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Thinking About Engineering

March 2009

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What is Engineering?

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Is it?

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Is it?

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Is it?

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What is it?

• It is all of these and more

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What is Engineering?

• From Wikipedia.com– “Engineering is the discipline and profession

of applying technical and scientific knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria.”

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What we think engineers are

• Argh!

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Think Again

• Engineers are good at:– Making things– Inventing things– Designing things– Repairing things– Breaking things

• And they often look just like the rest of us!

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Breaking Things

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Engineers can be nerdy but…

• Not all of them are…here are some examples

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Toy Designer

• Shannon Bruzelius• Toy Designer

– Invents new toys, especially pool toys

– Keep swim gear handy to test in pool

– Tests walkie-talkies and other toys with colleagues out on the streets

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Wii Fit Inventor

• Shigeru Miyamoto

• Dreams up new games for Nintendo Wii including– Donkey Kong & Mario– Wii – Wii Fit

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Do you need to be a trained engineer?

• It helps a lot but amateur engineers have delivered many incredible products and ideas– Thomas Edison – first commercial light bulb– Wright brothers (bicycle mechanics) – first

airplane– Thomas Jefferson (president) – swivel chair– George Washington (president) – farm

equipment

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NASA Gloves

• NASA held a competition in 2007 to try and create usable gloves for astronauts, instead of the immobile gloves they currently used– Unemployed engineer, Peter

Homer and his 14 year old son Matt, designed and built a more flexible glove for astronauts

– They used Duct tape as a prototype

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iPOD

• Kane Kramer– Invented the idea in

1979– Patented in 1980– Amateur Inventor

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Wristies

• 10 year old Kathryn Gregory• According to Wristies, "On a

cold and snowy winter's day, 10 year old K-K Gregory was out building a snow fort when her wrists started to hurt because they were cold and wet. She remedied the problem by inventing Wristies, and wore them under her coat and mittens.*

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Would you like to be an engineer?

An engineer is someone who sees a problem and works out how to fix it.

An engineer can be an every day person, or highly trained

An engineer solves puzzles and problems of every day life

An engineer can make the difference

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What next?

• If you have a product that doesn’t work well– If you have an idea on how to improve

something (like Kathryn Gregory)– Think about how you would fix it

• Join FIRST groups in the area

• Tinker

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What can you do?

• Products that we have today are often not ‘good enough’. If you have one, think about how it could be better

• Start simple projects such as solar powered toys

• Join FIRST and other such organizations

• Tinker