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National Engineers Week

This week is National Engineers Week!

This week-long event recognizes engineers as a central asset to our world and celebrates their “positive contributions to quality of life,” according to the National Society of Engineers.

Engineers created structures like the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal, and even the Great Wall of China! Without engineers, these massive and impressive feats would have never come to be.

Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951, National Engineers Week has coincided for over 50 years with the week of President George Washington’s birthday (February 22nd) to pay homage to the USA’s first engineer. Washington was introduced to engineering at an early age, often partaking in land surveying opportunities and ultimately going on to design a country estate on a plantation he’d inherited — Mount Vernon.

Each year, DiscoverE (http://www.discovere.org/), an organization focused on supporting and promoting growth of the engineering and technology communities, encourages children to explore the STEM community through interactive lessons, child-friendly activities, and involvement with their own local engineering communities.

Across the nation in cities like Port Jefferson, NY; Raleigh, NC; and Los Angeles, CA, DiscoverE hosts a series of workshops and presentations to promote the importance of engineering. Children are able to meet and speak with veteran engineers, participate in fun, educational activities, and learn about the global scale of engineered contributions.

For more information on upcoming STEM events sponsored by DiscoverE, visit https://discovere.org/engage/engineers-week/

 

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National Static Electricity Day

Today, January 9th, is National Static Electricity Awareness Day!

The Library of Congress defines static electricity as "an imbalance between negative and positive charges in objects." Static electricity is completely harmless and can manifest itself in a variety of ways, such as rubbing a balloon against your clothes and sticking it to the walls or on your hair to cause it to raise.

The first recorded instance of static electricity was when Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher, recorded that he noticed that dust was sticking to his ambers after rubbing them; however, it wasn’t until many years later that the term “electricity” was established, and that’s when humanity began to pursue a greater understanding of the concept of static electricity. National Static Electricity Day is now observed because it has become an essential component of and has shaped our daily lives in numerous positive ways. Factory air pollution, for example, can be managed thanks to advances in static electricity and electric engineering.

A few interesting and fun facts about static electricity:

  • Lightning is actually a form of static electricity due to the electric charge exchange between clouds;
  • Static electricity could be harnessed as a future source of energy; and
  • Photocopy machines use static electricity to place ink on paper.

If you want to learn more about science and static electricity, please visit: https://www.sciencemadesimple.com/static.html

 

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Happy National Metric Week

Did you know that the metric system began during the Age of Enlightenment?

In Europe, the metric system became the normal standard measurement and later was adopted across the world with the exception of the United States (US), Liberia, and Myanmar. Today, the US remains the only country to use the imperial system. The US didn’t adopt the metric system because, during the Industrial Revolution, the main source of income was manufacturing plants; adopting the metric system would have cost the US time and money. Even in today’s society, money is the main topic of discussion as to why the US won’t change to the metric system. Although the metric system is not used in the US, it plays a major part in the US engineering industry, which utilizes the metric system due to its compatibility with all types of measurements and accuracy over the imperial system. For example, engineers utilize the metric system when creating computer-aided design (CAD).

Many considered Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and scientist, to be the father of the metric system. Mouton was born in 1618 in Lyon, France, he spent his whole life and later died in 1694. Mouton was incredibly involved with his church, but also spent his personal time studying mathematics and astronomy. In the field of natural and practical measurement, Mouton was a pioneer; he started by examining how latitude affects a pendulum's length with a one beat per second frequency. The length of the terrestrial meridian, which was to be used as the universal unit of length, was the length that he then proposed to infer from these changes.

The metric system has many advantages, but is not without its disadvantages. Some advantages consist of the metric system being consistently based on decimal numbers; since it’s based on multiples of ten, you can simply move the decimal point so any measurements that are given in one metric unit such as a kilogram can be converted to another metric unit such as a gram. In addition, the metric system works well with percentages and is a one sort of unit for weight, which makes it easier to get more accurate measurements. However, the disadvantage of the metric system is that it’s not well suited for working with fractions, so basically one size does not fit all. When it comes to measuring fractions, the numbers can be off. For example, 2/6 meter is approximately equivalent to 333 millimeters and 2/3 kilogram is approximately equal to 666 grams.

 

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Happy National Aviation Day

From the French word “aviation” (which comes from the Laten stem, “Avis,” meaning bird), aviation is the act of flying or operating an aircraft. This concept, particularly human aviation, had been a point of interest in engineering for a long time, and on December 17th, 1903, the collective efforts and ideas of previous great minds resulted in one hugely significant event for aeronautical engineering; Orville Wright became the first ever person to fly a heavier-than-air flying machine, traveling about 850 feet while his brother Wilbur was at the controls. The aircraft had been designed and built by the brothers, making them the first-ever aeronautical engineers and test pilots. National Aviation Day is celebrated on August 19th, Orville Wright’s birthday, in recognition of pioneers of human flight and all developments humans have made thereafter that allowed aviation to be such massive part of today’s world.

The design for a modern airplane was first described before the Wright brothers were even born by George Cayley in 1799, who described a machine with fixed wings that used lift propulsion and control mechanisms; many other advancements in engineering gave the Wright brothers the tools to achieve this feat. Even still, the Wright brothers’ accomplishment cannot be diminished; they studied lift, calculated the wing area needed to allow the machine to fly, designed and built an aluminum engine capable of producing the required power per unit weight, used their understanding of lift to make calculations and estimates for propellers, and even funded the entire project out of their own pockets.

Present day, human flight is so commonplace that it is rarely even considered just how amazing the feat is and how impactful developments in aeronautical engineering have been for humanity. National Aviation Day is the perfect time to recognize this amazing innovation and appreciate how aeronautical engineering has made the world more accessible by providing speedy travel to places that would have otherwise been completely inaccessible to most people.

 

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Happy National Professional Engineers Day

A Professional Engineer (P.E.) license is a certification given to engineers after passing an examination provided by the National Council of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCEES). In order to obtain a P.E. license, engineers must meet NCEES requirements of passing the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam and the Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) exam. Engineers can have multiple P.E. licenses because they are provided individually by states. The first person to ever earn a P.E. license in the United States (U.S.) was Charles Bellamy on August 8th, 1907; now over 100 years later, we celebrate Professional Engineers Day around the world.

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022 will mark the seventh annual anniversary of Professional Engineers Day. The purpose of this holiday is to bring awareness to what engineers do, what it takes to be a P.E., and how they stay up-to-date with rapidly growing technologies. Thanks to the awareness this holiday offers, the U.S. has more than 800,000 engineers with P.E. licenses according to NCEES, and soon we will be able to proudly say the U.S. has more than 1,000,000 engineers with P.E. licenses.

Happy Professional Engineers Day!