Download or read book How Engineers Create the World written by William S. Hammack and published by Bill Hammack. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In over 200 delightful short essays Bill captures the creativity and impact of engineers. He talks of their spectacular achievements - jets, satellites, skyscrapers, and fiber optics - but draws his deepest insights from the everyday, the quotidian. He finds beauty, elegance and meaning in Ferris wheels, Tupperware, Slinkys, mood rings, waterless urinals and Velcro. Delivered originally on public radio between 1999 and 2006, each essay is a small slice of the world created by engineers. The essays also illuminate and inform about the important topics of our day by showing how intertwined engineering and technology are with terrorism, security, intellectual property and our cultural legacy.

Download or read book The Perfectionists written by Simon Winchester and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Another gem from one of the world’s justly celebrated historians specializing in unusual and always fascinating subjects and people.” — Booklist (starred review) The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future. The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider. Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia. As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?

Download or read book Why Engineers Need to Grow a Long Tail written by Bill Hammack and published by Bill Hammack. This book was released on 2010-08-23 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often the details of new media get lost in an alphabet soup that usually begins with an "i" - the iPod, the iPad, the iTouch. Yet the essence of new media is not in these devices, but in their use. This short primer shows engineers how to think about new media by focusing on the deeper issues of communicating in this new user- generated era. Readers will grasp the mindset of new media; an under- standing that will long outlast the latest social networking tools. It will empower practicing engineers to develop new, powerful ways to help the public understand what engineers do and why engineering is important; but perhaps most importantly this primer gives engineers the foundation for reaching the next generation of innovative engineers.

Download or read book Applied Minds How Engineers Think written by Guru Madhavan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Engineers are titans of real-world problem-solving. . . . In this riveting study of how they think, [Guru Madhavan] puts behind-the-scenes geniuses . . . center stage.”—Nature In this engaging account of innovative triumphs, Guru Madhavan examines the ways in which engineers throughout history created world-changing tools, from ATMs and ZIP codes to the digital camera and the disposable diaper. Equal parts personal, practical, and profound, Applied Minds charts a path to a future where we borrow strategies from engineering to find inspired solutions to our most pressing challenges.

Download or read book A Framework for K 12 Science Education written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Download or read book Engineering a Safer World written by Nancy G. Leveson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-01-13 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new approach to safety, based on systems thinking, that is more effective, less costly, and easier to use than current techniques. Engineering has experienced a technological revolution, but the basic engineering techniques applied in safety and reliability engineering, created in a simpler, analog world, have changed very little over the years. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leveson proposes a new approach to safety—more suited to today's complex, sociotechnical, software-intensive world—based on modern systems thinking and systems theory. Revisiting and updating ideas pioneered by 1950s aerospace engineers in their System Safety concept, and testing her new model extensively on real-world examples, Leveson has created a new approach to safety that is more effective, less expensive, and easier to use than current techniques. Arguing that traditional models of causality are inadequate, Leveson presents a new, extended model of causation (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes, or STAMP), then shows how the new model can be used to create techniques for system safety engineering, including accident analysis, hazard analysis, system design, safety in operations, and management of safety-critical systems. She applies the new techniques to real-world events including the friendly-fire loss of a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter in the first Gulf War; the Vioxx recall; the U.S. Navy SUBSAFE program; and the bacterial contamination of a public water supply in a Canadian town. Leveson's approach is relevant even beyond safety engineering, offering techniques for “reengineering” any large sociotechnical system to improve safety and manage risk.

Download or read book Engineer Your Own Success written by Anthony Fasano and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on basic skills and tips for career enhancement, Engineer Your Own Success is a guide to improving efficiency and performance in any engineering field. It imparts valuable organization tips, communication advice, networking tactics, and practical assistance for preparing for the PE exam—every necessary skill for success. Authored by a highly renowned career coach, this book is a battle plan for climbing the rungs of any engineering ladder.

Download or read book The Global Engineers written by Evan Thomas and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Global Engineers: Building a Safe and Equitable World Together, is inspired by the opportunities for engineers to contribute to global prosperity. This book presents a vision for Global Engineering, and identifies that engineers should be concerned with the unequal and unjust distribution of access to basic services, such as water, sanitation, energy, food, transportation, and shelter. As engineers, we should place an emphasis on identifying the drivers, determinants, and solutions to increasing equitable access to reliable services. Global Engineering envisions a world where everyone has safe water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure, and can live in health, dignity, and prosperity. This book seeks to examine the role and ultimately the impact of engineers in global development. Engineers are solutions-oriented people. We enjoy the opportunity to identify a product or need, and design appropriate technical solutions. However, the structural and historical barriers to global prosperity requires that Engineers focus more broadly on improving the tools and practice of poverty reduction and that we include health, economics, policy, and governance as relevant expertise with which we are conversant. Engineers must become activists and advocates, rejecting ahistorical technocratic approaches that suggest poverty can be solved without justice or equity. Engineers must leverage our professional skills and capacity to generate evidence and positive impact toward rectifying inequalities and improving lives. Half of this book is dedicated to profiles of engineers and other technical professionals who have dedicated their careers to searching for solutions to global development challenges. These stories introduce the reader to the diverse opportunities and challenges in Global Engineering.

Download or read book Eight Amazing Engineering Stories written by Bill Hammack and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight Amazing Engineering Stories reveals the stories behind how engineers use specific elements to create the material world around us. In eight chapters, the EngineerGuy team exposes the magnificence of the innovation and engineering of digital camera imagers, tiny accelerometers, atomic clocks, enriched uranium, batteries, microwave ovens, lasers, and anodized metals. In addition, short primers cover the scientific principles underlying the engineering, including waves, nuclear structure, and electronic transitions. "In Depth" sections cover entropy, semiconductors, and the mathematics of capacitors. Eight Amazing Engineering Stories forms the basis of the fourth series of EngineerGuy videos found on-line.

Download or read book Engineering Rules written by JoAnne Yates and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Finalist, Hagley Prize in Business History, The Hagley Museum and Library / The Business History Conference Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive, if rarely noticed, impact on all of our lives. This type of standard setting was established in the 1880s, when engineers aimed to prove their status as professionals by creating useful standards that would be widely adopted by manufacturers while satisfying corporate customers. Yates and Murphy explain how these engineers' processes provided a timely way to set desirable standards that would have taken much longer to emerge from the market and that governments were rarely willing to set. By the 1920s, the standardizers began to think of themselves as critical to global prosperity and world peace. After World War II, standardizers transcended Cold War divisions to create standards that made the global economy possible. Finally, Yates and Murphy reveal how, since 1990, a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while applying the same standard-setting process to regulate the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy. Drawing on archival materials from three continents, Yates and Murphy describe the positive ideals that sparked the standardization movement, the ways its leaders tried to realize those ideals, and the challenges the movement faces today. Engineering Rules is a riveting global history of the people, processes, and organizations that created and maintain this nearly invisible infrastructure of today's economy, which is just as important as the state or the global market.

Download or read book Make Think Imagine written by John Browne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's unprecedented pace of change leaves many people wondering what new technologies are doing to our lives. Has social media robbed us of our privacy and fed us with false information? Are the decisions about our health, security and finances made by computer programs inexplicable and biased? Will these algorithms become so complex that we can no longer control them? Are robots going to take our jobs? Can we provide housing for our ever-growing urban populations? And has our demand for energy driven the Earth's climate to the edge of catastrophe?John Browne argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance. Civilization is founded on engineering innovation; all progress stems from the human urge to make things and to shape the world around us, resulting in greater freedom, health and wealth for all. Drawing on history, his own experiences and conversations with many of today's great innovators, he uncovers the basis for all progress and its consequences, both good and bad. He argues compellingly that the same spark that triggers each innovation can be used to counter its negative consequences. Make, Think, Imagine provides an eloquent blueprint for how we can keep moving towards a brighter future.

Download or read book Imagine Design Create written by Tom Wujec and published by Melcher Media Incorporated. This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine, Design, Create offers a wide-ranging look at how the creative process and the tools of design are dramatically changing--and where design is headed in the coming years. Bringing together stories of good design happening around the world, the book shows how people are using fresh design approaches and new capabilities to solve problems, create opportunities, and improve the way we live and work. From the impact of SOM's Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland to the spark that inspired Thomas Heatherwick's U.K. Pavilion in Shanghai; from the new processes fueling Zaha Hadid's extraordinary architecture to the digital tools Ford is using to transform car design, each of these stories explores questions that swirl around the idea of design. How does design change our lives for the better? How is our capacity to produce good design evolving? How will the next generation of designers work? What will they make? What new areas of human experience is design opening for us? Now that designers can do almost anything--what should they do? The Publisher has two cover versions for this title. The books will ship with either a black or white cover. The interior contents are the same.

Download or read book Beyond Engineering written by Robert Pool and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-07-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have long recognized technology as a driving force behind much historical and cultural change. The invention of the printing press initiated the Reformation. The development of the compass ushered in the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World. The cotton gin created the conditions that led to the Civil War. Now, in Beyond Engineering, science writer Robert Pool turns the question around to examine how society shapes technology. Drawing on such disparate fields as history, economics, risk analysis, management science, sociology, and psychology, Pool illuminates the complex, often fascinating interplay between machines and society, in a book that will revolutionize how we think about technology. We tend to think that reason guides technological development, that engineering expertise alone determines the final form an invention takes. But if you look closely enough at the history of any invention, says Pool, you will find that factors unrelated to engineering seem to have an almost equal impact. In his wide-ranging volume, he traces developments in nuclear energy, automobiles, light bulbs, commercial electricity, and personal computers, to reveal that the ultimate shape of a technology often has as much to do with outside and unforeseen forces. For instance, Pool explores the reasons why steam-powered cars lost out to internal combustion engines. He shows that the Stanley Steamer was in many ways superior to the Model T--it set a land speed record in 1906 of more than 127 miles per hour, it had no transmission (and no transmission headaches), and it was simpler (one Stanley engine had only twenty-two moving parts) and quieter than a gas engine--but the steamers were killed off by factors that had little or nothing to do with their engineering merits, including the Stanley twins' lack of business acumen and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. Pool illuminates other aspects of technology as well. He traces how seemingly minor decisions made early along the path of development can have profound consequences further down the road, and perhaps most important, he argues that with the increasing complexity of our technological advances--from nuclear reactors to genetic engineering--the number of things that can go wrong multiplies, making it increasingly difficult to engineer risk out of the equation. Citing such catastrophes as Bhopal, Three Mile Island, the Exxon Valdez, the Challenger, and Chernobyl, he argues that is it time to rethink our approach to technology. The days are gone when machines were solely a product of larger-than-life inventors and hard-working engineers. Increasingly, technology will be a joint effort, with its design shaped not only by engineers and executives but also psychologists, political scientists, management theorists, risk specialists, regulators and courts, and the general public. Whether discussing bovine growth hormone, molten-salt reactors, or baboon-to-human transplants, Beyond Engineering is an engaging look at modern technology and an illuminating account of how technology and the modern world shape each other.

Download or read book The Art of Doing Science and Engineering written by Richard W. Hamming and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking treatise by one of the great mathematicians of our time, who argues that highly effective thinking can be learned. What spurs on and inspires a great idea? Can we train ourselves to think in a way that will enable world-changing understandings and insights to emerge? Richard Hamming said we can, and first inspired a generation of engineers, scientists, and researchers in 1986 with "You and Your Research," an electrifying sermon on why some scientists do great work, why most don't, why he did, and why you should, too. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is the full expression of what "You and Your Research" outlined. It's a book about thinking; more specifically, a style of thinking by which great ideas are conceived. The book is filled with stories of great people performing mighty deeds––but they are not meant to simply be admired. Instead, they are to be aspired to, learned from, and surpassed. Hamming consistently returns to Shannon’s information theory, Einstein’s relativity, Grace Hopper’s work on high-level programming, Kaiser’s work on digital fillers, and his own error-correcting codes. He also recounts a number of his spectacular failures as clear examples of what to avoid. Originally published in 1996 and adapted from a course that Hamming taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, this edition includes an all-new foreword by designer, engineer, and founder of Dynamicland Bret Victor, and more than 70 redrawn graphs and charts. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is a reminder that a childlike capacity for learning and creativity are accessible to everyone. Hamming was as much a teacher as a scientist, and having spent a lifetime forming and confirming a theory of great people, he prepares the next generation for even greater greatness.

Download or read book Dream Invent Create written by Alison Buki and published by . This book was released on 2013-10-30 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the inspiring possibilities of engineering

Download or read book Engineering In Time The Systematics Of Engineering History And Its Contemporary Context written by Brian W Baetz and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2004-06-14 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engineering represents an ordered activity of creative design and inventive manufacture of ingenious devices. Its practitioners have thereby stimulated individuals, enlivened communities, enriched civilizations, and contributed to the shaping of cultures.The authors of this innovative text develop a systematic framework for engineering in time, making extensive use of adaptive heterogeneous progressions. When combined with considerations of feedback, feedforward, recursion, and branching, an evolving and comprehensive characterization of engineering becomes evident. It is in this blending of chronology, emerging theory, and professional practice that engineering finds its foundational role in innovative design, device reliability, intellectual property, technology risks, public safety, professional ethics, material accounting, and other recurring themes relevant to contemporary engineering. Engineering clearly emerges as a complex and increasingly important profession.The authors introduce concepts and methods — including a critical definition of engineering -and selectively adapt symbolic-mathematical relations. The technical level of analysis is suitable for the undergraduate curriculum commonly encountered in colleges of engineering./a

Download or read book Forces Shaping the U S Academic Engineering Research Enterprise written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1995-08-12 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The way in which academic engineering research is financed and public expectations for the outcomes from such research are changing at an unprecedented rate. The decrease in support of defense-related research, coupled with the realization that many U.S. technological products are no longer competitive in the global market, has sent a shock wave through research universities that train engineers. This book argues for several concrete actions on the part of universities, government, and industry to ensure the flow and relevance of technical talent to meet national social and economic goals, to maintain a position of leadership in the global economy, and to preserve and enhance the nation's engineering knowledge base.