I gave a talk at Glasgow University in March 18th 2008. I would be grateful for any feedback.

"Engineering Calculations and the Great Physics Rip-off "- The good work of Newton, Hooke, Boltzmann, Bernoulli, Eigen, Euler, Hertz, Maxwell, Prandtl, Raleigh and countless other physicists is being plundered every day by engineers. I'd like to share with you how engineers apply physics theory and calculations to solve their problems. I'll draw on case studies and failure investigations from my work as a mechanical engineer in the railway industry, the oil & gas industry and the theme park leisure industry (we might even see a few Disney characters and rollercoaster rides). Our calculations help us make sense of what has happened they tell us what we should be worried about and help us to devise the best solutions.

I would like to discuss how my passion for calculations is focussed at www.ExcelCalcs.com where we hope to "build the web's largest repository of solved problems using the world's most popular mathematical software tool (Excel) and make it available to the world for free". I'll even give you some free software so that you can display Excel cell formulae as mathematical equations.

I do hope that the talk will bring a sense of relevance to your studies and helps you appreciate how your skills are valued by engineers (though not all that silly stuff about quarks which is of course completely and utterly pointless).