Question: what is engineering? I mean what types of engineering could you perhaps do.

anon answered on 18 Jun 2015:

I have stolen this definition from Wikipedia. Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.

It’s not mending broken boilers, washing machines or broken TV’s or computers. In the UK engineers are looked down upon because the title is not protected by law. So everybody and his dog can call themselves an engineer. Do this in Europe and the US then you may end up in jail for misrepresentation.

So in the UK the real engineers are those calling themselves graduate engineers i e those who have a degree in an engineering discipline or those like myself who has degree in something else but has Chartered Engineer registration.

So my definition of engineering is applying scientific principals to design build or construct buildings, cars, planes, electronic circuits, software etc. Where there is reproducibility and fit for purpose.

So will usually have a number of stages
Specification, decided what you want to build how well you want to build it
Design, choosing your components or materials
Build, construct the thing.
Test, make sure it does the job, if not either respecify or redesign some components. The retest the modifications.

So it’s following a set of protocols an procedures So what ever it is you want to make does what it suppose to. Modifying specifications and designs and retest.

Civil engineering is the construction of building roads tunnels.
Electronic engineering design an building electronic circuits or appliances including poppers generation.
Mechanical engineering, things like cars, structures (eg Eiffel tower)
Software engineering is the developing computer programs using engineering methods (following the previously mentioned principals). Not just writing a computer program .

These are some common examples.