engineering

Geoffrey Davey

Geoffrey Davey is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Geoffrey Davey rather than just read about it. In short: Geoffrey Innes Davey, KCGS, CBE (27 November 1906 – 12 February 1975) was an Australian civil engineer and priest. Davey was born at Double Bay, Sydney to English-born law clerk Joseph Innes Davey and his wife, Caroline (née Hurley).

Key takeaways

Geoffrey Davey belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geoffrey Davey to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geoffrey Davey from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geoffrey Innes Davey, KCGS, CBE (27 November 1906 – 12 February 1975) was an Australian civil engineer and priest. Davey was born at Double Bay, Sydney to English-born law clerk Joseph Innes Davey and his wife, Caroline (née Hurley). He attended Marist Brothers' High School in Darlinghurst and then the University of Sydney, receiving a Bachelor of Engineering in 1929. After graduating, he became an assistant construction engineer, working on the Woronora Dam for the Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board; he later began his own Queensland business manufacturing roofing tiles. In 1933 he was in charge of mill installation at Port Kembla for Australian Iron and Steel Ltd and then worked in Papua and Tasmania. He married architect Elsa Annette Isabel Hazelton at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney on 6 February 1935. Davey and his partner Gerald Haskins formed GHD Group and worked on the Morning Star dam in Tasmania and in New South Wales before amalgamating with Gordon Gutteridge in 1939 and receiving Commonwealth contracts during World War II. In 1946 he contested the Australian House of Representatives, running unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party in Hume. One of the founders of the Association of Consulting Engineers, he was its president from 1956 to 1957 and a councillor of the Institution of Engineers in 1962 and 1964–65. In 1966 he was appointed CBE. Davey had been appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great in 1960, and worked as an advisor to the Sydney Catholic schools system and a director of St Vincent's Hospital, as well as the Mater Misericordiae Hospital and the Catholic Weekly. He retired from his firm in 1964, becoming executive director of the Sydney Catholic Schools Building and Finance Commission. In 1967, a widower, he began studying theology at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome, and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Sir Norman Gilroy at Wahroonga on 10 July 1971 in a church designed by his late wife. He was sent to Strathfield as a curate. Davey died at the presbytery there in 1975, aged 68, of a coronary occlusion and was interred at Mona Vale beside his wife.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geoffrey Davey

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geoffrey Davey claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geoffrey Davey before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geoffrey Davey ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geoffrey Davey

In research: Geoffrey Davey appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geoffrey Davey in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geoffrey Davey is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1906 births, 1975 deaths, 20th-century Australian Roman Catholic priests, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geoffrey Davey outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Geoffrey Davey in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geoffrey Davey means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geoffrey Davey out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geoffrey Davey in simple terms?

Why does Geoffrey Davey matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geoffrey Davey?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geoffrey Davey.