Resources for Professional Engineering Licensure

A Quick Tip

The best "success secret" for passing the Engineering Licensure exam (or any other engineering exam) that I can provide on a Web page is, use dimensional analysis, or the factor-label method.
Once upon a time, engineers HAD to use the factor-label method to set up problems for their slide rules. Slide rules do not keep track of powers of ten, so one had to write the equation in factor form (with the powers of ten in place). Calculators take care of this automatically, so many people no longer use the factor-label method.
However, diligent use of the factor-label method prevents many mistakes, such as forgetting a factor. Why? If you've included everything, the answer will have the correct units of measurement. If the answer should be in kilograms, you will get kilograms. If you've left something out, you probably won't.
The following figure shows a Reynolds number calculation. The Reynolds number is dimensionless (has no units of measurement). If you go through the equation and multiply and divide the units of measurement, they'll all cancel out. In this example, 58 cubic feet of water per minute flow through a pipe whose inside diameter is 6.065 inches. The water's viscosity is 1.129 centipoise. Its density is 62.37 pounds per cubic foot. Note the presence of conversion factors in the equation. Their units (e.g. 1 centipoise = 2.42 pounds per foot hour) cancel against the others to yield the correct result. If, for example, you got an answer with the units "lb/ft-h-cP," it would tell you that a factor was missing. The Reynolds number has no units.

This approach also makes it easy to handle English-Metric and Metric-English conversion. Just insert the proper conversion factors, and you'll get the correct units.
There is, however, no substitute for working plenty of practice problems. The famous Russian Field Marshal, Alexander Suvorov, said that a hard drill makes an easy battle. This applies to the Professional Engineering Licensing Exam.

  • MGI Management Institute

    • MGI (SmartPros LTD) offers correspondence study courses for all four major branches of the P.E. exam. MGI carries the P.E. Readiness (R) series for Chemical, Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering.
    Contents (chapters include exercises with detailed answers)
    1. Mass and Energy Balances
    2. Fluid Mechanics
    3. Thermodynamics
    4. Heat Transfer
    5. Kinetics and Reactor Design
    6. Separations and Mass Transfer
    Free software to accompany Levinson, 1995, P.E. Readiness (R): Chemical Engineering Exam Preparation ActiveX programs require Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 (download for free from Microsoft). They are ActiveX documents from Visual Basic 5.0.  I have not yet been able to get these programs to work with Internet Explorer 3.0, but I have run them on two different computers with IE 4.0. Comments are welcome.

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    National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying
    NCEES offers study guides and sample examinations for the Professional Engineering exams.

  • National Society of Professional Engineers
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