What Engineers Do

WHAT ENGINEERS DO

PARENTS AND TEACHERS, All children love to play and explore the world in different ways. They invent bulldozers with their boots in the snow, or create bubbles by splashing through puddles. They also design solutions to problems by finding a way to climb up on a counter to nab a cookie! Children can be very imaginative and innovative when presented with a challenge!

These qualities – imagination, creativity, inventiveness, problem-solving and design skills – are all hallmarks of budding engineers.

Canada’s engineering profession needs more young people to build solutions for the future, and Aboriginal communities have the youngest population in the country. Canada’s Aboriginal communities also need the skills that an engineering education can provide. Whether the need is for a cleaner environment, new homes, better communications infrastructure or more efficient heating systems, Aboriginal engineers will make important contributions to community development.

We invite you to use this book as a first step in introducing children to What Engineers Do. The Engineering and You, Design Challenge and Experiment sections are intended to let you explore engineering concepts in an immediate, hands-on way in order to bring this book to life and have children recognize their relationship to engineering.

Many of the pages feature activities that can also be found as interactive games on our website, aboriginalaccess.ca. Other resources are also available on our website, such as curriculum guides, learning modules and role model profiles of practicing Aboriginal engineers. You may also keep up to date on developments in science, technology, engineering and math education for Aboriginal peoples through our mailing list and the social media networks that are linked on the site.

We hope you enjoy discovering along with your children what engineers do!

WHAT ENGINEERS DO

ABORIGINAL ACCESS TO ENGINEERING Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science Beamish-Munro Hall 300 Queen’s University Kingston ON K7L 3N6 aboriginalaccess.ca

What Engineers Do was originally designed and developed in 2002. This revised edition is produced by the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Queen’s University.

Text by Dawn Wiseman, Jerilyn Horn and Corinne Mount Pleasant-JettĂŠ Textual revision and development of parent-teacher companion text by Melanie Howard, with input from Ron Anderson, Duncan Cree, Janice Hill and Maria Lahiffe.

Cover and interior art by Peggy Collins, 2014.

Do you know what engineers do?

Engineers make our water safe to drink.

They design schools and protect our forests.

They also help clean up pollution, build roads and dig mines.

Engineers do lots of things that help people and communities.

To be an engineer you have to work hard in school. You also have to go to school for a long time. But imagine how cool it would be to study muskox, to make medicine, or to map the Northern Lights.

Engineers do those things too.

Bet you didn’t know that!

There are lots of things people don’t know about engineers.

That’s why we wrote this book.

We hope you enjoy learning what engineers do.

Forestry engineers work to help the health of trees and animals in the forest.

Can you help the engineer count the animals in this forest?

I counted ___ animals.

ENGINEERING AND YOU: WILDLIFE WALK Take some time to walk outdoors around your community.

What signs of wild animals do you see? What animals are they?

Structural engineers design places where people live, work and play.

Circle the buildings designed by Aboriginal peoples.

Adobe Pueblo

Longhouse

Mound House

Tipis

Canadian Museum of History

Igloo

DESIGN CHALLENGE: Can you try to make a smaller model of one of the buildings on this page? Which materials would work best?

The triangle is a strong shape. It has 3 sides.

Civil engineers build bridges with triangles.

There are 9 triangles in this bridge.

Can you find them all?

Outline each triangle in a different colour.

Haven and Oke are Civil Engineering students! Meet them at: issuu.com/queenseng/docs/werecivilforweb

Now you know civil engineers use triangles to build bridges.

Can you build a bridge to get the car across the river?

ENGINEERING AND YOU: BRIDGES What other types of bridges have you seen, either in real life or through pictures? Are using triangles the only way to build a bridge?

Naval engineers build boats. A canoe is a boat first built by Aboriginal peoples.

To find the canoe, use the number guide to colour the spaces.

1 = purple 2 = blue 3 = black 4 = brown 5 = orange 6 = red 7 = green 8 = yellow

EXPERIMENT: WHAT TYPES OF MATERIALS ARE BEST USED TO BUILD A BOAT? What are some of the things you’d need to think about? Fill a sink or bucket with water and test different materials to see if they naturally sink or float. You can try rocks, wood, leaves, plastic…anything you can find!

Mechanical engineers design different machines, including cars.

If you were a mechanical engineer, what kind of car would you design? Draw it below.

ENGINEERING AND YOU: MOTORS Engineers design all parts of a car, but pay particular attention to the motor. The motor powers the car.

What other things have motors? Engineers worked on designing those things too!

Construction engineers make buildings.

Colour the items used to make a building.

ENGINEERING AND YOU: YOUR HOUSE Take a look around your house.

What things were used to build it? Can you see everything used to build your house, or are some things hidden?

Transportation engineers help people get from place to place by building roads and travel ways. In the north, inukshuks are sometimes used like road signs.

They mark the way from one place to another.

Connect the dots to see an inukshuk.

DESIGN CHALLENGE: Do you have rocks around outside where you live?

Try to build an inukshuk! It’s not always as easy as it may look‌. what are some of the properties you would want to look for to ensure your rocks will balance? Imagine trying to build an inukshuk with huge boulders!

Computer engineers design computers.

Can you help make these computers work?

Trace the wire to find out which outlet the computer is plugged into. Write the letter of the outlet onthe computer screen.

A

B

C

ENGINEERING AND YOU: ELECTRICITY Computers require electricity to work. They get this electrical power from outlets or from batteries. What other things in your house use electricity? Can you count them? There are probably quite a few!

Mining engineers look for metals and gems.

Can you help the mining engineer find the diamond?

ENGINEERING AND YOU: ROCKS Mining engineers look for metals and gems in rocks. These minerals form different parts of certain rocks, and don’t often just appear on their own. Go outside and collect different rocks.

Can you sort your rocks out by their different properties? Are some of them shinier, smoother, or more multicoloured than others?

Chemical engineers help develop many different products. All of the pictures on this page were made with the help of chemical engineers.

How many do you have at home? Colour them in!

ENGINEERING AND YOU: MEDICINE Did you notice that chemical engineers make medicine? Medicine often comes from ingredients in plants. Medicine plants often grow in the wild, and an elder or medicine person from your community will know more about the natural medicines where you live.

Engineers learn from animals and nature.

Who built this structure?

Do you know what it is called?

Otter

Heron

Beaver

Moose

Like the beaver, engineers build dams. Many engineers will work on a dam. A dam makes electricity.

CIVIL

GEOLOGICAL

ELECTRICAL

MECHANICAL

EXPERIMENT: In a hydroelectric project, electricity is generated by the power of water going through the dam. The dam stops the flow of water and forces it through a smaller opening. The pressure of the water flow increases and turns turbines, which spin and make electricity. Have you ever tried this with a hose or tap outside in the summertime? What happens when you block the hose with your hand and let the water out of a much smaller opening?

Which engineer helps with each part?

Write the type of engineering they do beside where they work.

ENGINEERING AND YOU: TEAMWORK Engineers will often work in teams to accomplish a project. As you can see in the dam project, different types of engineers can work together. Have you ever worked or played on a team? Who were the different players on that team?

Water resources engineers design ways to make our water safe to drink. They also design the pipes and pumps which bring the water into our homes.

Colour in all of the things in the house that use water. There are a lot!

ENGINEERING AND YOU: WATER TRANSPORT Can you walk from your house to the nearest stream or lake? Fill a bucket with as much water as you can safely carry. Bring the water back to your house. This is how our ancestors got water to their homes‌ by hand! Imagine how much work this would have been!

What was designed by mechanical engineers to help people get around in the winter? To find the answer, write the first letter of each word represented by the pictures in the boxes below.

All of these objects are examples of engineering.

Draw a line from each box to the number of objects it contains.

Over the summer, engineers worked on your school building.

Can you find the 6 changes they made and circle them?

BEFORE

AFTER

While you were visiting Cathy’s engineering office, you accidentally left 7 things behind.

They are pictured at the bottom of the page.

Can you find them in Cathy’s office?

A HAT

A HAPPY FACE

A RULER

A JUICE BOX

A POPSICLE

A TEDDY BEAR

A LOLLIPOP

The words below are all examples of engineering.

Can you circle them in the puzzle?

Engineers can work in your community.

What type of engineer do you want to be?

Draw yourself!

This edition of What Engineers Do is brought to you through the generous support of:

The Joseph S. Stauffer Foundation

aboriginalaccess.ca