NZ
science teacher
changingwork/workplace:engineering
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mechanical engineering – paradigm shift? There has been a paradigm shift in mechanical engineering as Stefanie Gutschmidt from The University of Canterbury explains using this example of development of new types of motors: When asking prospective students and their parents during university Open Days or Career Expos what they associate with the term Mechanical Engineering, they often reflect a traditional picture of greasy hands, noisy engines and technical drawings. A few of them appreciate that the noisy and dirty aspects have vanished from modern Mechanical Engineering, but no one really recognises that, in fact, a paradigm shift has taken place.
The traditional view of engineering
The word mechanical originates from Greek. (mechane) comes from the root word (mechan) and means machine. It broadly refers to any device that carries out a function. This meaning originated from fine arts and the theatre, where in a play the "deus ex machina" (the god out of the machine) appears at the end of a play to solve a problem. Today's meaning and the related word mechanics is the scientific (lat. scienta=knowledge) study of mechane – the study of machines from which university majors like Applied Mechanics derive. The word engineering is derived from the Latin roots ingenium (cleverness) and ingeniare (to devise) from which we get the familiar word ingenuity1. The meaning of the word engine, however, has changed very much. While it used to mean any product of the mind or innate mental power, today it has a completely new meaning as in e.g.
“search engine” (computer terminology). This examination of the root words reveals two things: first, the interesting connection between art/creativity and producing/solving something; and second, the scope of an engineer’s duties (ancient and modern alike). Picture of dirty hands and noisy machines The rise of engineering as a profession dates back to the eighteenth century at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when the term engineering became more narrowly associated with mathematics and science applied to building innovative machines. Clearly, the meaning of the word engineering has been shaped and redefined over time by many factors, including increasing knowledge, skills and applications, which emerged from the four Industrial Revolutions. Engineering before the scientific revolution (end of Renaissance era to mid-18th ct.) was defined by practical artists and craftsmen, whom with imaginative tinkering, produced many marvellous devices. Names like Leonardo da Vinci come to mind. During the first Industrial Revolution (18th–early 19th ct.) engineering was no longer the domain of practical artists but became that of scientific professionals. Yet the most significant change during that era was the discovery and use of different, much more powerful energy sources than human or animal muscle power. For the first time, machines were powered by other machines (steam engines) and thus replaced muscle power, which gave birth to many new engineering branches. It is my personal view that the
Figure 1: Making screws in France in the third quarter of the 18th century. Ref: L’Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers…receuil de planches sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques, avec leur explication (Paris: 1762-1772), vol. 9, plate 12.
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New Zealand Association of Science Educators