As future engineers, it is important to familiarize the fundamental dimensions that are usually

used in engineering problems or calculations. It is because there are so many things that are reliant on
the appropriate dimensions.

The dimensions of a quantity identify the physical character of that quantity, e.g. force (F), mass
(M), length (L), time (t), temperature (T), electric charge (e), etc. On the other hand, “units” identify the
reference scale by which the magnitude of the respective physical quantity is measured. Many different
reference scales (units) can be defined for a given dimension; for example, the dimension of length can
be measured in units of miles, centimeters, inches, meters, yards, angstroms, furlongs, light years,
kilometers, etc. (Darby, 2001)

So why do we need units? Units are important for effective communication and standardization
of measurements. How do I say so? Let’s cite an example. As reported in news in 1983, Air Canada Flight
143, ran out of fuel on about halfway through its Montreal to Edmonton flight, this aviation incident is
popularly known as the Gimli Glider Incident. Based on the investigation made by the experts, it is
because of the miscalculation of the amount of fuel to be loaded to the aircraft. It was also revealed that
there is a combination of company failures and a chain of human errors, because of a confusion as to
the calculation of the weight of fuel using the metric system, caused the incident to happen. So, in order
to prevent those instances to occur, as engineers (yes, I already claimed it), we should be careful in
converting one unit to another.

Furthermore, dimensions can be classified as either fundamental or derived. Fundamental

dimensions cannot be expressed in terms of other dimensions and include length (L), time (t),
temperature (T), mass (M), and/or force (F) (depending upon the system of dimensions used). Derived
dimensions can be expressed in terms of fundamental dimensions.

There are two systems of dimensions, namely: scientific system and engineering system. The
categorization of force (F) is the difference between the two. In the scientific system, F is considered a
derived unit, given by the formula F=ma, while in engineering system, F is a fundamental unit, expressed
as F=ma/gc.

But what is gc? The story behind the formulation of gc is that engineers before, noticed that the
mass of a body is determined indirectly by its weight under specified gravitational conditions, so they
decided that it would be more practical and convenient if a system of dimensions were defined in which
“what you see is what you get”; that is, the numerical magnitudes of mass and weight are equal under
standard equations. Even though, there’s a little manipulation in the equation, it must not violate
Newton’s Laws. Since the value of g is not unity when expresses in common units of length and time, the
only way to have the numerical values of weight and mass be the same under any conditions is to
introduce a “conversion factor” that forces this equivalence. Then, the factor that is usually used in
engineering calculations is designated as gc and is incorporated into Newton’s second law for
engineering systems as follows:

F=ma/gc W=mg/gc

After knowing these concepts, the next topic that was discussed, was the conservation of
dimensions. This law states that, for any equation to be valid, every term in the equation must have the
same physical character. One analogy that can be associated with this law is that, we cannot add apples
and oranges together, unless we are making fruit salad. That’s why it is also called fruit salad law. The
law of conservation of dimensions can be applied to arrange the variables or parameters that are
important in a given problem into a set of dimensionless groups. That is, the magnitude of any
dimensionless quantity will always be independent of the scale of the problem or the system of
(consistent) units used. This is the basis for the application of dimensional analysis, which permits
information and relationships determined in a small-scale system (e.g., a “model”) to be applied directly
to a similar system of a different size if the system variables are expressed in dimensionless form (Darby,
2001). This is known as scale-up.

Scaling up is one of the obvious differences between chemical engineering and chemistry.
Chemical engineers are the one who are in-charge to the large-scale process and the chemists are for
the laboratory-scale experiments. So that, as a chemical engineering student, I should be able to master
the process of scaling up. In order to achieve this goal, dimensional analysis should be learned by heart.

Dimensional analysis allows the engineer to reduce the number of variables that must be
considered to model experiments or correlate data. Dimensional analysis can be done using the Rayleigh
method or the Buckingham pi method (Perry, 1997). There are alternative methods to find
dimensionless groups, but for me, Buckingham Pi method is the most convenient to use, student-
friendly method, and the easiest among the three (okay, I’m bias with Buckingham Pi method).

Dimensional analysis is very important to chemical engineers, because the information obtained
from a model (small-scale) system that is represented in dimensionless form can be applied directly to
geometrically and dynamically similar systems of any size or scale. This allows us to translate
information directly from laboratory models to large-scale equipment or plant operations (scale-up).
Also the number of dimensionless groups is invariably less than the number of original variables involved
in the problem. Thus the relations that define the behavior of a given system are much simpler when
expressed in terms of the dimensionless variables, because fewer variables are required (Darby, 2001).

As I have mentioned earlier (…I should master the process of scaling up), I can say that by this
time, I was not be able to master it. Honestly, I haven’t try to answer any problem regarding scale-up,
that’s why, in the last assignment, I’ve been stucked just after finding the dimensionless groups, because
I don’t know what will I do next. So next time, on my free time, I will try to answer problems about
dimensional analysis and scaling up, and read more about it, so that I will learn it by heart.