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Avoid the Worst Thinking Traps
Engineers must be excellent critical thinkers. Those who fall into patterns of sloppy thinking may pay dearly for those lapses.
Example. Tom maintained a high grade-point average in college by always demanding detailed instructions from his teachers and following them to the letter. As a newly-hired chemical engineer, however, he is required to think on his own. Tom is somewhat overconfident about the integrity of his thought processes. Today he must decide how a batch of hydrofluoric acid (HF) should be stored in the company’s new lab room. He thinks to himself,
Acids are stored in glass containers. HF is an acid, so it should go in a big glass jar.
Tom fails to verify that HF shares the properties of ...
