Science Comic: Heat Exchangers

Here is the fourth finished science comic that we produced through our educational research grant! The grant is designed to create visual media to help visual learners better understand concepts that are primarily theoretical - all comics are written by us at Northeastern University, and the art is commissioned from various artists interested in improving undergraduate education.

This comic about heat exchangers is drawn by the great Matt Lubchansky! Matt has an engineering degree and was excited to put it to use (although considering the number of pipes that look like they're leaking, I'm not sure I want to know his previous use). More of Matt's comics can be found in a bunch of places and you should read them all!

Like the previous comic about PID controls and less like our previous comics about data analysis and uncertainty, this comic may be more highly specific, and if you're not an engineer, you may have some difficulty appreciating the content. But heat exchangers are a vital part of every large scale and small scale process, whether that's the operation of air conditioners or radiators, automotive coolant systems, nuclear reactor temperature regulation . . . heat exchangers have a ton of different designs that have use in everything, all of which still comes back to the same general heat transfer relationships.

We'll be using this comic with our Transport course, but if it could be beneficial to other courses as well - such as your own! - if you are a teacher or professor and are interested in using it in your course, please contact me so that we can provide the full, high-resolution comic as well as a means of producing assessment of the students' learning!

More science comics to come!