Welcome to ENGR 193: Engineering Seminar
This course is designed for students interested in engineering... whether you are already set on pursuing a degree in engineering, or if you just have an inkling that engineering might be for you. Or perhaps you want more information on what engineering is all about, and are interested in topics such as energy, infrastructure, technology, and sustainability.
The goal of the course is to explore the field through discussion, articles, and guest speakers. We are fortunate to have a number of practicing engineers who are willing to come into the classroom to share their experiences with you, the prospective engineer.
As part of the course, we will be using this blog to facilitate discussion about the speakers and the engineering topics they share with us.
To start, please post a comment with a bit of background about yourself, where you are from, and what interests or questions you have about engineering. Include a link to an article about engineering, with a brief summary of what you found interesting.
My name is Sean O'Neill I grew up in Sitka, Alaska, and moved to Juneau just over a year ago. I have been working on a Commercial Fishing Seiner for the past 5 summers, and have decided to go back to school and pursue a degree in Civil Engineering. I would like to someday get my PE for Civil Engineering then focus my efforts on becoming a Licensed Land Surveyor, in hopes to someday own my own business.
ReplyDeletehttp://robohub.org/snap-2014-aerial-drones-and-3d-mapping-software-for-civil-engineering-surveying/
The Article I found was exploring the idea of using drones to conduct land surveys instead of doing surveys by hand. An unnamed university allowed an Irish surveyor to study the results/data from a drone, that was conducting Land Surveys using it's own software. Apparently the results were extremely accurate, and the Irish Surveyor is willing to stand by the results in a Court of Law. If the results were this accurate then we could use drones for many field applications.
This interest me because I would love to become a Land Surveyor. Though the use of drones might mean less man power (less jobs) this could aid Surveyors/ Civil Engineers tremendously in the near future. One application I could see drones being used for are Coastal Surveys, with our rising Sea Levels. A drone could map out a Coast lines much faster than Land Surveyors. What could take weeks, could only take days, or even hours. This would be great for large survey's like this. Also would give Civil Engineers more time to figure out how to adapt the cities that will be affected by higher sea levels. Though this is a great advancement, I believe it will take years before surveyors will be using drones. I believe this mostly because of the cost and availability of drones for the private sector. But, we will just have to wait and see. I did find this very interesting because Surveying/Engineering are starting to rely heavily on technology to assist with their jobs, and to think Auto cad was a great advancement for the field of Surveying, drones could be just a big, or even bigger advancement.
My name is Jasper Soriano and I was originally born in the Philippines. My parents decided to move to Juneau a year after I was born, so in 1995 we moved to Juneau. I have been here ever since. I'm currently interested in becoming a computer engineer, though my father wants me to become an electrical engineer.
ReplyDeletehttp://eandt.theiet.org/news/2014/jan/broadband-poll.cfm
The article I read talked about how Broadband is the greatest invention of the 21st century. This was interesting to me because nowadays, as the article stated, technology is everywhere. What was once a dream now is a reality, and engineers are continuing to redesign and innovate the technology around us.
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ReplyDeleteMy name is Jon Edillor and I was originally born in San Diego, California. I moved to Juneau three years ago due to my dad receiving a job on the ferry. At first I was planning to be a mechanical or electric engineer but that was before I really looked into the profession. After more researching I found an interest in environmental engineer. What caught my attention was the concept of finding different ways to harvest energy such as turbines or using water.
ReplyDeletehttp://ese.dgtlpub.com/2010/2010-07-31/home.php
I read the article of "Let's hope a "Gulf of Mexico' type oil spill never happens in the Great Lakes". It brought up the Gulf of Mexico spill that happened on April 20,2010. It was considered to be the largest oil spill on record. It was estimated that there were about 6,000 to 60,000 barrels that were released into the ocean. Because of the oil spill the oxygen levels started to dissolve. Something that was also effected were how fishing would be greatly effected because of the oil spill. They would lose about $350 million to $875 million of the value of fish lost. If this would happen in the great lakes or somewhere else where fishing is a big income it would greatly hurt the economy.
This was interesting to me because it got me thinking of what can be done to help prevent this mess from happening or help clean up a tragedy from getting worse.