Re: Rant on Engineering

From: "Hawco, Paul R."

> We have no real promotional body - that's the root of our problem.
What
> do we have? - an Engineering week that only some engineers actually
know
> about and very few participate in. If it wasn't for the Discovery
> Channel (that only engineers, math and science majors watch anyway)
we'd
> be completely ignored. There hasn't been a good engineer on TV since
> Star Trek's "Mr. Scott". In today's world kids feel Math is not
> important - Schools and University's are bending over backwards to
come
> up with programs that exclude Math - and we say nothing.

I've often thought that math education should work backwards at about age 10 or 11. In other words, start with a real-world application, get the kids interested and then explain how it was done. Lots of (user-modifyable - sorry, that's not even an actual word) computer animation to illustrate concepts. Then let the truly interested explore further while the less interested will still retain a basic understanding of the core concepts. But what do I know. My son is turning 13 later this month, and it's only recently that his math is getting a lot better. As for me and my own math skills, I'm still not too sure (abbr. N.T.S. - anyone remember that in these days of CAD exactitude?) if Pythagoras isn't some kind of Greek name for a long snake. Thank heaven for my HP-11c with the formulae on the back!

One of the (Asian-sounding name, can't recall now) ASME guys has been promoting engineers promoting themselves for ages. Nothing seems to happen.

The Discovery Channel program I mentioned earlier was somewhat focused on "gee, wow" stuff and exploding things (the "blue collar" side, so to speak), but they did do a good job on pipeline pigs and the process of installing underground pipelines. I can think about a lot of "cool" *engineering* stuff that would also be interesting, and I guess I'd better get on my horse and do something about it before someone beats me to it.

Here are the rebroadcast times for the pipelines episode, for those that get the Canadian version of the Discovery Channel:

Sat, Mar 6, 2004 at 7:00 PM (ET)

Sun, Mar 7, 2004 at 2:00 AM (ET)

Sun, Mar 7, 2004 at 9:00 AM (ET)

Paul

PS "Very funny Scotty. Now beam down my clothes." Received on Fri Mar 05 22:15:00 2004