Curriculum
Engineering
33 entries across 5 tiers. Each tier builds on the tiers before it, so read top to bottom and every idea arrives after its prerequisites. Where an entry has entries to read first, they are listed under it.
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T0 Primitives and observation
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- Constraints, assumptions, and margins
Design Fundamentals · Create a margin budget for uncertain loads or conditions.
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- Engineering as constrained choice You cannot reason about how much margin to leave until you first accept that engineering is a search among limited options, not a search for one true answer.
- Engineering as constrained choice
Design Fundamentals · Turn a vague wish into a bounded design problem.
- Failure modes and graceful degradation
Design Fundamentals · Produce a basic failure-mode table for a toy system.
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- Constraints, assumptions, and margins A margin is a bet against a specific way things could go wrong, so naming margins is the first step toward listing failure modes systematically.
- Prototypes as questions Prototypes are one of the main tools that surface failure modes nobody predicted on paper, feeding directly into a failure-mode analysis.
- Requirements and success criteria A failure is only definable once you have fixed what counts as success, which is exactly what a requirement states.
- Prototypes as questions
Design Fundamentals · Choose what not to build in an early prototype.
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- Functional decomposition A candidate architecture produced by decomposition is the thing a prototype is built to test.
- Trade-off spaces and objective functions A trade-off space tells you which contested variable is worth building a prototype to resolve, rather than guessing.
- Trade-off spaces and objective functions
Design Fundamentals · Compare designs using a transparent decision matrix.
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- Constraints, assumptions, and margins You cannot weigh design options honestly until you know which limits are hard, measured facts and which are convenient guesses that could be traded against.
- Functional decomposition Comparing architectures against each other requires first having generated more than one candidate decomposition to compare.
- Functional decomposition
Design Method · Generate multiple architectures for the same goal.
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- System boundaries and interfaces You cannot split a system's functions among its parts until you have first fixed which functions belong to the system at all.
- Requirements and success criteria
Requirements Engineering · Write measurable requirements that expose contradictions early.
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- Engineering as constrained choice Writing a measurable requirement is the act of naming one of the constraints that bounds the choice this entry describes.
- System boundaries and interfaces
Systems Engineering · Draw an interface map before selecting parts.
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- Requirements and success criteria You cannot decide what belongs inside a system boundary until you know what the system is required to achieve.
T1 Core relationships and structures
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- Bearings, bushings, and friction management
Machine Elements · Choose a low-cost rotating support for a toy vehicle.
- Gears, belts, chains, and transmissions
Machine Elements · Choose a transmission for starting torque and top speed.
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- Levers, linkages, cams, and motion conversion A gear tooth is a lever pivoting through the pitch point, so the ratio logic of transmissions is levers wrapped into a circle.
- Levers, linkages, cams, and motion conversion
Machine Elements · Design a mechanism that converts rotation into a desired path.
- Springs, dampers, and suspension
Machine Elements · Tune a simple suspension for stability.
- Wheels, rolling resistance, and traction
Machine Elements · Select wheel size and tire material for a surface.
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- Bearings, bushings, and friction management A wheel's rolling resistance includes the friction of the bearing or bushing that carries the axle load, so wheel performance cannot be analyzed without it.
- Beams, columns, and buckling
Structures · Estimate when a strut needs bracing.
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- Tension, compression, bending, torsion, and shear Buckling is a failure of members loaded in compression or bending, so the mechanics of those two loading types must be understood first.
- Fasteners and joints
Structures · Select a joint that can be made, inspected, and repaired.
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- Safety factors and uncertainty Sizing a bolt, weld, or rivet requires a chosen safety factor before its dimensions can be selected.
- Tension, compression, bending, torsion, and shear A joint must be sized against whichever of these five stress types actually dominates the connection it carries.
- Loads, load paths, and free-body thinking
Structures · Redesign a part so loads flow through strong geometry.
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- Center of mass and balance Engineers modeling a structure's weight as a single downward force acting at one point are relying on the center of mass concept.
- Static equilibrium Free-body force and torque balance on a rigid member is the direct engineering application of static equilibrium reasoning.
- System boundaries and interfaces Free-body thinking begins by isolating a boundary around a body and naming everything that crosses it, the same move this entry teaches in general form.
- Torque and rotational effect Engineers reading a free-body diagram for a rotating or pinned member are applying torque balance to a real structure.
- Safety factors and uncertainty
Structures · Choose and justify a safety factor rather than copying one.
- Tension, compression, bending, torsion, and shear
Structures · Identify the dominant stress in each part of a mechanism.
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- Loads, load paths, and free-body thinking Once a load path is traced through a member, the next question is which specific kind of internal stress that member is carrying.
- Trusses, frames, and triangulation
Structures · Design a lightweight bridge or chassis frame.
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- Beams, columns, and buckling A truss's compression members are exactly the struts that buckling analysis governs, so sizing a truss requires knowing when a member needs bracing.
- Loads, load paths, and free-body thinking Designing a truss is choosing a geometry for the load path in advance, which only makes sense once load paths themselves are understood.
- Static equilibrium Solving for member forces in a truss or frame requires applying force and torque balance to each joint or member in turn.
- Triangles and rigidity Engineers triangulate frames specifically because a triangle of fixed sides cannot shear, while a quadrilateral of fixed sides can.
T2 Mechanisms and transformations
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- Ceramics and glasses
Ceramic Materials · Use ceramic or glass where compression and temperature dominate.
- Composites and sandwich structures
Composite Materials · Design a light panel with stiff skins and a low-density core.
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- Ceramics and glasses Glass and carbon fiber reinforcements are stiff, brittle, ceramic-family fibers whose flaw-sensitive behavior needs to be understood on its own before the composite built around them can be.
- Material selection by properties Composites are built specifically to beat the property trade-offs this entry exposes, so the trade-off has to be understood before the workaround makes sense.
- Metals and alloys Metal alloys and metal reinforcing fibers are one of the constituent families that composites combine with a matrix.
- Polymers and elastomers Polymer resins are the matrix phase in most fiber composites, so their stiffness, temperature limit, and creep behavior have to be understood before the composite built around them can be.
- Design for manufacturing and assembly
Manufacturing and Production · Redesign a small assembly to use fewer parts.
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- Manufacturing by removal, forming, joining, and addition Redesigning a part to use fewer operations or a cheaper process requires first knowing what the four process families can and cannot do.
- Tolerance, fit, and clearance Choosing which dimensions can be loose and which must be tight is the raw material that design for manufacturing and assembly organizes at the level of a whole product.
- Manufacturing by removal, forming, joining, and addition
Manufacturing and Production · Choose a process compatible with geometry, material, quantity, and cost.
- Surface finish, wear, and lubrication
Manufacturing and Production · Specify where finish or lubrication matters and where it does not.
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- Design for manufacturing and assembly Combining or eliminating parts changes which surfaces exist and slide against each other, so a DFMA redesign changes the finish and lubrication problem the product must solve.
- Manufacturing by removal, forming, joining, and addition Each process family leaves a characteristic surface texture behind, so the finish available to a design is set by which process shaped it.
- Tolerance, fit, and clearance The clearance a fit leaves behind is the gap that a lubricant film must fill and that surface roughness must not close, so fit sets the boundary condition for wear.
- Tolerance, fit, and clearance
Manufacturing and Production · Specify a fit that assembles without unwanted play.
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- Manufacturing by removal, forming, joining, and addition The tolerance a drawing can realistically demand is bounded by what the chosen process family can repeatably hold, so process choice comes before tolerance choice.
- Material selection by properties
Materials Selection · Build a weighted material-selection chart.
- Metals and alloys
Metallic Materials · Choose between common metals for a loaded part.
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- Material selection by properties The property axes this entry defines, stiffness, strength, density, and toughness, are the coordinates on which metals are later placed and compared against other families.
- Polymers and elastomers
Polymeric Materials · Select a plastic for housing, gear, seal, or spring-like use.
T3 Systems and interaction
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- Feedback control
Control · Build a conceptual speed or temperature controller and reason about its stability.
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- Sensors as physical translators A controller acts on a measured error, so the sensor that supplies it comes first.
- Sensors as physical translators
Instrumentation · Select and calibrate a sensor for position, speed, force, or temperature.
- Motors, torque-speed curves, and gearing
Mechatronics and drives · Match a motor and gear ratio to a vehicle.
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- Gears, belts, chains, and transmissions Matching a motor's torque-speed curve to a load requires the gear-ratio reasoning this entry builds.
T4 Design, integration, and institutions
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- Thermal management
Thermal design · Design cooling for a motor, battery, or electronics enclosure.
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- Conduction, convection, and radiation Choosing an insulation or cooling strategy for a real system means first identifying which of these three mechanisms is doing the damage.
- Traction, steering geometry, and stability
Vehicle dynamics · Predict understeer, oversteer, or tipping risk in a small vehicle.
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- Springs, dampers, and suspension Keeping a tire in continuous contact with the road, the precondition for steering and traction analysis, is a suspension design outcome.
- Wheels, rolling resistance, and traction A vehicle's steering and stability analysis assumes the wheel's traction limit developed here as its starting constraint.