1. A computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program operable to perform a method comprising the steps of: receiving input comprising a description of a thermally conductive physical object and a differential equation representing heat conduction of the physical object; dividing a region into a plurality of finite elements to resolve an engineering problem, the region representing at least a portion of the physical object analyzed by the engineering problem; determining for each of said finite elements a respective approximate solution for the differential equation which relates to said region, the approximate solution determined according to piecewise approximation of said region, the differential equation describing a physical property of the object and comprising one or more derivatives; expressing each of the one or more derivatives according to a series expansion of each of the one or more derivatives to yield an expressed derivative; determining a differential formulation which approximates said differential equation by substituting the expressed derivative for each of the one or more derivatives of the differential equation; combining said determined approximate solutions and said differential formulation to obtain a set of algebraic equations; establishing a characteristic comprising heat conduction of the object using the set of algebraic equations in order to resolve the engineering problem; and displaying on a computer display a report describing the heat conduction of the object that resolves the engineering problem.