This time, it’s a oldie-but-goodie about the final-round competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The stringent requirements of the next-generation U.S. military strike fighter were well-characterized by Lockheed Martin’s X-35, which beat out Boeing’s X-32. After winning the government contract, the X-35 was renamed F-35.

The F-35 is a”fifth-generation, single-seat, single-engine, stealth-capable military strike fighter, a multirole aircraft that can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air defense missions. The F-35 has three different models; one is the conventional takeoff and landing variant, the second is short takeoff and vertical-landing variant, and the third is a carrier-based variant.” (Wikipedia) The F-35 Lightning II is expected to be fully introduced in 2016.

Not only is the F-35 an awesome feat of engineering, which is interesting to learn about in its own right, I’d like to bring your attention to the overall design process of getting the job done. All engineering students who have lived through such a challenging and demanding experience will surely enjoy watching how Boeing’s team and Lockheed Martin’s team fought it out with design decisions and prototype manufacturing to eventual failure or success.

Stacks at a Power Station

Back in February, I had written a post about the differences between science and engineering, titled “Science Isn’t Engineering; Engineering Isn’t Science.”

This morning, I came across a very interesting blog by a guy named Eric Drexler, who writes about science and technology at Metamodern.com. He elaborates more on the topic that I had superficially written about in my earlier science/engineering post. In “The Antiparallel Structures of Science and Engineering” Drexler writes that, although science and engineering share the same language, the way the approach problems are different:

Science and engineering are inseparable fields, linked by a shared language of mass and energy, molecules and thermodynamics, physical systems and physical law. This shared language makes communication deceptively easy — easy, because scientists and engineers can see every detail in the same way; deceptive, because they see these details in different contexts, forming different patterns and presenting different problems. In a fundamental sense, science and engineering are antiparallel, facing in opposite directions. …

The information flows that link these levels are antiparallel: In scientific inquiry, physical systems shape their descriptions through measurement, and the results constrain and shape general, abstract models (theories) by testing them. In engineering design, by contrast, descriptions (specifications) shape physical systems through fabrication, and general, abstract models (system concepts) shape descriptions through design.

The other fundamental difference is that while science attempts to explain the natural world, engineering trys to develop designs to meet certain needs, or requirements:

While science aims (ideally) to produce exact descriptions of all parameters of all members of a general class of physical systems, engineering aims to manufacture instances of a single kind of system, making choices to ensure that its functional parameters will equal or exceed those specified by a design description.

Likewise, while science aims to formulate a single theory that exactly fits all parameters of every description, engineering aims to design at least one description of a system having functional parameters that equal or exceed those required by one of a potential multiplicity of system concepts.

Engineering at a Plant

This might indicate that, in the current recession we are in, more students are turning toward “real” majors (of course, we are biased here at Engineerography) with more of a concrete focus than a traditional liberal education. The article focuses mainly on computer science applicants, where enrollment has increased 8 percent last year 2007-2008 over the previous year 2006-2007.

In January, Scientific American wrote that “85 percent of teens and tweens say they’re interested in science, tech, engineering and math, according to the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey.”

Click through to the Scientific American article here.

Also, USA Today elaborates futher here:

The dramatic shift should ease concern within the tech industry that the U.S. does not graduate enough computer-science students. For years, that has driven tech vendors to outsource low-level programming jobs to India, China and elsewhere.

The spike in majors comes as especially comforting news for IBM and others that often could not fill enterprise-computing jobs because of a paucity of qualified college graduates.”(Information technology) skills are now required to be more competitive in all professions — not just a technical company,” says Mark Hanny, vice president of alliances and academic initiative for IBM Software Group.

President Obama’s $787 economic stimulus package underscores the importance of such skills in building a smart energy grid, modernizing health care and expanding broadband networks. Indeed, eight in 10 U.S. college students see a growing need for more IT professionals as technology advances, according to a survey by IBM and the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, also released Tuesday.

The change is easy to spot at Carnegie Mellon University, says Sameer Chopra, a junior majoring in computer science there. It used to be fairly easy to get into most classes. Now, some have waiting lists of up to 40 people, he says.

Venn Diagram: Science and Engineering

Science is not engineering. Engineering is not science. They are, however, similar.

Science is assumed to be the study of general truths, the observation of objects and processes, and the discovery of laws that govern the physical world and the phenomena that exist in it. Engineering, on the other hand, is the application of science and mathematics to manipulate the properties of matter and convert the sources of energy that occur in nature as to become useful to people by accomplishing certain tasks.

Sometimes, engineering techniques and tried-and-true devices preceded any raw explanation by science. From an article titled “Don’t ask a scientist to engineer real change” on Tuesday, February 03, 2009: “Take steam engines: They were pumping water out of mines long before a science of thermodynamics was developed to explain how they worked. The engines were what prompted researchers to look into the nature of steam power in the first place.” The article goes further to argue that sometimes, science can get in the way of engineering breakthroughs.

The principles that explain how a battery works, for example, are old news. But a lightweight and cost-effective battery pack with enough juice to power a car over long distances remains an elusive goal.

On the other side of the coin, we have those those that believe that engineering does not supersede science, and science is not the end-all of new technology. From another article of the same day, “Scientists and engineers need each other“:

Sure engineers build bridges, engineer homes to be safe in hurricane winds, and build rockets to the moon. But without some scientist first figuring out the math and science used for the engineering, there would be few engineering creations, and many of them would fall down for faulty assumptions.

Both of these sides have their arguments. I believe that engineers make useful (or better) what scientists discover. Most of the time, there is a practical limit to what science can offer; it is engineering that gives us elevators, airplanes, computers, and the Internet. But while creative design and engineering is what ultimately drives this world, we need to remember that whatever we do, we still need to play by the rules—those discovered and given to us by science.