How Engineers Create the World

How Engineers Create the World PDF Author: William S. Hammack
Publisher: Bill Hammack
ISBN: 0983966109
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
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.

How Engineers Create the World

How Engineers Create the World PDF Author: William S. Hammack
Publisher: Bill Hammack
ISBN: 0983966109
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Eight Amazing Engineering Stories

Eight Amazing Engineering Stories PDF Author: Bill Hammack
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9780983966135
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
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.

Applied Minds: How Engineers Think

Applied Minds: How Engineers Think PDF Author: Guru Madhavan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393248003
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
“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.

The Perfectionists

The Perfectionists PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062652575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
“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?

Why Engineers Need to Grow a Long Tail

Why Engineers Need to Grow a Long Tail PDF Author: Bill Hammack
Publisher: Bill Hammack
ISBN: 9780615395555
Category : Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description
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.

Imagine Design Create

Imagine Design Create PDF Author: Tom Wujec
Publisher: Melcher Media Incorporated
ISBN: 9781595910660
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

And I Quote, Revised Edition

And I Quote, Revised Edition PDF Author: Ashton Applewhite
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312307448
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
The popular guide to quotable quotes returns in a totally revised and updatededition including all-new material.

The Things We Make

The Things We Make PDF Author: Bill Hammack Ph.D.
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1728215765
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Discover the secret method used to build the world... For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress. But this powerful method, the "engineering method", is an all but hidden process that few of us have heard of—let alone understand—but that influences every aspect of our lives. Bill Hammack, a Carl Sagan award-winning professor of engineering and viral "The Engineer Guy" on Youtube, has a lifelong passion for the things we make, and how we make them. Now, for the first time, he reveals the invisible method behind every invention and takes us on a whirlwind tour of how humans built the world we know today. From the grand stone arches of medieval cathedrals to the mundane modern soda can, Hammack explains the golden rule of thumb that underlies every new building technique, every technological advancement, and every creative solution that leads us one step closer to a better, more functional world. Spanning centuries and cultures, Hammack offers a fascinating perspective on how humans engineer solutions in a world full of problems. Perfect for readers of Adam Grant and Simon Winchester, The Things We Make is a captivating examination of the method that keeps pushing humanity forward, a spotlight on the achievements of the past, and a celebration of the potential of our future that will change the way we see the world around us.

On Design

On Design PDF Author: Ron Britton
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1460278569
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
While many engineering books speak to “doing” engineering, precious few focus on the concept of “being” an engineer. Hence, this book, which is a reflection on the human side of engineering. The contents are drawn from two different, but parallel, columns Ron Britton wrote for the Keystone Professional, the official magazine of Engineers Geoscientists Manitoba (formerly the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Manitoba). The Thoughts on Design column started in 2001 as an explanation of the opportunities provided by the award of one of the first Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Chairs in Design Engineering. The Engineering Philosophy 101 column came about in 2006, following a discussion relating to the philosophical foundations of engineering ethics. Consequently, this is a book about how one engineer has reacted to circumstances that involve engineers, either directly or peripherally, including engineering successes and failures. It reflects on how engineers should—and hopefully do—fit into and contribute to our ever-changing world, speaks to the privileges and responsibilities society has provided the profession in exchange for the right to self-government within that profession, and reflects on the constraints of professional practice and the creative possibilities that parallel those limitations.

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World PDF Author: Guru Madhavan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
An ode to systems engineers—whose invisible work undergirds our life—and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle. Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects—often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy—are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon. In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering—efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience—engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness. An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice—one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.