What is Engineering?
Hello
My Friends, Welcome to the Civil Stunner.
First
of all, I start simply with, “What is engineering?”
Let’s
take a moment to think about your morning.
The
alarm on your phone goes off at 7:00, you drag yourself to the shower and blast
yourself with perfectly warm water in an attempt to wake up. You smear your
toothbrush with toothpaste and scrub yourself into a foamy mesh of minty
freshness. Now you running late, so you skate downtown weaving through commuters,
dart across the road barely making light and jump on the train just before door
beep shut. There is a couple of stops to go so you pull out your phone and play
some games or be online at social media apps. Alarms, trains, traffic lights,
video games, toothpaste. All these things were made possible by Engineers.
But
what prompts to engineers to improve our world?
Well,
they solve problems. Problems are an engineer’s inspiration and math and
science are the creative tools that they used to solve them.
Now
what are the problems?
Problems
like making your alarm go off at right time or making sure your toothpaste is
just the right balance of chemicals to give you the perfect smile. Even making
a game so addictive that it’s almost impossible to put down, if that really is
a problem.
Now,
let’s head over to the airport and jump on a flight. Flights, they are so easy
to take for granted. But don’t forget you can fly!!!! Before flights, flying
was quite a bit more challenging. Every bit of your plane/flight has been
touched by engineers.
A Mechanical
and Civil engineers design engine and other parts, a Mechatronic engineers devises the
controls, the fuel? Extracted by Mining engineers and refined by Chemical
engineers. The navigation systems? Electrical and Software engineers created
those. Yes, a whole team of engineers.
Now,
we landed in Dubai, home of the Burj Khalifa.
It’s world’s tallest biding at 829.8 meters high. It’s also world’s hottest
environments, reaching up to 50 degrees in summer.
One
of the difficulties of this building was trying to figure out how to set
forty-five thousand cubic meters of reinforced concrete in such extreme weather.
The
solution? A clever method of pumping iced liquid concrete into the 55,000 tones
steel frame during the night.
The
result? A building that’s vertically over 800 meters high, rather than
horizontally all over the ground.
Now,
let’s jump into our time machine and go back to Saturday March 1932.
The
Sydney harbour bridge is about to open. The bridge is a marvel of Civil
Engineering, and a pretty cool place to set off some fireworks. Since 1815
people had been talking about building a bridge to connect the two sides of the
harbour.
The
problem was that the harbour was so incredibly wide, how could a bridge span
such a width and support its own weight?
The
solution? The Romans!!! Well actually it was an idea they came up with. The arched
bridge works by transferring the weight into horizontal forces, and bracing
them at ends of the arch.
But,
what about the future?
What
problems will engineers solve next?
Will
we finally have affordable solar power? Or robots that can perform life-saving
surgery, or a building that’s so tall your view is of outer space. How about
finally engineering a working hover board? Seriously we’ve waited long enough.
So,
what is engineering? Its solving problems. It’s taking crazy, out their ideas
and seeing if they’re actually possible. And when they are, the idea is shared
with the world to make all our lives better.
So,
what problems do you want to solve, comment it below.
Thank
You for Reading,
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