Imagine a world without Engineers

It’s a warm day, you press the button and get a blast of cool air from a machine — a fan. You speak to your mother who is miles away through a device — a phone. You key a string of letters and numbers onto a screen and like magic your businesses’ projections for the year are complete. We are surrounded by the seemingly impossible in every moment… Our life is the way it is because of engineers.  

Building A House

Let’s begin with our favourite place — our house. Not only do engineers plan how to build a house, but the way they do so has also changed over time, thanks to engineering inventions. Think of the way houses were built in the 16th and 17th century and compare it to the modern sophisticated condos and villas that we see these days and you will understand what we are getting at. Modern houses are complex technological entities that follow building codes, are smart and can cope with various weather conditions. Building codes are specific construction methods created by engineers and architects with a high level of detail to be followed during construction. Remember the classic movie The Wizard of Oz? Well, houses don’t typically get ripped away from their foundations thanks to engineers.

Making Of A Home

We need many things to make a house a home — fresh water for everyday use, wastewater disposal systems, electricity to light up the house, gadgets to blend fruit, iron trousers, and trim bushes. There are a thousand of things that contribute to our lives from the time we wake up. Look around you, and you will find at least 5 things that are engineering contributions. Today, we have gone beyond the basic requirements and are making quantum leaps. We are thinking of making our homes energy efficient, we are using technologies to make our gadgets safer, we are installing solar panels to move towards a greener energy source and innumerable other things. We are moving forward, thanks to engineers.

Growing A City

Now think about the city you live in. We are able to live the way we live because there are roads and bridges to travel, parks and recreation facilities to experience nature, malls to spend our cash and satisfy our hearts, cinemas to be transported into other realms, and countless other things that create the lifestyle we expect and are now used to. Furthermore, our cities grow and develop through specific plans in which engineers make major contributions. From bridges to skyscrapers, from dams to wind turbines, it is a list of things – big and small – that create the functionality of any city.

Electricity

We are surrounded by a mesh of wires, poles, transformers and innumerable other things that make up the electric grid. Thanks to Electrical Engineers, we not only have an illuminated world, but we also stay safe in spite of being surrounded by something that can kill someone in a millisecond.

Transportation

Getting around at the speed and efficiency that we do these days would not be possible without Engineers. And we are not just talking about cars or trains, but the whole transportation system. Think of everything associated with transportation — petroleum drilling and refining, satellite navigation, aircraft construction and flight navigation, trains tracks and even the radio that entertains you while you drive. Every single thing is a gift from the Engineering world, a world that you can certainly be part of today. If any of this is interesting to you, check out these programmes that will transport you onto the engineering career path.

Telecommunication

From the time when one had to book trunk-calls and wait for days to connect to today where one can contact someone sitting thousands of miles away in a second, telecommunication has come a long, interesting way. We have gone beyond telephone wires to a world of Internet phones, not to mention the Internet of Things! It’s a whole invisible world that impacts us in a very visible and concrete way! We are all immersed in the virtual world and yet functioning in a real one. Mind-blown? Thank an engineer!

Magnitude. That’s the best word to describe a world without engineers. There would be a magnitude of difference if there were no engineers in this world – the phone in your hand would disappear, the words on this screen would be no more, there would be no Netflix, no Pokemon to chase and to apply for a university course you will have to walk for days to the nearest institution. The contributions of engineers to civilisation is at a magnitude that our brains cannot even begin to compute.

You can be an engineer today and contribute in magnitudes too!