1) Newly hired as a production engineer, you find a potential problem on the shop floor: workers are routinely ignoring some of the government-mandated safety regulations governing the presses and stamping machines.
The workers override safety features such as guards designed to make it impossible to insert a hand or arm into a machine. Or they rig up "convenience" controls so they can operate a machine while close to it, instead of using approved safe switches, etc., which requires more movement or operational steps. Their reason (or excuse) is that if the safety features were strictly followed then production would be very difficult, tiring, and inefficient. They feel that their shortcuts still provide adequately safe operation with improved efficiency and worker satisfaction.
Should you immediately insist on full compliance with all the safety regulations, or do the workers have enough of a case so that you would be tempted to ignore the safety violations? And if you were tempted to ignore the violations, how would you justify doing so to your boss?
Also, how much weight should you give to the workers' clear preference for not following the regulations: ethically, can safety standards be relaxed if those to whom they apply want them to be relaxed?
2) You an engineer colleague work closely on designing and implementing procedures for the proper disposal of various waste materials in an industrial plant. He is responsible for liquid wastes, which are discharged into local rivers.
During ongoing discussions with your colleague, you notice that he is habitually allowing levels of some toxic liquid waste chemicals, which are slightly higher than levels permitted by the law for those chemicals. You tell him that you have noticed this, but he replies that, since the levels are only slightly above the legal limits, any ethical or safety issues are trivial in this case, and not worth the trouble and expense to correct them.
Do you agree with your colleague? If not, should you attempt to get him to correct the excess levels, or is this none of your business since it is he rather than you who is responsible for liquid wastes?
If he refuses to correct the problem, should you report this to your boss or higher management? And if no one in your company will do anything about the problem, should you be prepared to go over their heads and report the problem directly to government inspectors or regulators? Or should one do that only in a case where a much more serious risk to public health and safety is involved?
3) How many base and supplementary units in the SI system can one actually touch? Name such units.
4) Write each of the following in a correct form without using any negative exponents:
a) 0.004562 kNm m-3K-1
b) 10-5 MNs-1 m-3K-1
c) 0.000473001 mJs-1m-3kg-1