Apply What You Learn, Find the Cause, Make It Better
On this page 5 headings
Start here A plastic sheet is very hard to tear. Make one tiny cut with scissors, and it tears easily along that line. Now, where else could you use this trick? Notebooks with perforated pages! That question, “where else can I use this?”, is an engineer’s habit.
Habit 4: Where can I apply what I learned?
| What was learned | Where it was applied |
|---|---|
| A small cut makes a plastic sheet easy to tear | Perforated notebook pages, snack packets with a notch |
| Rubbing stones together makes heat | Early humans used it to make fire |
Habit 5: Relate cause to effect (root cause analysis)
Find the root cause. Then you can control the effect.
Lecture example — putting out a fire Fire needs oxygen (cause → burning). Throw a blanket over a small fire, and the little oxygen under it is used up, so the fire goes out. Knowing the cause tells you how to stop the effect.
Habit 6: How can I make it better?
Humans are never satisfied with the first version. The question “How can I make it better?” drives every improvement.
Lecture example — the computer mouse Bulky first mouse → rolling-ball mouse (but the ball got stuck and depended on the surface) → optical mouse → ergonomic mouse → gestures. Each step began by asking: where is the problem, and how can I fix it?
Lecture example — railway ticket booking (Prof. Kartic)
- 1980s: only 1–2 big booking halls in a city (like Chennai Central and Egmore), many long queues, tickets written by hand in ledgers. Half a day lost.
- Booking offices opened in different parts of the city, saving travel time.
- Chairs for waiting passengers, a kind thought (empathy) for senior citizens.
- One single queue feeding all counters, so nobody has to guess which queue is faster.
- Online booking, plus licensed agents for people who aren’t tech-savvy, which also cut down corruption.
- Mobile app and SMS tickets: no paper, which is also good for the environment.
Always ask: What struggles does the end user face? How can I make it easier for them?
Lecture example — games for teachers (Prof. Kartic) When the pandemic stopped his board-game workshops, Prof. Kartic moved to digital games. Teachers kept asking, “Can I use this for a test?” So, out of empathy, he chose platforms that also show analytics (who played, scores, difficulty of each question), while keeping the fun.
Habit 7: Change your perspective
A solution rejected in the past may become the best one when the situation changes.
Lecture example — DC power is back Edison’s DC power couldn’t travel far because too much was lost in the cables. Tesla’s AC could, so AC won. Today, solar panels produce DC power locally, close to where it is used. So DC systems are worth looking at again. (IIT Madras works on such DC electrification projects.) Lesson: Don’t throw away old solutions. Re-check them from today’s perspective.
In one line: Reuse what you learn in new places, find root causes, keep asking “How can I make it better?”, and look again at old solutions when the situation changes. Exam words: apply learning, root cause analysis, cause and effect, “how can I make it better?”, continuous improvement, end-user empathy, change of perspective, AC vs DC, decentralised solar power.