{"id":9447,"date":"2014-11-06T14:36:42","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T03:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legoeng.local?p=9447&preview_id=9447"},"modified":"2017-09-07T20:30:40","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T10:30:40","slug":"what-is-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legoeng.local\/what-is-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"What is engineering?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gearingdown\"<\/a>Engineering is the process of\u00a0designing of solutions to human problems. Engineers apply ingenuity in devising novel solutions, using expert knowledge of the properties of materials and systems to model the behavior of the design.<\/p>\n

In ancient and medieval times \u00a0engineering was primarily concerned with the design of military fortifications and weapons (engines<\/em> of war) from\u00a0ingeniare<\/em>\u00a0\u2018contrive, devise\u2019. Indeed, the first engineering school in the United States was West Point Military Academy.\u00a0Civil engineering, which involves the design of roads, bridges, and dams, was the first non-military field, established as a discipline in the mid 1700\u2019s. Later major fields of engineering include mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, as well as newer fields such as biomedical engineering and software engineering. Today, there are dozens of hybrid fields, such as bioinformatics, human factors engineering, and many others.<\/p>\n

Most engineering models are mathematical in nature. Examples include include the equations for design of a low-pass filter\u00a0(in electronics), or the forces on a beam in structural engineering.<\/p>\n

\"Low-pass<\/a>
Low-pass filter equations<\/a>, from Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"bending\"<\/a>
An illustration of forces on a beam, by Daniel De Leon Martinez, derivative work: Mircalla22 (Bending.png) [CC-BY-SA-3.0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the case of software engineering, such models include algorithms such as a bubble-sort<\/a>, or data structures such as simply-linked lists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Engineering design also involves limiting factors, or\u00a0constraints<\/em>,<\/em> <\/strong>such as cost, time, available technologies, and aesthetics.<\/p>\n

\"Traffic_jam_in_Haikou,_Hainan,_China_01\"<\/a>
Traffic jam in Haiku, China, by Anna Frodesiak (Own work) [CC0<\/a>], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>More everyday examples of engineering modeling might include<\/p>\n