Engineering to inspire

Featured Video: Saving Garbage???

Environmental engineers safeguard the quality of land, air and water. They investigate contaminants for each one of these items.

Imagine if they’re not around. How do you make sure that s**t doesn’t get into your drinking water? How do you make sure that pollutants are safely disposed of?

But it’s more than rubbish dumps and landfills. Singapore is trending towards green buildings that recycle their own waste water and air, and draw power from the sun.

Guess who’s responsible for it all?

Environmental engineering is concerned with the quality of land, air and water, and engineers primarily investigate contaminants for each one of these items. Find out how environmental engineers research those things in the environment that affect our health with help from a solid waste planning engineer and recycling program coordinator in this free video on environmental engineering.

Like this video?
Subscribe to UCreateChange’s YouTube Channel!

Bioengineering for a better life

Bioengineering sounds esoteric but really, it isn’t.

According to Wikipedia’s Bioengineering entry:

biological engineers attempt to either mimic biological systems in order to create products or modify and control biological systems so that they can replace, augment, or sustain chemical and mechanical processes.

Like spectacles – invented since 1200 for scholars and monks – or its modern evolution: the contact lenses. Or wooden teeth and ceramic dentures. Or an Egyptian pharaoh’s false toe to an Italian robotic hand that moves when we think “grab”. Or an artificial heart to replace a faulty heart riddled with holes. There are many more examples at UCreateChange.com Health posts.

You can see that bioengineering’s has been around for yonks. It’s just that we’re taking its inventions and products for granted for yonks as well.

It’s changed since.

Bioengineering is now a recognised field that doctors, surgeons and common folk rely on to make a difference in our lives. So instead of doing inane “turn off your lights for one hour in a year” (ala Earth Hour), think/find out how we can improve humanity from within.

After all, as a wise Chinese man once said:

“If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”

So take care of man and the rest will fall in place.

On James Cameron: Director of Avatar

James Cameron’s big-budget films have plenty of special effects and fantastic settings – like Terminator, Titanic and more recently, Avatar. Nay-sayers might argue that it’s a substitute for good story. And that’s what we thought when we saw his films.

That’s until we found his TED talk.

In it Cameron speaks about how he grew up as a science geek with his nose buried in science fiction books. That made him imagine what might be and what if… things happened in his films. And he’s still curious about the world to wander through it (check out the 9:45 mark where he talks about going into the sunken Titanic with homemade bots). Somehow along the way, he managed to bring together his sci-fi passions with doing science.

The moral of the talk? Be curious and explore. Maybe you’ll find the next big thing out there…

James Cameron: Science geek, avid reader, deep-sea diver and explorer.

Singapore: the land of “no ingenuity”?

Not if my trawl through the net had anything to say about it.

My research for this week’s posts on Asian inventions and Asian inventors at UCreateChange.com turned up an amazing revelation: Singaporeans are as inventive as Koreans, Japanese, or Silicon Valley types.

A little history, we have plenty of firsts – Sim Wong Hoo for PC sound cards (to better listen to MP3), Trek Technology for thumbdrives (to better carry data around), and X-mini for mini subwoofers (to better blast emo-punk music).

We know them cause they made it to the top. So are there inventors who aren’t on our collective Wikipedia entry?

Hell, yeah.

[Students say] What is Engineering?

Here’s the thing.

We’ve heard about “What is Engineering” from friends and our Creators of Tomorrow. But really, what do students think of engineering or innovation?

After all our friends aren’t going to switch careers and the Creators of Tomorrow are engineers. So that leaves the future – students of today.

While we’re waiting for your say, perhaps this little study by an engineering lecturer, Preman Rajalingam of Republic Polytechnic, could shed some light on what students think of engineering.

He got students to take photos and write up on what engineering meant to them. Then he categorised each photo according to an engineering outcome (what results from engineering) and their write ups to engineering processes (what goes into engineering).

I’m skipping over the report’s details (read it below or at Scrib) and presenting the conclusions…

“What is Engineering [about]?”

Two weeks ago, I’ve had a bunch of questions on “What’s engineering?”

That discussion (right fine, it was an argument) got me thinking about the nature of engineering and what’s it about. Is engineering really just making stuff like cars, buildings and mp3 players? Is it a way of improving our lives? Or is it a way to view the world?

I figured that I’d might as well ask an engineer on it’s all about. Good thing that Creator of Tomorrow, Justin Chiam from SIA Engineering, stepped up to the plate and gave us an answer (or eight of them) to the “what’s it about?” question. Some of his answers, most of us would instinctively know. The rest perhaps, not so. But in all, it’s a good list to get a feel of how engineers see engineering.

What is Engineering?

Last week I was quaffing beers with friends at Boat Quay. The night was balmy, beers were cool and crowd non-existent.

Perfect. Except for one little thing…

We got into a heated discussion on what engineering really meant. It was a sight to behold: beer froth spewed, we went at it like dogs chasing their own tails, and threw up a gazillion different scenarios before crawling away for another pint of Guinness.

It was a bizarre yet thought-provoking topic with things like: