Good Questions¶
Audience: Faculty and students
Strong engineering questions reduce ambiguity and force explicit assumptions.
Core prompts with worked examples¶
1) What must be true for this conclusion to hold?¶
Example: "For VFD retrofit to remain preferred, part-load operation must stay above 30% of annual runtime." Mindset link: Constraint
2) What evidence would change my decision?¶
Example: "If selectivity drops below the threshold in the next run, I will reverse the recommendation." Mindset link: Decision
3) Where is the hidden coupling in this system?¶
Example: "Lower reflux reduced reboiler duty but increased separation risk, changing purity control effort." Mindset link: Systems
Adapting these for your discipline¶
Use this pattern: "Which single assumption most affects [your decision metric], and what evidence would reverse my recommendation?"
Examples: - Mechanical: "Which load assumption most affects fatigue-life margin?" - Electrical: "Which operating assumption most affects power-quality risk?" - Civil: "Which boundary condition most affects serviceability under peak demand?" - Chemical: "Which assumption most affects utility intensity at required purity?"
CBE 253-specific prompts (local context)¶
- Which single assumption has the largest effect on energy duty?
- If conversion falls by 5 points, does my recommendation change?
- What purity constraint is silently driving the economics?
- Am I optimizing the model or the decision objective?