• Question: How does engineering impact the world?

    Asked by anon-73959 on 23 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Sophie Louth

      Sophie Louth answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      I am a medical engineer which means I make things to help doctors. This is anything from new designs of wheelchairs, to new types of scanners to look in the body, to devices such as artificial limbs. So this type of engineer has a massive impact because without engineers doctors wouldn’t be able to do their jobs.
      Other engineers make other things we use every day such as bridges, roads, cars, computers and so many more. Almost every object that you use has had input from an engineer at some point.

    • Photo: Will Smith

      Will Smith answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      Everything you see around you will have been designed and worked on by an Engineer! We make sure the power stays on, that you can travel, that you can communicate over the phone or internet, make machines that develop new medicines, put people into space, create artificial limbs, design medical equipment………..

    • Photo: Claire Brockett

      Claire Brockett answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      Like Sophie, I am a medical engineer. I am involved in the design and development of new implants such as joint replacements and tissue repair. That has pretty good impact – hopefully making lots of patients lives much better.

      As Will says everything around you will have been worked on by an engineer. One of my friends who is a civil engineer is responsible for assessing road design in areas that might have higher than expected accidents. Another is designing exoskeletons to help rehabilitation in stroke patients (as someone who studied mechatronics, rather than medical engineering). There are so many ways engineers impact the world, it’s a really exciting subject to be involved with!

    • Photo: Douglas Wragg

      Douglas Wragg answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      Massively!!!!
      Just about anything you can name needed engineers.

    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      Engineers make things happen and solve problems.
      There are all sorts of things that go into engineering something – once you’ve identified a problem or something that can be improved, you then need to work out different ways you could solve that problem.
      Once you’ve come up with a few things, you’d likely test them, then come up with a final design. At that point, it’s all about being accurate in making too.

      So anything that has been designed and made has some element of engineering in it.

      On a bigger level, can turn findings from science research into something that can be useful to people every day.

    • Photo: Louise France

      Louise France answered on 23 Apr 2020:


      Engineering will always impact people in some way – mostly positive, but unfortunately there are cases where engineering has a negative impact on the world (war, bombs etc).
      I like to think that as a Medical Engineer I am always designing and inventing things that will help people to heal quicker, and live a longer, healthier life. My field definitely makes the world a better place 🙂

      The world around you is completely reliant on engineering!

    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 29 Apr 2020:


      Pretty much anything you can think of will have involved an engineer, because engineers create all the materials, food, structures, buildings, machines etc. that we build our world from.
      One of my favourite examples is penicillin. Alexander Fleming is very famous for discovering penicillin. But another really important part of the story is the chemical engineers who designed a way to produce penicillin on a very big scale. Without them, none of us would have access to antibiotics.
      A really important recent example is climate change. Engineers transformed the world with the Industrial Revolution, powered by fossil fuels. However, we now know that all those fossil fuels cause climate change. So now we’re in the middle of a modern day revolution, where different engineers of all kinds need to work together need to transform the ways we make and use energy (and hopefully save the world!).

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