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What is Engineering?

What do Scotty on the Starship Enterprise, Neil Armstrong, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Bill Nye all have in common? They're all engineers! Engineers are capable of doing some amazing things: they solve problems in society that might seem impossible at first, like designing and building the first suspension bridge, assembling the equipment to put man on the moon, or creating the steam engine. In fact, that's where the word 'engineer' comes from: engineers are the individuals responsible for building everything from the steam engine to the engine in your car. But, what exactly is engineering?

Engineering is a scientific field and job that involves taking our scientific understanding of the natural world and using it to invent, design, and build things to solve problems and achieve practical goals. This can include the development of roads, bridges, cars, planes, machines, tools, processes, and computers. The things engineers build are called technology. Without technology, the modern world simply wouldn't exist. We're surrounded by the work of engineers practically every moment of our lives.

There are many different types of engineering. The most significant ones are civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering.

Civil engineering is probably the first one that comes to mind when people think about engineering. These are the roads, bridges, dams, buildings, and canals that make up our human communities and infrastructure. All of those structures are designed and built under the supervision of civil engineers.

Mechanical engineering is what puts the 'engine' into engineering. This is often where the problem-solving cleverness of engineers is most on display. Mechanical engineers can turn one type of energy into another one, or one type of motion into another, to solve problems. They're responsible for cogs and levers, joints and belts, cams and wheels, and shafts and pulleys. These basic structures, when taken to a highly complex level, lead to things like steam engines and the internal combustion engine of cars. Mechanical engineering, therefore, encompasses everything from car mechanics, to air-conditioning systems, to military aircrafts and robotics.

Electrical engineering might be less acknowledged than other types of engineering, but it's probably the most central to the modern world in which we live. It's hard to imagine a world without electricity and electronics. From computers to televisions, to digital cameras to cell phones, each of these technologies is a product of electrical engineering. It began with simple electrical systems like the telegraph, telephone, and light bulb, and advanced more and more from there.

Chemical engineering is perhaps the least well known, but it's a no less important part of the field. It involves producing chemicals, such as man-made and space-age materials, and fuels for human use. The gas you put in your car exists thanks to chemical engineering. So do polyester clothes, plastic toys and bottles, and even treatments for diseases, which often involve chemical engineering processes.

When you put all of these pieces together, you see that the modern world we live in would be completely impossible without engineering; and even into the future, the problem-solving skills of engineers have the potential to solve many problems.

With every new century comes new challenges. We have many problems still to solve, and engineers can help us solve them. How many problems can you think of that engineers might be able to solve in the 21st century?

One of the most significant problems humanity is currently facing is the threat of climate change. It's engineers who will figure out how to improve sustainable sources of energy, making it easier for people to use them. It's engineers who will work on ways to provide plenty of clean water for the growing human population without using too much energy in the process. Engineers might even find viable ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reversing the process of climate change, or find ways to capture the carbon dioxide we're currently producing. Many of these tasks are feasible already, but the cheaper and easier they are to do, the more likely people will do them.

Other problems humanity faces are the issues of poverty and world hunger. Already, things are much better than they would be without engineering. The farming technology we use today, for instance, allows us to create huge quantities of food with relatively little effort. There is no way we could have so many people alive on Earth without it.

There are dozens of additional problems that engineers may solve over the next century. Maybe we'll have automatic irons, fully solar-powered cars, household robots, virtual-reality computers, advanced medicines, cheap and easy-to-build bullet trains, or fusion power. Whatever we learn from scientific research, engineers will be there to put it to use in our lives.

Let's review what we've learned. Engineering is the means by which we take our scientific knowledge of the world and use it to invent, design, and build technologies to solve problems in our lives. Engineering includes civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering.

Together, these fields of engineering have shaped the modern world and will continue to do so in the future. Whether it's household robots or advanced medicines, engineers will put science into practice.

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What is Engineering? | Engineering Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript ...