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Fender benders: engineers who enjoy a spot of crash testing may also make the worst drivers out on the roads. That’s according to a survey in the Metro newspaper, which finds that engineers are ranked number one among the worst drivers – the other chief culprits being estate agents, mechanics and, er, those notorious road-rage rebels, travel agents. Yes, you heard it right, engineers were deemed to be worse drivers than estate agents, according to the survey by 1st Central Car Insurance. One can only assume there is that old problem with nomenclature going on here: does the insurer really mean engineer, or rather gas fitter, boiler mender, plumb job white-van man fella, etc. You can understand the confusion... there’s plenty of vans emblazoned with the word ‘engineer’ dashing headlong between plumbing emergencies to give the profession a bad name. Is this a new type of image problem?
Eye was gratified to learn that Lego has agreed to make a set of figures featuring women in scientific roles. An online campaign suggested female roles for Lego figures, including astronomer, palaeontologist and chemist – but no engineer. Surely Lego could be asked to create a set of female engineers – perhaps seven to the 93 of their male counterparts, to reflect imbalances in the industry. Or maybe a forward-thinking move would be to have female engineers – iPads in hand – outnumber their male counterparts. Just no spanners, oily rags or overalls, please.
“You are Leonardo da Vinci, artist-engineer-extraordinaire. You’re one of the most creative ideas-people of the Renaissance, so congrats...” Eye was proud to be compared to da Vinci in an online assessment of its inventiveness – which seems to be measured by its ability to pluck thoughts out of nowhere and make things out of them. Quite appropriate. What sort of genius are you? See:
www.playbuzz.com/tomorrowsengineers10/which-engineering-inventor-genius-are-you
And finally: Award for most dubious attempt to link technology with the World Cup goes to General Electric, which tweeted during the early days of the tournament that “just one gram of #graphene can stretch to cover an entire #soccer field”. Nice one, GE. As inventive as the Eye. But all that can be said for this astonishing fact is that the graphene – wonder material – probably covered each blade of grass more effectively than the woeful England team.
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