• Question: What do you think has been the most significant achievement in water engineering so far ?

    Asked by hannahgrimes to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 19 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Water sanitation as it has saved so many lives. But the principles of it are more to do with biology than engineering. It is engineers that use the principles to build the water treatment plants.

      From the engineering techy point of view, probably it is the work of Archimedes that defined basic understanding of how fluids behave and how buoyancy works. These ideas are so old and are still used everyday by many engineers.

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Some might say Archimedes; others might say Brunel’s building of the SS Great Britain (out of steel rather than wood, being powered by steam and with a propeller, too); and yet more might say the steam engine of Richard Trevithic; but I think I will opt for the development of the Bernouilli principle which has allowed us to predict how water will behave.

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      One thing that makes all civil engineering (building things) possible is to be able to lift heavy weights. So a crane is a key invention. The ancient greeks made the first I think – and even today we use the same principles, but have modern additions like diesel engines and hydraulic pressure.

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