greatest achievements in science and engineering 2

[25362]

This is in fact a continuation to the interesting and instructive thread769-94507 started by zdas04 which has become "long" but not exhausted.

Anyway, let's add to the list the discovery of soap. Although probably known to the Babylonians almost 5000 years ago and by the Phoenicians and ancient Egyptians, it was the Romans who passed along -in writing- the secrets of soap preparation. They knew that heating goat fat with extracts of wood (strongly basic) ashes, or lye, produces soap.

I'll leave it to the readers to think, speculate, reflect and ponder about the importance of soap to human civilization, including the much later Friedel-Crafts alkylation and sulfonation which brought us the magic of tailor-made synthetic detergents.

 

[RalphChristie]

http://www.greatachievements.org/greatachievements/

 

[25362]

To RalphCristie, thanks for the link.

More mundane achievements such as meat cooking methods: barbecuing, boiling, broiling, frying, microwaving, roasting, steaming and stewing, seem to be more primordial achievements in the use of heat or fire to enable human survival.

Nobody knew at the start, that the chemical reactions between carbohydrates and aminoacids on the surface of meat due to direct high heating is the cause of a flavorful brown crust. And that heat causes myoglobin to lose oxygen, the connective tissue to become partly denatured, the fat to melt, and proteins to form a network enclosing most of the water. That was the ulterior work of science. In this sense it seems that engineering pre-dated science by a long stretch.

Any comments ?

 

[PSE]

Necessity is the mother of invention. Invention is one of the foundations of engineering. Science brings the knowledge of why it works.

Regards

 

[plasgears]

Notables by branch of engineering:

Civil Eng'g: Water purification, power dams, bridges, tunnels, structures, flood control, etc.

Mech/Ind Eng'g: engines, automobiles and trucks, trains, labor saving tools and appliances, automation, robotics, weapons, etc.

Aero Eng'g: airplanes, missiles, aerospace developments, etc.

Elect Eng'g: radio, TV, electronics, printed circuits, semi-conducters, computer, power distr, programmable controllers, radar, ATC, satelite comm, etc.

Chem Eng'g: Food, chem, and pharm processing, petroleum processing, food preservation, etc.

Bio/Med Eng'g: prostetics, various diagnostic machines, life support systems, emergency systems, etc.

I am sure I left out something; sorry. Engineering helps characterize much of what we consider life in modern times.

 

[jay165]

My vote is the Manhattan Project with Gen. Leslie Groves as the greatest project engineer of all time.

 

[gearguru]

My vote goes to the inventing and developing the Global Positioning System (GPS). Amazing technology, perfectly applied, used for free by anybody ariund the world who has the money to buy a receiver.

 

[vonbad]

I think this thread has passed away, but I thought I would toss in my 2 cents

How about the transistor.

 

[ScottyUK]

Or the thermionic valve?



----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[CRG]

Gibbs work on entropy

 

[GregLocock]

Ooh, nice one.

How about Rayleigh's work on acoustics? Written 120 (ish) years ago and still pretty much defines the theoretical basis of the entire field.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[jmw]

While we are considering math, and not neglecting the considerable contribution of the Arabs; algebra etc, perhaps we should remember some of those philosophical abstract things like zero, infinity, the square root of minus 1 and negative time (Fenyman diagrams).
We could also consider the profound value of the triangle e.g. the square on the hypotenuse = the sum of the squares on the other two sides which, even before Pythagporus produced a proof, was widely used in construction.
Some of the simplest things......


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[CRG]

Was it Newton, Leibniz, or both that are the father of calculus? Look at the following site:

http://www.angelfire.com/md/byme/mathsample.html

 

[IRstuff]

If all you had were algebra and geometry, you'd be unable to solve:

>> equations of state --> no HVAC, except through empirically generating psychrometric charts, no quantum mechanics, no blackbody theory

>> linear differential equations --> no electronic filter theory, no diode or transistor analysis, no Laplace transforms, no Fourier transforms, no structural analysis, no Bernoulli's equations



TTFN

 

[quark]

Even the fundamental and basic principles of Geometry were first observed by Archinedes using an early form of calculus(i.e approximation) and then proved in a classical way to satisfy Aristotle's idealogy. Archimedes did knew the importance of this approximation.

JMW,

Gauss already proved that (-1)^1/2 is not abstract and we can devise a mechanism to produce this effect.

This link gives the ingenious way of how it is done.

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2002-18/bruce1/gauss1.html

(PS: pdf format is better to read)

Regards,