10 World’s Top Engineering Schools 2007

1. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), US

MIT was founded in 1861 which combined polytechnic models in Europe, especially German and French. In World War II (WWII), MIT played a key role as a research and development center for defense-related technologies which included radar, missile guidance and military computer application.

Later, it evolved to provide other field of courses that encompass economics, linguistic, political science and management. However, technology and engineering remain as the university’s strongest legacy. The founder of JobStreet.com, Malaysia’s largest online recruitment website, Mark Chang went to this school.

2. University of California, Berkeley, US

The university, often referred as ‘Berkeley’ or ‘Cal’ was established about 140 years ago as a result of a merger between 2 private colleges. Similar to MIT, Berkeley also produced some smart engineers who were involved in the World War II and developed the atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs. The Berkeley students are not only good academically but they also have reputation to produce excellent sportsmen and competitive athletes. To date, their athletes have won an astounding figure of more than 100 medals in Olympic Games.

Malaysian top-notch swimmer, Alex Lim received his sports degree in Berkeley. In 2002, Alex became agonizingly close to winning a 50 meter back-stoke in the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, United Kingdom, losing by 0.02 second to the world champion and multiple-record holder, Ian Thorpe, or popularly nick named ‘The Torpedo’.

Former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin also graduated from the University of California, in the field of law.

3. Stanford University, US

Another American institution, which was interesting enough, built on a horse farm. It was formed by a California Governor, Leland Stanford and his wife, in tribute to their son, who died of typhoid at a tender age of 18. In the earlier years, the number of female students were capped with certain quota, as Stanford’s wife felt that large number of female students would violate the honor to their son’s tribute.

Technically, Stanford University is considered to have the world’s largest campus, as it occupies the largest land area. The institution enrolls between 14,000 to 18,000 students at one time.

In 1997, Stanford accepted enrollment of a 14-year old Malaysian by the name of Lim Huat Chye, who graduated with a Degree in Computer Science 4 years later, at 18. He went on to work with the world’s biggest online bookstore, Amazon.com. Among other prominent Malaysians with educational background from Stanford are Tan Sri Dr Wan Mohd Zahid Noordin, former Director of Education and Guthrie Chairman, as well as Tan Sri Awang Had Salleh, Vice Chancellor of UPSI and Chairman of a number of private tertiary institutes.

4. California Institute of Technology (CALTECH), US

California Institute of Technology or more popularly known as Caltech is a private institution with strong reputation in engineering and natural sciences. It even houses a NASA laboratory in the campus which oversees the design work and operation of unmanned space probes. The size of the students is considered relatively small, with only over 2000 students occupying the university at one time, but this small number is a bunch of talented students. The institution is also known to have produced many Nobel winning researchers and professors.

Caltech admitted its youngest ever graduate about 15 years ago and the student was a Malaysian by the name of Chiang Ti Ming. Ti Ming was barely 15 when enrolled into the university, and after 4 years graduated among the top 5% of the class. Unfortunately the prodigy died in his hometown, Negeri Sembilan in 2007 at the age of 31.

5. University of Cambridge, UK

The best engineering school in England and United Kingdom. Often, Cambridge and Oxford Universities compete head to head on general reputation but when it comes to technical field, Cambridge is always ahead of its rival.

Ironically, Cambridge was formed by a group of scholars who left Oxford University, after a dispute with local town folks. Every year, the institution accepts between approximately 5-10 Malaysians for enrollment in various courses and colleges, with many of them eventually become the country’s think tanks and corporate hotshots.

The most well-known one is arguably the late Dr Liew Boon Horng, who was crushed to death in his BMW after a block of concrete fell down in the infamous Plaza Damas incident in 2006. Dr Liew was a former McKinsey & Co stalwart before he left and co-founded Ethos Consulting, which is a consulting firm for many government linked companies (GLCs).

6. Imperial College, UK

Imperial College officially goes by the long name of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and is located near the heart of one of the world’s most expensive cities, London, and to be exact, South Kensington. It used to belong to the University of London constituent before but today it is no longer the case.

The college also houses the prominent Royal Albert Hall, where the country’s top singer, Siti Nurhaliza, used to perform. The hall is used for the graduation ceremony of students. Imperial is known to be one of the most selective universities in the world, having recorded a consistent acceptance rate of well below 20%.

The present President and CEO of Ranhill Berhad, Tan Sri Hamdan Mohamad, received his masters from Imperial College, while former HEP Vice Chancellor of UTM, Prof. Dr. Ahmad Kamal Idris obtained his PhD in the same institute.

7. Carnegie Mellon University, US

Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon was founded by Andrew Carnegie, the famous industrialist and philanthropist in 1900. For many years, the university has been consistently ranked among the top 20 universities in the world. On approximation, about 70% of the students admitted to the university are in the top 10% of their high school classes, while their engineering and computer science courses are considered the best in its class.

In 2006, Carnegie Mellon collaborated with Universiti Malaya (UM) to provide master’s degree program in Information Technology Management.

8. Georgia Institute of Technology, US

Georgia Institute, or more commonly known as Georgia Tech, is one of the few public universities in the top list. From only 2 buildings during its formation, the university has grown into providing hundreds of courses to close to 20,000 graduate and undergraduate students, as well as becoming a well-known center with very active research activities.

As a matter of fact, many start up companies have been born out of research works initiated by Georgia Tech, with many of them went on to produce many patented technologies.

Unfortunately, the university is also notoriously known as ‘one of the toughest universities’ in the United States, and produce many ‘unhappy students’ due to tough academic life.

9. University of Tokyo, Japan

University of Tokyo belongs to a ring of a so-called the Seven Universities, which refers to seven top public institutions of higher education in Japan. Uni of Tokyo tops the rank, with Kyoto University considered its biggest rival.

University of Tokyo is one of the only two Asian universities in the world’s top 10 rank in the field of engineering and technology. At the moment, more than 30,000 students are enrolled in the campus, with less than 10% of them foreigners, including Malaysians.

10. National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

While Malaysia embarrassingly does not have any of its university even in the top 200 list of world’s best university, the neighboring Singaporeans can jump in joy and delight.

Ranked in 10th means National University of Singapore, the oldest and largest university in the country, gets the better of Oxford, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell and so on.

Apart from its main campus, NUS also have colleges in Philadelphia, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Stockholm and Bangalore.

Technorati Tags: top colleges, us university ranking

The Top Ten Lies of Engineers

1. “We're about to go into beta testing.” This is a meaningless statement because it doesn't matter when you go into beta testing--what matters is when you come out of beta testing. (The only hard and fast deadline for coming out of modern-day beta testing is “before you run out of money.”)

In the good old days, “alpha” used to mean “all features are implemented though not necessarily working properly.” “Beta” used to mean “there are no more repeatable bugs.” Nowadays beta means “we've gone as long as possible past the shipping date that we promised our investors.”

2. “I don't know anything thing about marketing...” This is a lie of false modesty. The engineer is thinking, in totality, “I don't know a thing about marketing, but how hard could it be compared to what I'm doing? I should run marketing and engineering. I just hope that the marketing the MBAs come up with is worthy of my code.” However, don't worry too much about this lie because it self-corrects as the engineer misses deadline after deadline and comes to realize that he has bigger issues.

3. “I'll comment the code, so that the next person can understand what I did.” This is a lie of good intentions. Really, the engineer did intend to comment the code but as the schedule slipped, priorities changed. The question put to management became: “Do you want me to comment the code or finish it sooner?” Guess what the answer was. Luckily, the lack of comments usually doesn't matter because the code is so crappy that a total rewrite is necessary in a year.

4. “Our architecture is scalable.” This is the lie that I enjoy hearing the most. Typically, an engineer who has never shipped a product says this after creating a prototype in Visual BASIC. The whole conversation goes like this: “Google's architecture isn't as scalable as mine. They can support 25 million simultaneous searches. We will be able to easily handle a billion.”

Luckily, in most cases, the adoption of the product is slower than the CEO's “conservative” forecast, so scalability never becomes an issue. Yeah, those clowns at Google, Yahoo, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, and AOL don't know anything about scaling compared to the engineer...

5. “The code supports all the industry standards.” This is almost a truth but for a short omission: “This code supports all the industry standards that I agree with.” The engineer has made a personal decision to ignore standards she doesn't like--for example, those promulgated by Microsoft. It's no big deal--customers will never know...

6. “We can do a Macintosh version right after we finish the Windows version; in fact, much of the Windows code can be re-used because of how we architected it.” The truth is that version 1.0 of any software is an experiment. It can be a magnificent experiment, but it's an experiment nonetheless. Thus, Windows version 1.0 is held together by duct-tape. The Macintosh version is a copy of the duct-taped Windows version written by an engineer who just finished college and got his first Macintosh a month ago. How hard could it be to learn to program for a different platform? C++ is C++, right?

7. “We have an effective bug reporting database and system.” Of course, the assumption behind the design of the bug reporting database and system is that there are no bugs in the code, so there's not much to database and report. Generally speaking, if the largest number of documented bugs doesn't ever exceed 1,000, it means that the company isn't tracking bugs carefully.

8. “We can do this faster, cheaper, and better with an offshore programming team in India.” Rank and file engineers usually don't tell this lie; it's the CTO who does. Somehow we've got it in our heads that every programmer in India is good, fast, and cheap, and every programmer in the United States is lousy, slow, and expensive. My theory is that for version 1.0 of a product, the maximum allowable distance between the engineers and marketers is thirty feet.

9. “Our beta sites loved the software.” In twenty five years of working in technology, I've never heard a company report that its beta sites didn't like its software. There are three reasons for this: first, many beta sites are so honored to get pre-release software that they don't want say anything negative. Second, most beta sites haven't used the software very much. Third, most beta sites don't want to seem cruel by criticizing a company's new product. Doing so is as socially unacceptable as telling someone that his baby is ugly.

10. “This time we got it right.” The scary thing about this lie is that the engineer really believes it. Again. The problem is that “this time” occurs over and over again. I have great faith in engineers and believe that in the long run, they do get it right. It's just that in the long run, we're all dead.

The Rules of Engineering

The Rules of Engineering :

Found on a wall in a mechanical engineering shop. But many of these dicta apply just as well to software engineering.

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1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is, at best, only an opinion.
2. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.
3. Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.
4. When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when real numbers come along.
5. The odds are greatly against your being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, the chances are better that you've screwed up than that you've invented warp drive.
6. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.
7. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.
8. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.
9. Your best efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.
10. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.
11. There is never a single right solution. But there are always multiple wrong ones.
12. Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.
13. "Better" is the enemy of "good".
14. The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.
15. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.
16. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.
17. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. On the other hand, too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design.
18. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.
19. Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.
20. When in doubt, document. Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of the project.
21. It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.
22. The first 90 percent of the project takes 90 percent of the allotted time. The last 10 percent of the project takes the other 90 percent.

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Ancient Engineering

People have been using engineering to solve the problems of their daily lives since the first caveman picked up a rock and chipped away at it to make a handaxe in the Paleolithic, about 70,000 years ago. It is impossible to list all of the inventions that people have made since then, there are so many.

For tools, there was first the stone handaxe, and then stone knives. In the Neolithic, stone sickles were invented. People used obsidian because it was sharper than flint. Around 3000 BC, people first began to make bronze knives and sickles, and also tweezers, razors, and spoons. By 1500 BC they were beginning to make iron knives and all kinds of tools out of iron. Around 1000 BC a lot more people all over the Mediterranean began to use iron. Gradually mining and smelting techniques became more and more sophisticated.

For hunting, there were bone fishhooks and wooden spears with stone tips, and later on stone arrowheads. People began to spin string and knot it together to make nets for fish and birds. They wove thin sticks together to make snares to catch rabbits and squirrels. With the invention of bronze, and later iron, people began to make fishhooks and spearheads out of these lighter, sharper metals.

For clothing, first people invented ways to tan hides, to preserve animal skins as leather and furs to keep people warm. Then they invented bone needles and thread, to sew these clothes together. Then in the Neolithic, people invented the drop spindle to spin wool and linen and looms to weave it into clothing. Gradually the design of looms improved, with the invention of the heddle. Dyes were also invented. The next big advance in clothing technology was the invention of the spinning wheel in the Middle Ages, which made it possible to spin four times as fast as before. Knitting was not invented until around 1500 AD.

For cooking, the most important invention comes right at the beginning with the invention of ways to make fire: the firestick and flints. By the Neolithic period the oven was invented, and also the spit for roasting meat over a fire. Pottery, for making cooking pots and storing water and food, was very important. People started to use pottery around 7000 BC, and the potter's wheel was invented around 2000 BC, and made pottery making much faster. The use of bronze and then iron to make spits is better because metal will not burn through like wood. But more importantly you can boil water much faster in a metal cooking pot than in a clay one, which saves on fuel. Wooden spoons have existed since the Neolithic. Scholars disagree about the date of the first forks, but certainly there were forks by the Roman period, about 100 AD. Blown glass cups became popular about the same time. The invention of the chimney, in the Middle Ages, must have helped to keep houses from being so smoky, and also reduced the risk of fire.

For farming, the most important invention is farming itself, but soon after that comes the simple plow. Later people began to have animals pull the plow, and sometimes put iron tips on the plowshares. The Romans invented a longer handle for the sickle, which made reaping much more efficient. And by the later Roman Empire, around 300 AD, there were heavier plows. On some big farms, an animal-drawn automatic reaper was being used. In the Merovingian period, harrows began to be used. A better form of horse harness was also invented around this time.

For transportation, there was first the ox-cart, with the idea of wheels and axles. Horse-riding seems to have been brought to the Mediterranean by the Indo-Europeans, starting about 2500 BC. After that, horse-drawn chariots became popular, both with two wheels and with four. In the Bronze Age, donkeys became popular as pack animals, and in some places people began to build stone roads and bridges for the first time. The Persians, around 500 BC, pioneered the idea of a relay system to carry messages more quickly. The Romans are famous for their carefully laid roads and bridges, many of which are still in use today. It was in the early Islamic period that people first invented a good saddle for camels, and so were able to start using caravans of camels to transport people and things in the southern Mediterranean (we can't say whether the increased use of camels was due partly to the desertification that followed the coming of Islam, when people shifted from pig to sheep and overgrazed the hills, but it seems possible).

To get drinking water, and to irrigate fields, many different inventions have been used. The first was baskets lined with tar, and leather bags. Then clay jars were used, which were heavier but didn't leak as much.Soon people began to dig wells to get water closer to home. In Egypt and Sumer, people dug huge canal systems to take the water from the river to their fields, and used levers to raise the water up into higher canals. The Greeks piped water from springs or wells to public fountains in their cities. The Romans built huge aqueducts going for miles from a mountain stream to their cities or their fields. In the Middle Ages, however, most of these aqueducts went out of use, and people went back to using wells again.

Wonders of World Engineering

"Wonders of World Engineering", the most interesting website in the whole world !!! Well, you may not actually agree with this if you are not interested in how things were made - but if you are then you've come to the right place.

This website contains articles taken from a magazine called "Wonders Of World Engineering" published back in the 1930's. The articles range from describing how the Golden Gate Bridge was built to how ball bearings are made. The articles are scanned and presented in Djvu. This is a similar format to Acrobat pdf. To view them you need to download the DjVu plug-in viewer for your browser. "Why DjVu?" I hear you say. Go here to find out.

There were 53 issues in total. They were published weekly beginning March 2nd, 1937 and cost 7 pence each. Dont forget this was 7 "old" British pence so that is equivalent to about 3 pence (or 0.03UKP) today (watch this space for the Euro conversion!!).

Each issue was printed in black and white (monochrome) but they all had the most wonderful colour covers illustrating one of the features found within. Several cover illustrations are shown as "thumbnails" above. To give you a flavour of their varied contents, here is a list of the articles in issue 1 of the magazine:

* San Francisco's Great Bridges
* Empire Flying Boats
* Harnessing Niagara
* Giant of the Ether
* The Oil Route from the East

If you want to know what "Giant of the Ether" is all about you'll have to take a look.

As mentioned previously there were 53 of these magazine published so scanning them all in and putting them up here will take quite a while. So be patient. When you click on the "Contents" button above you'll be presented with a huge contents list for the 52 issues. There is also a detailed Index which you can use to search.

You can search a page for a topic or subject by using F.

If the particular article that you would like to read has a hyperlink associated with it (i.e. underlined text) then it means that article has been published. If it isnt and you really would like to read it then please drop an email to "david@wow-engineering.co.uk" and it will be given due consideration. However the issues will normally be published in the same chronological order as they were back in 1937.

Obviously, all the stuff in these articles is nearly 70 years old. So you'd be correct in thinking that some of it is some of it is out of date. However when you stop and think about it, most things apart from electronics have not changed a lot. And most famous structures, be they the Empire State, Eiffel Tower, Hoover Dam, Tower Bridge, Battersea Power Station, or the Golden Gate were all built by then. Also, it is amazing to find out just how advanced engineering was even in the 19th Century. For example in issue 49 there is an article entitled Standards of Accuracy. In this article it describes a machine that was built back in 1852 that could write in text so small that it could reproduce the entire text of the Bible 22 times on a square inch !!!

One of my favourites is the story of how they laid the first Atlantic Telegraph Cable back in 1858. You really must read this story. Its a fantastic testimony to man's determination to succeed against all the odds

There are also some very unique historical perspectives. For instance in issue 9 there is an article on Airship design that features the Hindenburg. Only two weeks after this issue was published the Hidenburg burst into flames and crashed at the end of its maiden voyage. There is also an article in issue 43 on Hydroplane Speed Records featuring Sir Malcolm Campbell who broke the world water-speed record on Coniston Water in 1935 with 142mph. We all know now that Sir Malcolm's son Donald was later killed in 1967 on the same stretch of water, trying to break his own water-speed record of 276mph.

So, whether it be Fire Engines or Grass Drying Machinery, Cotton Mills or Coal Mines, Harbours or Cathedrals, Water Softners or Windmills, Gold-Dredgers or Scottish Shale mining, these magazines have it all.

of World Engineering", the most interesting website in the whole world !!! Well, you may not actually agree with this if you are not interested in how things were made - but if you are then you've come to the right place.

This website contains articles taken from a magazine called "Wonders Of World Engineering" published back in the 1930's. The articles range from describing how the Golden Gate Bridge was built to how ball bearings are made. The articles are scanned and presented in Djvu. This is a similar format to Acrobat pdf. To view them you need to download the DjVu plug-in viewer for your browser. "Why DjVu?" I hear you say. Go here to find out.

There were 53 issues in total. They were published weekly beginning March 2nd, 1937 and cost 7 pence each. Dont forget this was 7 "old" British pence so that is equivalent to about 3 pence (or 0.03UKP) today (watch this space for the Euro conversion!!).

Each issue was printed in black and white (monochrome) but they all had the most wonderful colour covers illustrating one of the features found within. Several cover illustrations are shown as "thumbnails" above. To give you a flavour of their varied contents, here is a list of the articles in issue 1 of the magazine:

* San Francisco's Great Bridges
* Empire Flying Boats
* Harnessing Niagara
* Giant of the Ether
* The Oil Route from the East

If you want to know what "Giant of the Ether" is all about you'll have to take a look.

As mentioned previously there were 53 of these magazine published so scanning them all in and putting them up here will take quite a while. So be patient. When you click on the "Contents" button above you'll be presented with a huge contents list for the 52 issues. There is also a detailed Index which you can use to search.

You can search a page for a topic or subject by using F.

If the particular article that you would like to read has a hyperlink associated with it (i.e. underlined text) then it means that article has been published. If it isnt and you really would like to read it then please drop an email to "david@wow-engineering.co.uk" and it will be given due consideration. However the issues will normally be published in the same chronological order as they were back in 1937.

Obviously, all the stuff in these articles is nearly 70 years old. So you'd be correct in thinking that some of it is some of it is out of date. However when you stop and think about it, most things apart from electronics have not changed a lot. And most famous structures, be they the Empire State, Eiffel Tower, Hoover Dam, Tower Bridge, Battersea Power Station, or the Golden Gate were all built by then. Also, it is amazing to find out just how advanced engineering was even in the 19th Century. For example in issue 49 there is an article entitled Standards of Accuracy. In this article it describes a machine that was built back in 1852 that could write in text so small that it could reproduce the entire text of the Bible 22 times on a square inch !!!

One of my favourites is the story of how they laid the first Atlantic Telegraph Cable back in 1858. You really must read this story. Its a fantastic testimony to man's determination to succeed against all the odds

There are also some very unique historical perspectives. For instance in issue 9 there is an article on Airship design that features the Hindenburg. Only two weeks after this issue was published the Hidenburg burst into flames and crashed at the end of its maiden voyage. There is also an article in issue 43 on Hydroplane Speed Records featuring Sir Malcolm Campbell who broke the world water-speed record on Coniston Water in 1935 with 142mph. We all know now that Sir Malcolm's son Donald was later killed in 1967 on the same stretch of water, trying to break his own water-speed record of 276mph.

So, whether it be Fire Engines or Grass Drying Machinery, Cotton Mills or Coal Mines, Harbours or Cathedrals, Water Softners or Windmills, Gold-Dredgers or Scottish Shale mining, these magazines have it all.

So take some time out and enter the Wonderful World of Engineering .....

Organic: A Study on Engineering Miracles : By Dan and Dave

Organic, A Study on Engineering Miracles, is our first venture outside of card magic, and it's full of 15 phenomenal impromptu routines perfect for the street magician. Outlined in Organic is not only the explanation of each effect, but the process in which it was developed. Learn how to create miracles with everyday normal objects and be inspired by whatever situation you find yourself in.

Contents:

Tumble: This effect takes place at the Laundromat and uses a normal pack of cards, the clothes dryer, and your pants pocket. This is the style of effect David Blaine would perform on TV.

Rigged: A method for controlling the outcome of a coin-toss, every time.

Cartel: A miracle that allows you to turn two playing cards into a virtual credit card that actually works.

Sidekick: Includes the explanation of three different effects including an impromptu signed-card through window.

Edamame: A highly visual method for restoring an empty Edamame bean.

Subway Renovation: An improved handing on our trick “Subway” found in The Trilogy DVD set.

Joker Tracking: An impossible location where the spectator finds his/her chosen card after shuffling the deck as many times as they wish. You never touch the deck! Can be used to locate multiple cards too.

Resurrection: A man asks you for a light. You remove a small box of matches, take one out and light it. After lighting the man’s cigarette, you shake the match to put out the flame. A woman walks up and also asks you for a light. Now instead of taking out another match, this is what happens. Slowly blow on the burnt match as a cloud of smoke forms around it. Both the man and the woman then see the burnt match slowly restore. After all the smoke has dissipated, strike the restored match on the box and light her cigarette.

Blinded: What if you could reach into the air with your empty hand and produce a lit match? Now you can!

Sealed & Revealed: The corner of a signed playing card appears sealed inside a sugar packet.

Deliquesce: A selected card is lost into the deck and set on the table. A saltshaker is set on top of the deck only to visually penetrate through both the deck and the table. From underneath comes the saltshaker with the signed card folded inside the saltshaker.

Autocatch: A neat Sandwich effect done on the table that uses a new flourishes called the “Hover Spring.”

Strawgami: A cleaver method for turning a drinking straw (still in its wrapper) inside out so that the wrapper ends up inside the straw.

Shake & Bake: A visual approach to Doc Eason’s “Anniversary Waltz” where two signed selections fuse together to form one card.

Mannequin: This effect takes place in a shopping center. A selected card is shuffled into the deck. With a snap of the fingers the card appears in your pocket. Again, the selection is lost into the deck and with the snap of the fingers…a clothes tag is pulled from the pocket. Turn around and point to a pair of pants on a Mannequin in the window behind you. Protruding from the pocket is the selection.

Dubai's Engineering Miracles

Dubai's Engineering Miracles

The rush of groundbreaking developments in Dubai makes it easy to forget it started less than 15 years ago. Dubai began its first foray into engineering history when Sheikh Mohammed announced plans for the Burj Al-Arab hotel in the late 1990s, and today this dramatic hotel takes its place alongside structures such as the Hoover Dam as icons of the modern age.

The sheikh wanted the design of the Burj to symbolize the traditions of his lands, and architect Tom Wright was inspired by the shape of a dhow sail when it catches the wind. For the concept to work Wright had to make the hotel look as if it was floating on water, so it was decided the structure would sit on a little artificial island built about 900 feet off the Jumeirah shore. This island posed interesting problems for Atkins Architects, the firm contracted to build the hotel. To secure the offshore location, Atkins had to construct a firm foundation for the hotel by driving 230 concrete piles 40 meters into the substrate. Atop these piles, a surface layer of concrete blocks was added and held in place by a collar of concrete. This breakthrough feat took three years to complete.

The hotel itself is a masterpiece of modern architecture, with two long steel columns visually anchoring the building and acting as the "mast" to its "sail." Steel struts that measure 278-feet long form the structure's skeleton, some of which were lifted 656 feet into the air to be correctly positioned. Over 160,000 square feet of Teflon-coated Dyneon flouropolymer material–a revolutionary membrane that offers high UV resistance and allows 90% of light to pass through–is the sail. It softens the lighting streaming into the hotel's monumental 590-foot interior atrium. Because the floating restaurant sits off from the building's center, it posed a design and construction challenge. But the tiny circular helipad at the summit of the hotel, 725 feet above water, is a simple structure supported by a metal cantilever. While this landmark construction was underway, Sheikh Mohammed also launched the Palm Jumeirah project, an artificial island concept so massive in scale that it can be seen from space. It was soon nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World."

True to its name, the Palm Jumeirah was designed in the shape of a palm tree. A 2-mi-long core development of hotels, apartments, and shopping and entertainment complexes in the shape of a trunk will link the palm to the Dubai mainland. At the end of this trunk, a 6.8-mi, 656-foot-wide protective breakwater will surround the palm canopy, which will be made of 17 1.2-mi-long, 820-foot wide "fronds" where exclusive private villas will be built. This project–the most audacious land reclamation project in history–was slated to be built offshore from Jumeirah Beach.

More than 50 engineering and environmental studies were conducted before work commenced to assess everything from traffic flow to water quality. The main challenge was creating a landmass stable enough to support high-rise development. The basic technique involved dredging sand to form the basic shape, driving deep foundations into the sandbanks, covering that core with monumental rocks to anchor the base, and then spraying sand on top of the rocks–a technique called rainbowing–to the final level on which developers could build.

The height of the breakwater canopy was critical as it needed to sit 14.7 feet above normal sea level to account for rising water levels during regular shamal, or storm systems, and a once-in-100-year mega-storm scenario. Therefore, the seabed had to be raised nearly 50 feet in some areas. To complete the work, almost 175 million cubic feet of rock had to be strategically placed in the sea to create the curved shapes. This rock was then rainbowed with a staggering amount of sand to soften the landmass.

Despite the vast size of the project and the revolutionary techniques employed, the basic ground works were complete and Palm Jumeirah was ready for development in only two years. There were 20,000 workers on the project at the peak of the infrastructure development.

In the last few years, Nakheel broke ground on two far larger palm projects. Palm Jumeirah's interior diameter is just over 3 mi, while Palm Jebel Ali's interior diameter is 4.6 mi and Palm Deira is a pear-shaped 7.5 mi by 5 mi. However, each project will be built using the same principles as Palm Jumeirah–now an industry standard for all such development.

But even then, Nakheel didn't rest on its laurels; the company's next megaproject, The World, posed different problems again for the structural engineers. An archipelago of 300 man-made islands (the smallest around 150,000 square feet) in the shape of the continents, with a 16.7-mile breakwater forming the outline of the planet, The World was the first development to have no land link to the Dubai mainland. Everything from fuel to food and water for the construction workers had to be transported on giant barges from the mainland 2.5 mi to the east. Rock and rainbowing were again used to create the 10-foot base island height. Around 3,884,650,000 cubic feet of sand were needed. Logistical problems included freshwater supply and sewage removal, but these have been solved by allocating an island within each cluster of islands as a distribution and service point for utilities.

The World concept was unveiled in 2003 by Sheikh Mohammed, and the substrate was ready by early 2008. This is the ultimate in real estate. Every tropical island is equipped with state-of-the-art utilities and communication systems, and can be "terraformed," or shaped and landscaped, to fit each client's needs. Nakheel won't tell who has purchased the islands, but those who have can get to work building their private villas, pools, and gardens. Several exclusive resort developments have been approved and these will surely become must-see hotels in the next five years. There's a vast amount of work yet to be done on The World, and even more work to be done before Dubai breaks from its construction frenzy.

Civil engineering

Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works such as bridges, roads, canals, dams and buildings.[1][2][3] Civil engineering is the oldest engineering discipline after military engineering,[4] and it was defined to distinguish non-military engineering from military engineering.[5] It is traditionally broken into several sub-disciplines including environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering, municipal or urban engineering, water resources engineering, materials engineering, coastal engineering,[4] surveying, and construction engineering.[6] Civil engineering takes place on all levels: in the public sector from municipal through to federal levels, and in the private sector from individual homeowners through to international companies

History of the civil engineering profession

Engineering has been an aspect of life since the beginnings of human existence. Civil engineering might be considered properly commencing between 4000 and 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia when humans started to abandon a nomadic existence, thus causing a need for the construction of shelter. During this time, transportation became increasingly important leading to the development of the wheel and sailing. The construction of Pyramids in Egypt (circa 2700-2500 BC) might be considered the first instances of large structure constructions. Other ancient historic civil engineering constructions include the Parthenon by Iktinos in Ancient Greece (447-438 BC), the Appian Way by Roman engineers (c. 312 BC), and the Great Wall of China by General Meng T'ien under orders from Ch'in Emperor Shih Huang Ti (c. 220 BC).^[6] The Romans developed civil structures throughout their empire, including especially aqueducts, insulae, harbours, bridges, dams and roads.

Until modern times there was no clear distinction between civil engineering and architecture, and the term engineer and architect were mainly geographical variations referring to the same person, often used interchangeably.^[7] In the 18th century, the term civil engineering began to be used to distinguish it from military engineering.^[5]

See also: History of structural engineering

The Archimedes' screw was operated by hand and could raise water efficiently.

The first self-proclaimed civil engineer was John Smeaton who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse.^[6][4] In 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of the profession who met informally over dinner. Though there was evidence of some technical meetings, it was little more than a social society.

In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in London, and in 1820 the eminent engineer Thomas Telford became its first president. The institution received a Royal Charter in 1828, formally recognising civil engineering as a profession. Its charter defined civil engineering as:^[8]

“

"...the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation and docks for internal intercourse and exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce, and in the construction and application of machinery, and in the drainage of cities and towns."

”

The first private college in the nation to teach Civil Engineering in the United States was Norwich University founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge. ^[9]. The first degree in Civil Engineering in the United States was awarded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1835.^[10] The first such degree to be awarded to a woman was granted by Cornell University to Nora Stanton Blatch in 1905.

Engineering

Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying technical and scientific knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria. The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET[1]) has defined engineering as follows:

“[T]he creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.”[2][3][4]

One who practices engineering is called an engineer, and those licensed to do so may have more formal designations such as European Engineer, Professional Engineer, Chartered Engineer, or Incorporated Engineer. The broad discipline of engineering encompasses a range of more specialized subdisciplines, each with a more specific emphasis on certain fields of application and particular areas of technology.


Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
o 1.1 Ancient Era
o 1.2 Middle Era
o 1.3 Renaissance Era
o 1.4 Modern Era
* 2 Main branches of engineering
* 3 Methodology
o 3.1 Problem solving
o 3.2 Computer use
* 4 Engineering in a social context
* 5 Cultural presence
* 6 Legislation
* 7 Relationships with other disciplines
o 7.1 Science
o 7.2 Medicine and biology
o 7.3 Art
o 7.4 Other fields
* 8 See also
* 9 References
* 10 Further reading
* 11 External links

History

The concept of engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the pulley, lever, and wheel. Each of these inventions is consistent with the modern definition of engineering, exploiting basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools and objects.

The term engineering itself has a much more recent etymology, deriving from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1325, when an engine’er (literally, one who operates an engine) originally referred to “a constructor of military engines.”[5] In this context, now obsolete, an “engine” referred to a military machine, i. e., a mechanical contraption used in war (for example, a catapult). The word “engine” itself is of even older origin, ultimately deriving from the Latin ingenium (c. 1250), meaning “innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention.”[6]

Later, as the design of civilian structures such as bridges and buildings matured as a technical discipline, the term civil engineering[4] entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish between those specializing in the construction of such non-military projects and those involved in the older discipline of military engineering (the original meaning of the word “engineering,” now largely obsolete, with notable exceptions that have survived to the present day such as military engineering corps, e. g., the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers).

[edit] Ancient Era

The Acropolis and the Parthenon in Greece, the Roman aqueducts, Via Appia and the Colosseum, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pharos of Alexandria, the pyramids in Egypt, Teotihuacán and the cities and pyramids of the Mayan, Inca and Aztec Empires, the Great Wall of China, among many others, stand as a testament to the ingenuity and skill of the ancient civil and military engineers.

The earliest civil engineer known by name is Imhotep.[4] As one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser (the Step Pyramid) at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630-2611 BC. [7] He may also have been responsible for the first known use of columns in architecture.[citation needed]

Ancient Greece developed machines in both in the civilian and military domains. The Antikythera mechanism, the earliest known model of a mechanical computer in history, and the mechanical inventions of Archimedes are examples of early mechanical engineering. Some of Archimedes' inventions as well as the Antikythera mechanism required sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing, two key principles in machine theory that helped design the gear trains of the Industrial revolution and are still widely used today in diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.[8]

Chinese and Roman armies employed complex military machines including the Ballista and catapult. In the Middle Ages, the Trebuchet was developed.

[edit] Middle Era

An Iraqi by the name of al-Jazari helped influence the design of today's modern machines when sometime in between 1174 and 1200 he built five machines to pump water for the kings of the Turkish Artuqid dynasty and their palaces. The double-acting reciprocating piston pump was instrumental in the later development of engineering in general because it was the first machine to incorporate both the connecting rod and the crankshaft, thus, converting rotational motion to reciprocating motion.[9]

British Charter Engineer Donald Routledge Hill once wrote:

It is impossible to over emphasize the importance of al-Jazari's work in the history of engineering, Until modern times there is no other document from any cultural area that provides a comparable wealth of instructions for the design, manufacture and assembly of machines...[10]

Even today some toys still use the cam-lever mechanism found in al-Jazari's combination lock and automaton. Besides over 50 ingenious mechanical devices, al-Jazari also developed and made innovations to segmental gears, mechanical controls, escapement mechanisms, clocks, robotics, and protocols for designing and manufacturing methods.

[edit] Renaissance Era

The first electrical engineer is considered to be William Gilbert, with his 1600 publication of De Magnete, who was the originator of the term "electricity".[11]

The first steam engine was built in 1698 by mechanical engineer Thomas Savery. The development of this device gave rise to the industrial revolution in the coming decades, allowing for the beginnings of mass production.

With the rise of engineering as a profession in the eighteenth century, the term became more narrowly applied to fields in which mathematics and science were applied to these ends. Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering.

[edit] Modern Era

Electrical Engineering can trace its origins in the experiments of Alessandro Volta in the 1800s, the experiments of Michael Faraday, Georg Ohm and others and the invention of the electric motor in 1872. The work of James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to the field of Electronics. The later inventions of the vacuum tube and the transistor further accelerated the development of Electronics to such an extent that electrical and electronics engineers currently outnumber their colleagues of any other Engineering specialty.[4]

The inventions of Thomas Savery and the Scottish engineer James Watt gave rise to modern Mechanical Engineering. The development of specialized machines and their maintenance tools during the industrial revolution led to the rapid growth of Mechanical Engineering both in its birthplace Britain and abroad.[4]

Chemical Engineering, like its counterpart Mechanical Engineering, developed in the nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution.[4] Industrial scale manufacturing demanded new materials and new processes and by 1880 the need for large scale production of chemicals was such that a new industry was created, dedicated to the development and large scale manufacturing of chemicals in new industrial plants.[4] The role of the chemical engineer was the design of these chemical plants and processes.[4]

Aeronautical Engineering deals with aircraft design while Aerospace Engineering is a more modern term that expands the reach envelope of the discipline by including spacecraft design.[12] Its origins can be traced back to the aviation pioneers around the turn of the century from the 19th century to the 20th although the work of Sir George Cayley has recently been dated as being from the last decade of the 18th century. Early knowledge of aeronautical engineering was largely empirical with some concepts and skills imported from other branches of engineering.[13] Only a decade after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, the 1920s saw extensive development of aeronautical engineering through development of World War I military aircraft. Meanwhile, research to provide fundamental background science continued by combining theoretical physics with experiments.

The first PhD in engineering (technically, applied science and engineering) awarded in the United States went to Willard Gibbs at Yale University in 1863; it was also the second PhD awarded in science in the U.S.[14]
In 1990, with the rise of computer technology, the first search engine was built by computer engineer Alan Emtage

Main branches of engineering

Main article: List of engineering branches

Engineering, much like science, is a broad discipline which is often broken down into several sub-disciplines. These disciplines concern themselves with differing areas of engineering work. Although initially an engineer will be trained in a specific discipline, throughout an engineer's career the engineer may become multi-disciplined, having worked in several of the outlined areas. Historically the main Branches of Engineering are categorized as follows:[12][15]

* Aerospace Engineering - The design of aircraft, spacecraft and related topics.
* Chemical Engineering - The conversion of raw materials into usable commodities and the optimization of flow systems, especially separations.
* Civil Engineering - The design and construction of public and private works, such as infrastructure (roads, railways, water supply and treatment etc.), bridges and buildings.
* Electrical Engineering - The design of electrical systems, such as transformers, as well as electronic goods.
* Mechanical Engineering - The design of physical or mechanical systems, such as engines, powertrains, kinematic chains and vibration isolation equipment.

With the rapid advancement of Technology many new fields are gaining prominence and new branches are developing such as Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Nanotechnology, Molecular engineering, Mechatronics etc. These new specialties sometimes combine with the traditional fields and form new branches such as Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

For each of these fields there exists considerable overlap, especially in the areas of the application of sciences to their disciplines such as physics, chemistry and mathematics.