• Question: which is the best engineers

    Asked by moshi7 on 6 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Tris Warren

      Tris Warren answered on 6 Nov 2020: last edited 6 Nov 2020 3:36 pm

      There are many types of Engineering, but I think most people would agree there are 4 main types:

      1. Mechanical Engineering (think gears and cars)
      2. Civil Engineering (think buildings and bridges)
      3. Electrical Engineering (think computers and electronics)
      4. Chemical Engineering (think designing chemicals to do useful things – washing powder or rocket fuel)

      There are other types of engineering (e.g. aeronautical engineering or computer engineering or design engineers), but I think those are the four main types.

      For space missions, however, we kind of need all the different engineers to work together. We need mechanical engineers to design the spacecraft, civil engineers to build launch pads, electrical engineers to make the electronics and communications and chemical engineers to design the rocket fuel. In fact even more than just engineers, we need politicians and accountants to help us get funding for our missions, scientists to tell us what we might find on other Planets and geologists to tell us what types of rocks might be there. Actually, that’s the cool thing about space missions is it requires a lot of people from different backgrounds to work together.

      To answer your question though I think electrical engineers are the best – but I should say I am biased because I studied electrical engineering at university. My brother is studying mechanical and he often tells me mechanical engineers are the best. But we both agree civil engineers are the worst! I mean designing bridges – come on – how hard can that be….. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH7VfJDq7f4

    • Photo: Declan Vogt

      Declan Vogt answered on 6 Nov 2020:

      Everyone thinks their own kind is best. So electrical!

      There’s a lot of rivalry: mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets.

      But we all love each really . . .

      Generally, engineers get on well with each other, so there’s nothing too serious in the comments.

    • Photo: Steve Williams

      Steve Williams answered on 9 Nov 2020:

      This is a near impossible question to answer. Most extreme example I can think of is the Victorian civil engineers who designed and built the sewage systems. It is said that their work saved more lives than medicine did because it stopped the spread of deceases at their source.

    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 23 Nov 2020:

      Everyone will always think that their type of engineering is the best type. I studied Mechanical Engineering at University, and as that was the right choice for me, of course I will think it is the best!

      The more you progress in your engineering career, though, the blurrier the lines get. You realise that actually to be a good mechanical engineer you need to know a lot about materials engineering, and to understand that, you need to understand chemical engineering.

      When you start seeing the big picture of how all the different strands of engineering come together, and you know enough about all of them to understand how the whole mission works as a “system” of interconnecting specialisms and parts, then you might become a systems engineer, which is the kind of job I do now. My role kind of uses basic knowledge about how everything works together and affects the other parts to be able to guide the overall mission in decisions which affect more than one part, to make sure that you pick the course of action which is best overall for the mission.

      So long story short, now I think systems engineers are the best, because that’s my job now! :oP

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