Definition of an Engineer 26

[Ashereng]

I recently brought my little ones to my office, to see where I work.

They have only seen me "colour" my drawing, and working on my computer at home, and seem to think that engineering consists of:
1) drinking a lot of coffee (yes, I am cutting back)
2) colouring (I do a lot of back checking and review)
3) surfing the web (I do a lot of design and sizing on my computer)

However, this descripton aside, how would you describe/define engineering to a group of Grade 10s? I don't mean the specific type of engineers, like a piping engineer works on a project to bring oil from Alaska to Texas, but more generic

What does an "engineer" do?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[GregLocock]

That's just them naughty scientists stealing the engineering word to give themselves some credibility.

More seriously, sure, some of what we do is scientific. There again some of what real scientists do (say Feynman diagrams) is pretty much rule of thumb, or orders of magnitude estimation, inside a conceptual framework.

Yet, vast lumps of what we do, that keeps aeroplanes flying, bridges up in the air, chemicals sploshing about, and engines going round, is based far more on experience and approximations than any thorough, deep, understanding of the way the systems behave in theory.

If I might borrow some leet slang, we, quite literally and meatphorically, /hack/ the physical world.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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[25362]

Following your line of thought I'd say that scientists do the same. The hallmark of a scientific theory is not what it seems to explain, but rather what it predicts.

More often than not it proceeds by a reverse use of logic. Sometimes predictions turn out to be wrong. But when they aren't as, for example, after the canonical Newton laws of mechanics F=ma, and F = GMm/r[sup]2[/sup] showed to suit nicely the predicted planetary orbital periods (an experimental verification), the reverse logic was used to confirm the truth of the expressions.

Sometimes a mathematical instrument is used to prove a theory. Take, for example, the Poisson statistics; it is used to "confirm" atomic random decay, although no one knows for sure how this decay really happens, not even if the decay is actually random.
But if the statistics "works", as in this case, the theory is considered valid.

No doubt the old idiom: the proof of the pudding is in the eating is used as the gauge of success of many a human undertaking.

 

[Ashereng]

Engineering is a branch of knowledge and as such is usually considered a science.

Are you saying then that engineering is not unique, but is in fact science? And by extension, we are not engineers, but scientists?


"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[Longinthetooth]

A chemical engineer is someone who talks engineering in the presence of chemists, chemistry in the presence of engineers, and politics in the presence of both.

 

[25362]

Yes, engineering is considered by many an applied science. Visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

to get an idea of the general thinking on the subject.

 

[Ashereng]

25362,

I was prompting for your definition of an engineer.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[EnglishMuffin]

I have noticed over the years, having lived a considerable time on both sides of the Atlantic, that the term "scientist" seems to be used more broadly in the US than in Britain and the associated countries of the former British Empire. I recall Alistair Cooke saying on one of his "Letters From America" broadcasts that "scientist" was a word that was actually coined in the US, so I assume Americans are at liberty to use the term as broadly as they choose, since after all, they invented it. And to continually complain, as I once did, that "Rocket Scientists" are really "Rocket Engineers", is certainly a lost cause, and probably an overly narrow view - although it should be mentioned that when these things go wrong, for some reason they are always referred to as "Engineering Failures". On the other hand, I also recall reading that no less an authority than Richard Feynman has said that everything they did during WWII at Los Alamos was actually Engineering, not Science. But I imagine there are few members of the general public who would make such a distiction.

 

[25362]

It was said that scientists build in order to learn and engineers learn in order to build. I believe that this old distinction is becoming blurred and exhausted. Science and engineering frequently overlap. Examples abound.

Engineering is now categorized as a subfield in the science kingdom.
This is perhaps because all engineers use scientific methods, and all of them theorize, each one in their particular field of expertise.

By accepting this new taxonomy I must admit that we are engineers in the sense I explained in my previous post and are part of the scientific family as well.

 

[GregLocock]

We are not scientists, or if we are we are very bad ones. We rarely use the scientific method. Our results are not really peer reviewed.

Cheers

Greg Locock

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[Ashereng]

Also, I think we don't theorise as much as we guess most of the time.

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Albert Einstein
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[Ashereng]

A very educated guess mind.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[25362]

Although peripheral at first sight, a thread that contains postings touching the subject in hand: thread769-94507.

 

[waross]

What is an engineer. I heard a definition atributed to an engineer with a Phd. in engineering.
"If you can design something, build it, and it works, you are an engineer."
I may have missed it but I was surprised not to see zero mentioned in thread769-94507. Computers, working at the basic level with ones and zeros would be severly handicapted without their zeros. Zero and orders of magnitude, does order of magnitude have any meaning in regards to Roman notation?
I am sure there are many other examples of the importance of zero in everything from basic arithmetic on up.
yours

 

[Ashereng]

What is the roman numeral for "zero"?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[Jabberwocky]

I didn't think the Romans had 0, didn't the Indians invent it?

 

[Ashereng]

Don't know.

waross mentioned zero and roman notation.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[waross]

Hi Ashereng
The point I was trying to make (not very well I guess) was that
1> I didn't think that Roman numerals had a zero and
2> It may be hard to express orders of magnitude in Roman numerals.
I may be wrong on one or both counts.
respectfully

 

[sms]

So we have lots of opinions on what an engineer does in general, and the orignial poster tells us that he colors, surfs the web and drinks coffee. Maybe we need some more data points. I am a liscensed mechanical engineer.

I spend a lot of time messing with computers, surfing the web, and drinking coffee, but I also:

Travel a good bit.

Over see others doing maintenance work on process machinery

Gather data from instruments and run calculations on that data (more computer time).

Ride helicopters out to off shore oil platforms.

Climb up into the drive train of wind turbines

Visit refineries, LNG plants, and chemical plants.

Oversee the attachment very large and heavy chunks of steel to cranes and fly that steel through the air.

It is really quite fun! B-)

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

 

[TurbulentFluid]

I'd agree with the guy who said "an engineer can make for a dollar, what anyone else can make for 2".

Also, one of my college instructors made an interesting point:
"There were no flaws in constructions prior to the existance of engineers."

 

[HgTX]

"There were no flaws in constructions prior to the existance of engineers."

What the hell does that even mean?

Hg

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