Developing Engineers

This year has been the first full year for us here at developingengineers.com, and what a year it’s been!  We’ve been posting on a whole range of issues, engineering in the news, exciting new and incredible historic innovations, we’ve reported on science and engineering events, as well as sharing some of our own experiences.  So let me take you through our year in blogs…

In January we started off discussing specialisms in engineering, first asking how you discover or decide your own area of expertise, before discussing the value of doing a PhD.  Hardly surprising looking back, when higher education was big in the news, still reeling from the decision to triple tuition fees for undergraduate students (which to date has resulted in a 15% drop in UCAS applications, although ‘thankfully’ only around 8% for engineering subjects).  We also posted on the upcoming Formula 1 season, which while slightly one-sided has still been one of the most technologically remarkable to date.

Early in the year we also shared a number of our experiences and advice on job interviews, and in particular answering those tricky STAR questions that employers love to fill their application forms with!  March saw us highlighting some of the exceptional work done to inspire young people into engineering, in which we commented on International Women’s Day as well as The Big Bang Fair.

Inevitably, we waded in to the debate around nuclear power that started after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the resulting meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant.  Along with the rest of the engineering profession, our writers tried to rationalise the debate by highlighting the inherent safety of modern nuclear plant designs and the exceptional circumstances experienced at Fukushima.  Even so, in the aftermath of the disaster a number of prominent countries have decided to abandon nuclear power altogether, which presents yet another challenge in trying to combat global emissions, and led us to try and assess the impact of the Japanese earthquake on the energy industry.

Rounding off the first quarter, we even got an early sighting of the Airbus A400M!

In April we looked at how both historical and state-of-the-art engineering can inspire us, with a look at the SS Great Britain and the Bloodhound Super Sonic Car.  Both got follow ups, with a two-part tour of the SS Great Britain and a piece on the phenomenal Bloodhound SSC project – I think it goes without saying that we can’t wait to see the car come together during 2012 ready for it’s 1000mph world land speed record attempt in 2013!

Another issue never far from the fore is that of sustainability, and before Easter we discussed not simply the technological, but the ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development.  Whilst innovation will allow us to reduce our energy and material requirements, perhaps more important is a cultural shift towards re-using and recycling the resources we have.

Over the summer I’m sure many people enjoyed watching the latest BBC series of The Apprentice, however many engineers took exception to comments a certain Lord Sugar made when ‘firing’ a contestant.  Interestingly however, Lord Sugar redeemed himself by hiring an engineer at the end of the competition!

A big event this summer (which we surprisingly covered!) was the quadrennial World Scout Jamboree, which attracted almost 40,000 Scouts from over 140 countries to a site near Kristianstad in Sweden.  Having been lucky enough to be asked to act as an ‘external expert’ to design and build a range of bicycle powered activities, I thought I’d share my experiences through a trio of posts covering the design, prototyping and final manufacture of the bike rigs for the Jamboree!

Getting ‘back on track’, we were also lucky enough to experience the IMechE’s annual Formula Student competition held at Silverstone.  Attracting over 130 teams from around the world, this year was particularly special as it featured, for the first time, a team from Gaza University who spoke of the added challenges of designing, manufacturing and transporting a working race car, when subjected to such severe restrictions.

During the autumn we covered a number of issues facing engineers, both current and future, as we commented on the case against 6 Italian seismologists for failing to predict the L’Aquila earthquake, as well as discussing how we can communicate our passion for engineering to inspire the next generation.

As a suitable finale to the year was our coverage of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, which is hoped to become established alongside the Nobel Prizes with its £1,000,000 prize for engineering innovation.  In an unprecedented show of support, the leaders from all three of the UK’s biggest political parties appeared together to announce the new prize, which will be administered by the Royal Academy for Engineering and supported by a number of prominent engineering companies.

It’s been a busy year for us here at Developing Engineers, but we’re thrilled with the sheer number of visitors we’ve had from across the world.  In 2012 you can look forward to more articles covering the vast spectrum of engineering, a revamp of the site making it more accessible, and perhaps even a non-English blog post or two!

Thanks for reading this year, we look forward to seeing you back here in 2012!

Partly shaped like a bullet, unreal looking, stuff video games are made of, you’ve probably seen it in a sci-fi movie, but there it was sitting right in front me and a number of people on the night of 19th February.  Imitating a Bullet in shape and aerodynamics, yet it outdoes bullets in terms of speed. This unique one-off car, that cannot be obtained from your local dealer, primarily aims to steer the interest of children of school age towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects. It makes this impressive statement to them: -

“STUDY SCIENCE OR MATHS AND YOU TOO COULD BE INVOLVED IN SOMETHING LIKE THIS”

Sporting a handle bar moustache and acting as the superhero/mascot for the cause in my opinion is Daniel “the rocket man” Jubb. What is profoundly striking about this character is his profile entry on the project’s website. On the qualifications line, it simply says ‘I don’t have any‘,  seeming to be a living, breathing, proof of my earlier statement that: -

“ENGINEERING PIONEERS ARE SIMPLY MEN WHO DARED TO DO”

Here is an engineer with no qualifications who built his first rocket, age five, from a “McDonald’s straw, a light bulb holder and some household ingredients”

But, since this was an event with just adults, Daniel Jubb was not around, in attendance was James Painter and Dan Johns. James Painter in his presentation made what I suspect to be a well rehearsed, often used joke about the complications of a Taylor Series equation.

Besides the failed attempt at injecting humour, the whole presentation was informative, attention grabbing & effective.

The 1000 mph achieving team work tirelessly to achieve it’s STEM catalyst mission through several of such presentations to schools and their efforts I highly commend and applaud.

CAD files of Bloodhound are now available on the project’s website here

This is the blog post that never happened, an account of an evening on SS Great Britain. In attendance was James Painter & Dan Johns of Bloodhound SSC at a relaunch event for sogeclair aerospace which I alluded to in my earlier post – Ideas ditched in the valley of death. In fact the pictures in that post were all taken at the event.

I recorded a video of 3 experienced Engineers I work with (1 was born in the 1940s !) having a conversion with the 2 bloodhound engineers I mentioned in the first line of this post. I cannot post this video and this is my ‘the dog ate my homework story‘

There is some noise in the background of the video from the extractor fans on site (Bloodhound technical center) which makes the video virtually inaudible. I gave the video to my sound engineer housemate (Can he call himself that ?) to fix, who promised that he could solve my problem easily. Unfortunately, he broke up days later with his girlfriend who also lived in the flat, he moved out with his computer and since I’ve only known him for a while I cannot get the fixed video back.

Though it has been uploaded on Vimeo somewhere, I will not provide you with a link, to distance myself from such a horrible sounding video. All this just goes to show how much we here at developingengineers are still learning, but aim to get better, so please stick with us, the best is yet to come.

Now, instead of posting everything from the event on the 19th of February 2011, I’ve decided to extend it to a series of posts with pictures I took on the night, since they tell a better story than I ever can. Also unashamably milking it for all it’s worth !