CEE Stirred Pots
“Stirred Pots” was a recurring section in the Chemical Engineering Education journal, often featuring anecdotal stories, reflections, or discussions relevant to chemical engineering education, written in a more informal style compared to traditional research articles. Links go to the original CEE Journal in which it appeared.
Battle Hymn of Thermo
Author Unknown
Edited and Submitted by
Kenneth R. Jolls
Iowa State University
Published in CEE: Fall 1990
(Tune: Battle Hymn of the Republic)
Free energy and entropy were whirling in his brain
With partial differentials and Greek letters in their train;
For delta, sigma, gamma, theta, epsilon, and pi
Were driving him distracted as they danced before his eye.
(Refrain)
Glory, glory, dear old thermo.
Glory, glory, dear old thermo.
Glory, glory, dear old thermo.
I’ll learn you by and by
Heat content and fugacity revolved within his mind
Like molecules and atoms that you never have to wind.
With logarithmic functions doing cake walks in his dreams
And partial molal quantities devouring chocolate creams.
(Refrain)
They asked him on the final if a mole of any gas
In a vessel with a membrane through which hydrogen could pass
Were compressed to half its volume, what the entropy would be,
If two-thirds delta sigma equalled half of delta P?
He said he guessed the entropy would have to equal four,
Unless the Second Law would bring it up a couple more.
But then it might be seven if the thermostat were good,
Or it might be almost zero if once rightly understood.
(Refrain)
The professor read his paper with a corrugated brow,
For he knew he’d have to grade it, but he didn’t know quite how.
Till a sudden inspiration in his cerebellum smote,
And he seized his trusty fountain pen and this is what he wrote:
(Refrain)
“Just as you guessed the entropy, I’ll have to guess your grade,
But the Second Law won’t raise it to the mark you might have made;
For it might have been a hundred if your guess had been quite good,
But I think it must be zero till you’ve rightly understood.”
(Refrain)
The Limerick Metric Applied to Thermodynamics
J.M. Haile
Clemson University
Published in CEE: Winter 1984
The subject of Thermodynamics,
‘Tis true, is not for pedantics.
For, tho work must be done
And sweat be not shunned,
Insight requires more than mechanics.
O’r the four Laws stands Confusion,
As their numbering is all but illusion;
For the first is not first,
Tho the first is well vers’d,
And the last is not fourth-how amusin’ !
The relations of Maxwell are infamous
For prompting ill-natured remarks most boisterous.
Their exactness is trying,
Their permutations vying
With other companions more amorous.
The compressibility of liquids and gases
Is oft devious to lads and lasses.
Relating P, V, and T
Seems difficult to see
Without perturbing the masses.
Some students have little capacity
For understanding fugacity.
Their tendency to flee
Is paradoxical, to me,
And how will they develop tenacity?
The structure of phase diagrams abound
With complexities horribly profound.
Solid fluid, triple critical,
And others more mythical,
Its very dimensions can naught but astound.
T’was once a Chem Engineer grasping
For the concept of entropy dashing
To proverbial heights;
But try as he might,
There seemed little hope of his passing!
Heat Exchangers: The Agony and the Ecstasy
Ellen Barrar, ChE 1979
Oregon State University
Published in CEE: Fall 1981
Premeditated motions
Control the beckoning valves.
Water begins its hereditary migration
Towards the shell side
While steam penetrates other water
Destined by ulterior motives to ramble
In a twisting gyrating frenzy
To the tube side.
Swept up in the confusion
Of bombarding torrents
A decision must be reached
By the bold few who dare
Comprehend heat exchangers,
IS there a heat balance?
Time vacates as great minds
Ponder through flow rate commandments
And theories of original heat.
Minds seeking to know
Whys and wherefores,
Pros and cons,
Ins and outs,
And clues only heat exchangers can provides
The elusive stigma attached to heat transfer.
Peering through the cheap answers
The truth shyly steps forward;
Heat has indeed been abducted
By common two-bit fouling resistance schemes
Use primarily by alien heat exchangers
Affiliated with corporations of ill repute
And shady character profiles.
This then becomes … the agony.
Despite seemingly corrupt odds,
Heat transfer does occur;
The hot gets colder
The cold gets hotter
And data gets its wish, a plot.
How can one put into words
The ecstasy of a well correlated Wilson plot?
How can one man conceived in liberty
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal
Stand up and boldly proclaim
“I have found it .. . heat exchangers!”
Let this man step forward and be heard,
For he has indeed found
The elusive truth;
And this is … the ecstasy.
The Creation
ChE Class
Auburn University
Published in CEE: Fall 1979
And in the beginning there was “Control.” And Control created τ. And Control saw that this was good, but that τ was lonely, so Control created τ a mate and Control saw that this also was good. τ’s mate was called τs+1. But before long τs+1 led τ down the path of sustained oscillation. Control saw this and He was troubled. He granted τ and τs+1 a transfer function to the land of instability where through the wonders of “Control” τs+1 begat Gain. And before long τs+1 also begat Routh. One day while tending the process, Gain became quite angry with Routh and rattled his array but good. And then Gain fled to the caves of Frequency Response, emerging only at odd multiples of τ to wash his B.V.D.’s and read the weekly edition of the “Control Gazette.”
Videos
The Pebble by Lisa Bullard
The Pebble
Who can know the difference that a teacher’s life can make?
Just look at all the ripples as a pebble strikes the lake.
A rough and humble pebble may not look like very much,
but it started all the circles with their ever-widening touch.
A tiny sailboat, stagnant, in the middle of the lake
may pick up some momentum from the tiny pebble’s wake.
Although no longer visible, its influence remains,
for the surface of the water cannot remain the same.
To all my teaching colleagues, it’s you of whom I speak;
you’ve achieved the kind of influence that many others seek.
Because of your encouragement to be all they could be,
there’s a fleet of tiny sailboats that have made it to the sea.
Who knows where they will sail to, or just what they will do?
But inside each one’s cargo is a tiny bit of you.
As I reflect upon these years I’ve spent at NC State,
I’m grateful for the chance to be a pebble in the lake.
The Reynolds Number Song by Peter Harriott
The Reynolds Number Song
Contributed by Peter Harriott
Cornell University
Published in CEE: Winter 1979
Sir Osbourne Reynolds was a man of yore
Who liked to play with symbols that you might think a bore
But he figured out a problem and aquired some fame
And now the Reynolds number bears his name
Chorus
Take a d times a v and a rho by mu
Put them all together with a little bit of glue
Then you’ve got a number that will see you through
And tell you what the fluids going to do
Does the syrup in the pipe flow as smooth as can be
Or is it all mixed up like in a cup of tea
Enter all the numbers and press the little key
Laminar or turbulent, the answer will be
(Chorus)
Now lots of other numbers may come to mind
Prandtl, Schmidt, and Grashof, and more of that kind
But when you’ve got a sticky problem and are getting in a bind
The old Reynolds’ number is the first one to find
(Chorus)
It’s really very simple, so the profs all say
But the gol-darn dimensions keep getting in the way
The old English system has had its day
So better switch over to SI today
(Chorus)