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Explosives testing, bubbles formed in melted glass, biological fermentation processes, vaporising metal. It may sound a little like a James Bond laboratory, but it’s really all part of what happens at McCann Science.

Dr. Michael McCann is a Chartered Engineer and an expert in the application of quantitative analysis and applied mathematics. He founded his consulting service, McCann Science, to provide practical solutions to problems in business, engineering and the physical sciences. McCann assists his clients with design, production or operational problems, provides technical support, quantitative assessment, design alternatives and, with a wide and somewhat unconventional engineering experience, often brings a fresh perspective to crack tricky puzzles.

McCann has worked with a wide range of companies involved in science (R&D, physics, biology), engineering (control systems, chemical, pharmaceutical, electrical, electronic, mechanical) and even business (marketing, finance, operations, planning, production). With this diversity of clients, McCann requires a means to collaborate with all of them throughout the consulting process, developing understanding, working through problems and finding practical solutions.

“If you don’t understand a system, it’s out of control,” McCann said. “And if you can’t quantify the underlying causal relationships that determine its behavior, you don’t understand it.”

This is where Mathcad comes in. McCann uses Mathcad, the technical calculation and design package from Mathsoft, to develop mathematical models and simulations quickly and reliably, to quantify understanding of his client’s processes, to determine root causes of technical problems and synthesise feasible solutions. He also uses Mathcad to share his findings with his clients and to work with them towards solutions to their problems.

McCann utilises the functionality of Mathcad to create mathematical models of physical systems such as the evaporation of metal under vacuum, the thermal behavior of igniters for explosives, the propagation of signals in strange transmission lines, heat transfer to flowing liquids, electronic circuits, fermentation processes and other reaction systems, induction heating with explosives and furnaces for glass treatment.

“If you can describe it, I can simulate it,” says McCann.

Mathcad satisfies complex calculation and design needs while offering a normal mathematical language interface that enables him and his clients to view and understand the work as easily as they would if it had been created with paper and pencil. According to McCann, Mathcad allows him to “build up a picture for the client, so they’ve got something that they can, first of all, read and make sense of, and secondly, they can actually play with.”

Since Mathcad features the flexibility of a graphical ‘live document’ mathematical interface, one that recalculates each time you change an input or value, real data can be easily manipulated within an experimental setting and the client can be given usable tools, matched exactly to their needs. McCann’s clients either already use Mathcad when they seek his services, or buy it for the project they will work with him on.

McCann has been using Mathcad since version 3 with companies in the U.S.A., the U.K., Canada and South Africa, and uses it in virtually all of his projects. He values the extensive functions and the visual graphing capabilities, which enable him to realise significant timesavings.

“Mathcad does in a matter of seconds what would have taken me a week,” McCann comments. “If I didn’t have Mathcad, I wouldn’t really have my business.”

Mathcad 11 is supplied and supported in the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Norway by Adept Scientific plc, Amor Way, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 1ZA; telephone (01462) 480055, fax (01462) 480213, email mathcad@adeptscience.co.uk; or see Adept’s World Wide Web site http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/. Adept Scientific is one of the world’s leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers.

With offices in the UK, USA, Germany and throughout the Nordic region, Adept Scientific is one of the world’s leading suppliers of software and hardware products for research, scientific, engineering and technical applications on desktop computers.