Engineering is the application of scientific principles to solve a problem. I have chosen this definition to start with because it seems like a simple one, but it’s actually pretty broad. It also covers everything that engineering does in the most basic sense. This definition covers everything from bridges and skyscrapers to washing machines and televisions. These are all products of engineering, so they fit right into what this first sentence says about manufacturing engineering being “the application of scientific principles”. Let’s think about some examples:
Bridges and Skyscrapers: The science behind these massive structures is both physics and mathematics; there are formulas involved in figuring out how much weight something can hold without collapsing! You can’t just guess at those things if you want to be safe for people who walk across your bridge or drive on your interstate highway system that has overpasses and underpasses (interchanges). If you’re not careful when designing these systems, people will die when a bridge collapses or cars crash into each other on an interstate highway interchange! That would never happen! Would it? Well…yes actually. There were two fatal crashes on an Interchange within two days earlier this year in January 2014 (according to Google News), which happened because someone tried driving around road construction barriers near the Ohio/Indiana border that were causing traffic bottlenecks during rush hour traffic times. Modern challenges of engineering have to be addressed in a responsible manner if they are going to help us, rather than hurt us. The risk of failure is too high when people don’t address these issues accordingly.
Washing Machines and Televisions: These pieces of technology are also excellent examples of how engineering can solve problems for us. The first washing machine was invented in the late 1800s by an American woman named Mable A. M. Woodhouse who was tired of her clothes getting dirty when she had to wash them by hand along with everyone else in the house. She thought about ways to solve this problem, and it took her a few years to build the first washing machine prototype. But she did it! It wasn’t easy, and she had to test all sorts of things out for hours on end, but she finally came up with a good solution that made her clothes clean again (she had been using sand as an abrasive in the tub). Now we don’t have to scrub our clothes by hand anymore; they’re clean through modern technology! After a few decades, another woman named Margaret Knight invented an improved washing machine design that put Ms. Woodhouse’s original design out of business. She didn’t get anything from this invention for herself (she never patented it), so someone else got rich off of what she invented; that’s just how capitalism works sometimes, unfortunately…she died penniless despite inventing something that is still used today around the world! Television was also invented around this time period (in 1926) by Philo Farnsworth who was only 14 years old at the time he came up with his idea while he was helping his dad out on their farm one day and he noticed how fast electrons moved through some wires when sunlight hit them. He used this to figure out a way to transmit signals over long distances, and the rest is history. People wanted television sets for their homes (I’m one of them), and now we have televisions in every home around the world!
What Do We Need Engineers For?
So what do you need an engineer for? Well…think of our modern world. Would we have any buildings where people live? Would there be roads for us to drive on or bridges that hold up traffic during rush hour times? If you couldn’t drive, would you be able to get anywhere at all without walking everywhere instead? If the answer is no, then why are there so many engineers in our society today? It’s because engineering makes things possible that otherwise wouldn’t exist if they weren’t there. Without engineers, we wouldn’t have any skyscrapers or bridges; we’d still be riding horses instead of driving cars too! So I hope this list has made it clear: We need engineers to make life easier for everyone by providing solutions when problems arise. The more innovations they come up with, the better off we all are as a society.
I would say yes, engineering is necessary. Without engineers, we wouldn’t have all of the conveniences that we now enjoy in our everyday lives thanks to modern technology. We also wouldn’t have things like skyscrapers or the interstate highway system if it weren’t for engineers who designed those things in the first place. I’m not sure why people think that engineering has no value; they should be asking themselves how much their life would suck without a washing machine or television instead. A lot of people don’t realize this because they take these inventions for granted, but you can see from my examples above that there are a lot of problems to solve before something becomes a reality! Don’t take anything for granted in your life…it could disappear at any time because someone isn’t thinking about how hard it was to invent it in the first place!
Thanks so much for reading this post if you made it all the way through! I really appreciate your time and attention here on my blog so please share this link around if you liked what you read here today and let’s get more people interested in science & technology education through our schools and communities together as one world community focused on learning and discovery from each other together as friends! Thanks again, everyone…and happy wonderful holidays!!