Engineering the Future tells the stories of real engineers, engineering students, technicians, and

people who work closely with engineers. All of the chapters are based on personal stories, but of

course they are not complete—it is impossible to compress a lifetime into just a few pages. Each

chapter communicates not only what people do on a day-to-day basis, but also what prompted them to

choose this career, and the motivation that keeps them excited about their work. Finally, each chapter

presents important concepts about engineering, science, and mathematics in the context of real-world

engineering jobs. The book is divided into four units, each containing seven to nine chapters. On the

following pages is a brief overview of the units, and the people you will meet in each one.

Book Overview

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Our world is fi lled with technologies—objects and systems designed by humans to fulfi ll human wants

and needs. How did this come to be so? In this unit, you’ll explore this question by meeting nine

working engineers and learning about how they design, build, and mass-produce the technologies that

make up the designed world.

Unit I Manufacturing and Design

Amy Smith, an engineering instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explores the concepts of engineering, science, and technology and explains how she designs tools that improve lives half a world away.

Inventor Shawn Frayne shares the design process—an approach to solving engineering problems—and explains why it’s more of a guideline than a rule.

Jamy Drouillard, an aeronautical engineering student with high-tech dreams, describes his own design process.

Lam Loc, a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) technician, explores engineering drawing techniques and explains why a picture is worth more than a thousand words to engineers.

Robert Hartmann, an electrical engineer at an industrial design fi rm, explores how companies use the design process to develop products for market and examines why a product’s look and feel is as important as how it functions.

Araceli Ortiz, a former manufacturing engineer at Ford Motor Company, tells the story of the automobile’s rise to fame and explores how companies decide what to mass-produce.

Dudley Green, a process engineer at Teradyne Corporation, shows that every product and every technology is a part of an interconnected system that is, itself, designed.

Christine Epplett, a developer at New Balance Athletic Shoe, takes us through the process of designing and mass-producing popular footwear.

Inventor Saul Griffi th illustrates why nature knows best when it comes to building better manufacturing systems.

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A city is an ever-changing, designed system fi lled with structures of all sorts, like houses, apartment

buildings, factories, and stores, as well as subsystems, such as those that control traffi c, water,

electricity, and waste. A city’s various structures and subsystems must evolve constantly to meet the

changing needs of its residents. In this unit, you’ll learn how designers draw on their knowledge of

mathematics and science to design structures and systems that will stand the test of time, promote the

health and well-being of residents, and preserve more of the natural world.

Peter Park, an urban planner in Denver, describes the key elements of the world’s greatest cities as well as a new-and-improved design for his own.

Structural engineer Bill Baker explains how he’s engineering the worlds tallest structure to withstand sky-high forces.

Field engineer Kirk Elwell explores the various forces and loads that a structure must be designed to withstand as he describes the design and construction of a major Boston bridge.

“Green” architect Chris Benedict tells why conventional heating systems can be bad for the environment and how to design a building that conserves energy while keeping its inhabitants warm.

Prity Rungta, a construction manager in Toronto, Canada, describes the complexity of building a house on time and on budget.

Lauren Stencel, a college student, describes how she’s helping to build a home that uses the sun for its energy needs.

Geotechnical engineer Cathy Bazán-Arias explains why engineers need to understand the land they are building on.

Unit 2 Sustainable Cities

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Bob Brown, design engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, describes how he’s overhauling the deepest human-driven diving submersible in the country.

Astronautical engineer Aprille Ericsson shares how she’s designing a spacecraft that will bring Martian material back to Earth.

Professor of thermodynamics Ron DiPippo describes how geothermal wells might provide a solution to some of the problems associated with burning fossil fuels for energy.

Activist Josh Tickell tells the story of how he reworked his diesel van to run on leftover cooking fuel.

Rebecca Steinman, a nuclear engineer, explains how a nuclear reactor is designed to provide electric power safely without creating air pollution.

Chris Langenfeld, design engineer at DEKA Research, explains why it’s sometimes better to look to history when designing a low-emissions wheelchair.

Environmental engineer Lisa Bina leads a tour of a major city’s sewage system and explains how it has been redesigned to protect residents.

Our world is fi lled with technologies—objects and systems designed by humans to fulfi ll human wants

and needs. How did this come to be so? In this unit, you’ll explore this question by meeting nine

working engineers and learning about how they design, build, and mass-produce the technologies that

make up the designed world.

Unit 3 Going with the Flow

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Computer scientist David Clark describes the digital world of computers and explains his role in designing the Internet to inspire innovation.

Nanette Halliburton, a test engineer at Cisco Systems, Inc., explains how information can travel encoded as light though fi ber-optic cables and traces an e-mail message from sender to receiver.

Sol Lerner, a computer programmer at ScanSoft Corporation, explores the complexity of developing systems that can “understand” human speech.

Chemical engineer at the National Energy Technology Laboratory Soung-Sik Kim explores how electricity is generated and how her designs are making the process more effi cient.

Carnegie Mellon communications engineer Alex Hills examines how he developed satellite communication systems in rural Alaska and how that work allowed him to pioneer wireless networking technologies.

Electrician Ken McAuliffe explains how the Museum of Science, Boston is wired to ensure that the building’s systems get the electrical power they need.

Museum of Science curriculum developer Joel Rosenberg shares a model for electricity that he found while designing this course with the hope that he can help students overcome some of the barriers he faced trying to understand electricity.

Entrepreneur Jim Gordon describes how his current venture, developing a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, highlights the benefi ts of renewable energies and illustrates the controversy that surrounds energy technologies.

Christine Bordonaro, a materials engineer at Evergreen Solar, introduces the concept of renewable energy and describes how engineers have harnessed the energy of the sun to generate electricity.

Every time you turn on a light, you are depending on a vast electrical system known as “the grid” to

supply electricity to the bulb. In this unit, you’ll fi nd out how electricity is generated and distributed

to millions of people daily. You’ll also explore how electrical systems are integral to communication

technology such as telephones, the Internet, cell phones, and satellite systems.

Unit 4 Power to Communicate

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Table of Contents

Book Overview

Unit 1. Creators of the Designed WorldChapter 1. Welcome to the Designed World—Technology and Engineering . . . . . 3

Chapter 2. Birth of a New Technology—How Things Are Invented. . . . . . . . . . . 11

Chapter 3. Designs That Take Flight—The Design Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chapter 4. Beyond Words—Engineering Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chapter 5. The Art of Engineering—Teamwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Chapter 6. Bringing Designed Ideas to the Market—Market Research . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 7. A Universe of Systems—Systems Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Chapter 8. The Making of a New Balance Shoe—Manufacturing Processes . . . . 61

Chapter 9. Like Nature Intended—Meeting Human Needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Unit 2. Sustainable CitiesChapter 10. Redesigning America—Urban Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Chapter 11. Bridging the Future—Structures and Loads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Chapter 12. Tower in the Sky—Materials and Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Chapter 13. Home Sweet Home—Planning, Coordination, and Safety . . . . . . . .111

Chapter 14. From the Ground Up—Climate and Soil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Chapter 15. Building Green—Energy Effi ciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Chapter 16. A Race for the Sun—Active and Passive Solar Heating . . . . . . . . . 143

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Unit 3. Going with the FlowChapter 17. In Deep—Buoyancy, Robotics, and Hydraulics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Chapter 18. Shooting for the Moon—The Physics of Rocketry . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Chapter 19. Fuel from the Fields—Renewable Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Chapter 20. An Ingenious Engine—Heat Engines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Chapter 21. Energy from the Earth—Geothermal Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Chapter 22. Good Chemistry—Nuclear Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Chapter 23. Down the Pipes—Open Hydraulic Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

Unit 4. Power to CommunicateChapter 24. A Highway for Ideas—The Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Chapter 25. Teaching a Machine to Listen—Computer Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Chapter 26. Shedding Light on Communications—Optical Fibers . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Chapter 27. Riding the Waves—The Electromagnetic Spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Chapter 28. Designed Learning—Mental Models of Electricity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Chapter 29. On the Grid—Coal Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Chapter 30. Electrifying!—Series and Parallel Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Chapter 31. Sunny Side Up—Solar Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

Chapter 32. Cape Wind—Wind Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

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