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I need to formulate a question that addresses the criteria "Solve engineering problems and formulate mathematical models using graphical and numerical integration".

I'm trying to decode what I can do for this and I don't have a problem coming up with a question to an engineering problem that can only be solved numerically, but I'm really unsure what it means with regard to formulating a model.

Can any of you suggest an approach here?

C. Wolfe
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  • It's for a semester-long unit. We'll only be spending a week covering numerical integration techniques though. It's for the new Pearson HND in Engineering, Unit 39 - Further Mathematics.

    I will be having two assignments for the unit in total

     – C. Wolfe Jul 21 '19 at 19:47

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What I would take it to be is making an equation based on data. If you do a bunch of experiments on gases, you might look at your data and come up with the ideal gas law $PV=nRT$. You could then fit your data to this to get a value for $R$. In a more complicated version, you could measure the spectrum of black bodies and come up with the Planck black body law, then fit the data to determine $h$.

Ross Millikan
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  • Hmm... I've done similar things for ODEs on assignments before, but the part that stumps me is that it has to involve numerical integration. Surely, to do that, you'd need to already know the equation of the function so you could use one of the methods like mid-ordinate or Simpson's rule. Finding an area under an unknown curve wouldn't be very revealing to coming up with a function to describe it. I feel like this criterion is poorly written :) The unit spec for the topic only talks about graph sketching, root finding, and numerical integration methods for this learning outcome. – C. Wolfe Jul 22 '19 at 21:11