirts 40
10 Radio studio 23
11 Recording studio 20

a) Create a spreadsheet with Excel with the values in the table above. Using the formula
given above, calculate the intensities I for each of the noises (Note: 10-12 is set to 1E-12 in
Excel. You can use the POWER function from the function wizard).
b) Give a "scientific" format to cells with a precision of 3 decimals, to the result of the
previous section.
c) Change the title of the sheet (Sheet1) to “Sounds and Decibels”.

d) Represent graphically the values of β (dB) with respect to noise source number, with the
following specifications:
-Type of graph: 2D Columns
-Titles: General (Sound and decibels). Axis X (Sources of noise). Axis Y (beta (dB).
-Title for the data series: beta vs. sound source