ISU Media Message Episode #11

good evening welcome to ISU media message I'm Bob Linda Mayer scioscia director of the media resources Center here at Iowa State and our program is hopefully many of you know by now has a really very simple and straightforward purpose our purpose is to give you our television audience an opportunity to see some of the fine films and videotapes that have been produced here at the University programs that normally are just seen in classrooms or for very unique and specific sort of targeted audiences as opposed to the wider television audience my guest today is Laura Wingert whose instructor of engineering fundamentals College of Engineering here at Iowa State what are the engineering fundamentals Laura the engineering fundamentals are things like engineering graphics drawing design using CAD programs Fortran programming typically these courses are taught during the freshman year to all engineering students that's right uh-huh they study a lot of calculus and chemistry and physics that's right as well as these fundamental courses that's right along with some English a little bit okay yeah we have to be able to communicate as engineers to know I know that the engineering college is on a real initiative to try and describe the engineering careers and the value of being involved in engineering and scientific disciplines - what a wide range of population very wide range that's that's what generated the big book that we've heard a little bit about mmm-hmm that's right being done in the Engineering College that big book is used by a what level of teachers primary school teachers kindergarten first grade second grade teachers right now are using the big book it's been distributed widely I guess around the state around the state and we've also been taking orders across the country and also internationally now for the big book mm-hmm well the videotape that we're gonna see tonight that you brought us is gonna be seen by number of people we hope - let's have a look at it now and then we'll come back and talk some more with Laurel Ingrid here's our videotape for the night it's called engineering game plans engineering is all around us it's just a matter of looking past the obvious most things made by people have been touched in some way by engineers different kinds of engineers work on different kinds of products each one created from a design a game plan based on the rules of science and mathematics after designing a product engineers then plan how it can be created until it's ready for us to use from footballs to football stadiums and more let's look past the obvious to see how engineering game plans have resulted in some of the things we see in use a car it's a very complex piece of machinery so many kinds of engineers have a hand in its design but the mechanical parts of a car are usually designed by a mechanical engineer some engineers mechanical engineers may work on the air conditioning heating of the car on the starter of the car a lot of the engineers may just work with the transmission and the gears they may work on the suspension of the vehicles how you would change the design of the car for the driver we do a lot of computer simulations of the driver in the car will get parameters from companies like GM and Ford and Chrysler and we can run those on the computer when an engineer designs a car it has to work and all these things that I've mentioned the transmission he air conditioning the gears all have to work as well as that it looks good cars aren't the only things engineers design what else do you see that could be designed by an engineer the football stadium is a large structure and large structures like stadiums school buildings bridges even airplanes are designed by engineers structural engineers basically a structural engineer will match material with force atching enough material to get a structure that will stand up under loads be a man-made or being forces of nature enforce a nature primarily there would be they win loads on the structure but then the other load we take in cow to be the Ocwen see load the fan load that comes it's not only a static load when they're sitting there but also a dynamic when they move in and out of the stadium and respond to exciting events on the field if you look at those two large columns coming down obviously they're putting the force on the soil so we had to distribute that load so underneath the walkway we have foundations the structural engineer would work with the geotech engineer geotech engineer would tell the structural engineer how strong the soil was and then the structural engineer would figure out how large the footings had to be so he didn't over stress the soil after structures are designed someone has to build them there are even game plans for building things and engineers once again design their own plans for construction construction engineering is the coordination of people is the coordination of the tools and equipment and the plan for building a structure they work on highways they work on roads they work on all sorts of facilities that you walk into every day and never think about who build them construction engineers rely on their business training they rely on their law training they rely on their engineering training to make sure the constructed facility is built on time under budget at the acceptable quality and without hurting anybody construction engineers have the unique ability to take two-dimensional plans basically lines on sheets of paper and turn them into a three-dimensional finished product we wouldn't have large skyscrapers there ports bridges shopping malls if it weren't for those construction engineers to help get them built football is an exacting sport the coach engineers the game plan around the players strengths and around the physical properties of the football field and the football itself the footballs unusual shape is an important part of how the game is played the football is is basically in an unstable shape and the only reason we can play with it is the fact that the quarterback spins the football and that spinning gives it the aerodynamic stability that's necessary well that's what aerospace engineers do also they worry about stability that is once you put an airplane in the air you want it to go where you want it to go you want it to stay in the same direction so it must be stable the aerospace engineers studies the flow of air about the Space Shuttle the structural characteristics of the machine how can you build it so it will hang together in flight we've already gone to the moon and eventually we'll go to Mars that trip to Mars will have to be in a vehicle that's designed by engineers people who know the mechanics of nature the laws of physics and who are able to use those laws to design a vehicle which can go in the right direction and is safe and can get there and come back footballs take a lot of punishment and they seem to hold up pretty well that indicates good quality yet thousands of footballs are made and sold every year how can such a high quality product to be manufactured at a cost most of us can afford that's a question for an industrial engineer footballs are like any other product that's mass-produced they start from raw materials and go through a number of steps until the product is finished for example to produce a football the leather is first cut into pieces and those pieces are sewn together and the ball is turned right side out then it's laced and inflated and then checked to make sure that all the balls are the same size and weight an industrial engineer looks at the entire manufacturing process and by considering the materials the equipment the people the time and money involved they can determine the best way of producing the product industrial engineers work in every industry from manufacturing hot dogs to airplanes just try to think of something that's been produced without an industrial engineer half time fifty thousand football fans taking a break at the same time a product we all take for granted is water but it has to get to us somehow the engineer responsible for supplying and disposing of our water is the civil engineer one of the problems civil engineers face is supplying water to facilities and collecting the waste water and taking it away for example and the civil engineer has to decide on how many toilets and how many drinking phones and how many wash basins have to be provided and how big the pipes must be to serve those facilities must keep in mind that during the halftime you get a big demand put on these facilities because every time somebody flushes the toilet it takes about 25 gallons per minute and several toilets may be flushed at the same time similarly the plumbing that collects these waters and discharges it away from the facility has to be designed by the civil engineer and has to be big enough to collect all that waste water otherwise the toilets might flood when you flush them and you'd have a real mess on your hands so the civil engineer faces some real problems in a facility of this type as with water we also take our food for granted behind the scenes our agricultural engineers who help make that food available to us agricultural engineers are among those people who find easy ways to get the food from the farm to your stomach agricultural and Biosystems engineers develop efficient ways to plant care for and harvest the crops and develop ways to care for the farm animals both of which are made into the foods that we eat they do this by designing farm machinery housing for livestock food processing systems and other systems and make the producers work easier and more efficient and less costly engineer's also help design machines that process the crops after it leaves the farm we use our knowledge of math and science to solve the many practical problems of processing the crops into tasty foods that we eat so that they're not only fresh and tasty but also affordable from the meat and vegetable and the milk on your dinner table to the hotdogs and the drink at the stadium have you ever thought about the surface these players are playing on it's not grass it's artificial made from chemicals designed by engineers artificial turf didn't get here by accident it wasn't grown it was developed in a laboratory and manufactured in a processing plant chemists and chemical engineers play key roles in his development and production the chemists inventor had to consider several important properties that it had to have such as being tough and resilient to its stand two to three hundred pound muscle men diving and stomping all over it it had to be waterproof but still be able to pass water through it and it had to last a long time because it's very expensive to replace after developing it in a laboratory the chemical engineer had to find a way to produce it on a very large scale to do all this profitably chemical engineers have to rely on academic training in math science and engineering not to mention a degree of creativity determination experience and yes even intuition wherever we look engineering is all around us but it's hard to see almost invisible like the unseen electrical signals running through the wires electricity carries power power to work a lot of devices but it can also carry information computer information that can program those devices to work in different ways these are two closely related areas electrical engineering and computer engineering any significant design project anymore it's been is going to involve engineers from all disciplines and the electrical engineer will specialize in working with the electrical principles those principles that deal with the use of electricity in a generation of electrical power design of electrical circuits they're also involved in electronics the things that make your TV set go your CD players go those sorts of things computer engineers they're involved again in the programming of these devices to give them their personality or care their character it's hard to conceive of any of any industry that does not need the skills that computer engineering students or electrical engineering students can bring to the table football is a grueling physical sport where injuries can be a major factor biomedical engineers create and improve many devices in the health field nobody likes to see the lineman or anybody else the running backs get hit on the side lateral impact and and see the knees pop or see him cringe in pain but what I was trying to do relates to that I was trying to simulate those activities and not risking anybody's knee by doing it on the field the knee brace after talking to the head trainer here at Iowa State identified his brace and looking at it because it was so flexible it led me to think well how can this brace be as protective as it needs to be how can we make it better or could it be made better and so I tested different materials and I was trying to prove that stiffer materials things like aluminum or graphite would be better because they resisted bending it takes a broad knowledge in math and science I use some very common things out of physics gravitational laws the law is dealing with pendulums motion of pendulums of velocity and momentum stuff like that so it was a lot of number crunching adding dividing subtracting averages the things that you have to learn in school the health field is demanding a lot from the engineering field new instruments new devices to use in the hospital's cat scanners magnetic resonance all kinds of different things and all of that is within the scope of biomedical engineering materials everything is made of something usually something made by people like the turf or the steel and concrete of the stadium engineers who design materials are called material scientists material scientist is someone who studies the structure and properties of materials to determine how we can engineer them or alter them to suit our specific purposes so with the materials that we develop we sort of hand them over to another type of engineer who incorporates them into some sort of design for a real product sometimes we work with civil engineers to work on structural materials or maybe we work with biomedical engineers for materials that are used specifically in biomedical implants for the semiconductor manufacturing or electronic materials we work with electrical engineers and find out what their needs are so we've just got a huge variety there are people that are working on things for aerospace applications and what we get to do in our field is work with all the other fields and find out a lot about a lot of different things a lot of different things that's what engineering is so what does it all boil down to engineering is just a very exciting field because you get to use your creativity as well as your technical skills the math and the physics and the science that you've learned it gives a person the chance to design things that help people engineering would be fun for those that enjoy using their mind in math and science there are always new problems to be solved and new ways of doing things in a sense of pride because you've seen a product developed from ground level up until it's marketed so I'm excited about where I'm at and also what the future is gonna be like so it's always a challenge and it's always fun well there you have it engineering game plans and my guest is Laura winger instructor of engineering fundamentals here in the engineering college at Iowa State well it's really an interesting tape I the idea of sort of conceiving all these engineering disciplines around what goes on at the football game came from where I know you did some early planning in the development well I was I wanted to come up with with a project that would really interest eighth-grade students in engineering and the typical tour through a factory just I didn't think that was going to do it so I tried to come up with an idea something that they would be interested in something that would be fun that would tell them that engineers work on fun projects as well as some important other other projects so your target audience with this tape is eighth graders ninth graders sort of what are we called junior high middle school okay and you had some people that teach math at that level served with your Advisory Committee as I recall we had one councilor from a middle school and he helped us come up with some ideas and we just decided to look at the different aspects of football that come from engineering now has the finished tape in I realize has just been finished very recently has it been evaluated by that target group of students we had some preliminary evaluations done a couple months ago and the students were very positive they liked it a lot yeah they said they learned a lot from it they were excited about engineering and they they hadn't known before really what engineering was so that's great now as I recall it's gonna be sent out widely to two schools tell us about the distribution plans right now we're planning to distribute it to every Middle School in the state of Iowa each school will receive a tape and then each 8th grade math teacher will receive a resource manual to be used with the tape no tell us about the man the resource manual is an eight-page manual and it has sample story problems that relate directly to the video we'll be calculating you know how much turf is needed if it costs so much per square foot etc so they're actually doing problems that engineers would do relating to football games and if all those toilets flush at the same time how much water is required that's right exactly right so hopefully that will help the math teachers tie in what they're studying in math class to what engineering is and what engineers do all right now if if someone is interested in getting a copy of the tape or that resource manual I assume there's a way that they can write in to us here at the engineering college they can write or call to the engineering student services office oh here it is on our monitor now okay good engineering student services at 110 Marston Hall I guess - huh that's right and we can send an order form and then they can get a copy ok how many copies have actually been distributed initially I think you said - to every Middle School in this thing that's right we're sending out about 500 oh wow just over 500 tapes initially ok let's talk a little bit about the interest that the college has really been demonstrating in terms of encouraging engineering and science disciplines we talked earlier about the big book for the little folks but I know there's a thrust going on that's called the NSF coalition tell me a little bit about that the National Science Foundation has sponsored an engineering synthesis coalition and it consists of 10 colleges universities across the country and we're working on keeping students interested in math and science so that eventually they can be involved in math science and engineering careers because research has been showing that there's going to be a shortage of Engineers and scientific professionals in the future so we're trying to keep students interested in that and getting them on the right track early on so that they're prepared for college courses do you face up honestly with them to the fact that they need to have their math skills and their chemistry at the high school level in good shape well yeah we I mean that's why we want to get them interested early so that they can be aware that they need the math but also helping them helping encourage them that engineering can be exciting and fun can help encourage them to take those courses well we had a guest on our series earlier about the women in science and engineering program and I guess you're a good example of that yourself you have a bachelor's degree in some field of engineering that's in industrial engine industrial engineering okay well it's been very interesting having you here tonight and we're gonna look forward to hearing more about the response that comes from this tape I'd be thrilled to find out what happens when we show this tape to a junior-high crowd from Iowa City for example yeah it'll be interesting to see what they what they think of that okay thanks for being with us Laura thank you my guest today has been Laura Wingert instructor of engineering fundamentals here at Iowa State I hope you'll join us here next week for another issue of ISU media message you