blimp ~on the web |
"To define it rudely but not inaptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two dollars." -Arthur M. Wellington, The Economic Theory of the Location of Railways, Introduction (6th ed., 1900).
-?- All engineers, at one time or another, find themselves trying to explain their job to a friend or relative. This can be a very painful experience, especially for the so called "chemical engineer". This is often due to misunderstandings about what engineers actually do. For example...
The words "engineering" and "technology" are often used interchangeable, when in fact they are quite different. Engineering is a specific profession which uses science and mathematics to solve technical problems. While engineers concentrate on developing and using technology, it is important to remember that there was technology long before there was engineering. It is very possible to invent a new technology without engineering it!
Also, the buzzwords "science" and "technology" are too frequently used interchangably, no doubt because these two words always appear lumped together. While the scientific and technological communities have some similarities, they also have profound differences.
Lastly, it is easy to assume that someone with the title "chemical engineer" must be a narrow specialist, when in fact the outstanding feature of the profession is its broadness when compared to other engineering fields.
Lets take a closer look at engineering...
Your aunt thinks you work for the railroad while a cousin figures you must have something to do with sanitation. Your father is a little closer to the truth, but still visualizes you as "Scotty" on Star Trek. Your uncle used to teach high school, and he thinks of you as a chemist who works in a plant (instead of a laboratory I guess). He keeps "encouraging" you, by reiterating the great contributions of chemists. Such abuse is tough to take, but if you can survive Engineering Thermodynamics you can survive this. Take a deep breath and politely explain that you are an engineer who understands a little chemistry, not a chemist who builds things. Chemical Engineers are first and foremost engineers, not chemists!
Announcing that "engineers employ mathematics, science, and the engineering art to benefit mankind by solving problems in a safe and economical fashion" is technically correct, but it does little to really explain the profession. Such a statement cannot stand on its own, and conveys only two messages;
I
took a lot of classes in college.
I
don't want to hurt people.
No doubt it is vague definitions like this that allow almost anyone to sneak the word "engineer" into their professional title. For example, take your local garbage man. He probably graduated from a College of Liberal Arts, and might have slipped in a math or chemistry course during his six years at the University. Today he helps mankind by disposing of trash (which of course consists of an interesting mix of chemicals). He has never hurt anyone, and does not "feel" overpaid. Hence he is helping "mankind in a safe and economical fashion". Then one day he reads a definition like the one above and Poof!!! Goodby "garbage man", hello "sanitation engineer"!
Yet, lets not be too hasty in discrediting the above definition. A more thorough look suggests that it may in fact have some value. This is because, in a very stale manner, this definition does capture the essence of engineering. It speaks of a union of mathematics, science, and the engineering art to solve problems. Today's engineers are, in fact, a hybrid of this sort. They are a new breed of technologists created through a union of science and technology!
"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor." -O.W.Holmes, The Poet of the Breakfast Table
Historians once envisioned technological advance as feeding from scientific insight. The scientist was thought to study the world and produce a theory to describ it. The engineer's role was seen as the simple application of other's insights for practical ends. Science was the means, technology was the ends, and the engineer's task involved the mindless application of other's ideas. I say to you now, this view of the interaction between science and technology is dead wrong!
First, it is important to realize that science and technology have fundamentally different approaches to describing the way the world works. Scientists seek to explain their findings by refering to the most fundamental entities, such as quarks, gravity, electromagnetic forces, and so on. Technolgists explain their findings using measureable quantities, such as pressure, temperature, flow rates, and so on. This is because scientists seek to know, technologists seek to do. A good example of this philosophical difference is seen in the current "grand unification" effort in physics.
In the 19th Century, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) electrified the scientific community when he discovered that electricity, magnetism, and even light (electromagnetic radiation) were all described by the same "electromagnetic" force. Such unification would have made Occam and his razor proud, as it appeals to our belief that "simple is beautiful." Albert Einstein (1879-1955) deeply believed in unification, and devoted the last half of his life in an unsuccessful effort to combine electromagnetism with gravitation through a unified field theory. Yet, his efforts were not in vain, as they inspired others. In 1979 a Nobel Prize went to Glashow, Weinberg, and Salam for their unification of the electromagnet force with the weak interactive force (responsible for some types of radioactive decay). Today, high energy physists continue the effort to link the three remaining fundamental forces (gravity, strong nuclear, and electromagnetism) through a Grand Unified Theory (GUT), sometimes referred to as a "theory of everything". Such a result would be an intellectual triumph for the human race, but would have little or no effect on the way engineers carry out their own analysis of the universe!
This is because, for engineers there are many forces in the universe. A list might include; gravity force, pressure force, viscous force, elastic force, buoyant force, inertial force, surface tension force, centrifugal force, coriolis force, osmotic force, and magnetic force. When confronted with a challenging problem, engineers proceed by pairing up these forces two-by-two via dimensionless numbers (like the famous Reynold's Number, inertial force divided by viscous force). In this way, it is easy to determine which forces will dominate behaviour in any given situation. By knowing the relative sizes of these forces you can tell if a boat will float, a plane will fly, a beam will break, how a fluid will flow, or if a chemical separation will work. Equipment can be scaled up and scaled down using a paper and pencil. Engineers can make excellent predictions via compiled correlations, instead of relying upon blind luck coupled with trial and error. A physist may very well scoff at such a list of forces, because it makes the world seem so much more "complex". Yet an engineer would critize a grand unified theory for the same reason... it is too "complex" to be useful for "real world" problems. If is futile and unproductive to argue who's world view is right and who's is wrong, they are simply different... The ironic thing is that both the scientist and the engineer believe that "simple is beautiful."
When Einstein showed that the universe was accurately described by his "General Theory of Relativity" (1915), and not the classical laws of motion, Sir Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) views were hardly abandoned. Newton's laws of motion hold as well today as they ever have, and until we start transporting materials at velocities that approach the speed of light, we are wasteing our time if we try to employ some relativistic form of fluid dynamics. Similarly, Einstein's discovery that mass and energy can be interconverted is profound, yet not very useful unless we are designing nuclear reactors. Best to keep mass and energy separate, so we have two equations, instead of just one, in our continuous battle to match overly abundant "unknowns" with an equal number of equations. Grand unification would no doubt fall victim to some of the same technical deficiencies. The great paradox is that a law may be simple in form, yet impossibly complex to apply. A grand unification theory would look very "beautiful" until you tried to use it on a real world engineering problem. At that stage you would decide that scientists and engineers have different definitions for the words "simple" and "beautiful".
Social Structure... (similar, yet inversed values)
Math...
"The attitude of the engineer to mathematics must be quite different from that of the pure mathematician. The engineer is concerned with truth not with mere consistency." -Biot
"Who shall criticize the builders? Certainly not those who have stood idly by without lifting a stone." -E.T.Bell
A major obstical in explaining our profession, is overcoming the narrow sounding title "chemical engineer". Of the big four engineering fields, chemical engineering was the last to arrive on the American scene. Civil Engineering was first, then Mechanical Engineering, then Electrical Engineering, and finaly Chemical Engineering which gained a formal degree in 1888.
Please check this page for better explanation. Also check Richard Stover's little FAQ about his job as Chemical Engineer.
"The essence of engineering, as a crusty veteran once told his
engineering rookies, is to be only as complicated as you have to be. What
he left unsaid, though not undemonstrated, is that you must also be as
able to get as complicated as the problem demands." -D.E.Gushee,
Ind.Eng.Chem., vol. 57, no. 10, p. 5, October 1965.
You may be asking yourself, "Do I have what it takes to be an engineer?" Well, just consult our not so serious list of engineering characteristics.
History of Chemical Engineering
The Virtual ChemE Asks: What's Chemical Engineering?
For some more views of what makes a chemical engineer tick.