You already have plenty of experience with technology even if

you have never taken a course about it. Just look out of your window.

Human-made objects—roads, cars, benches, homes, telephone wires,

playgrounds—most likely fill your view. Gaze around the room. Can you

find any objects that weren’t designed by humans? Now, consider all of the

different technologies that you have used today starting from the moment

you got out of bed: your toothbrush, your shower, your clothing, the cereal

box that holds your breakfast, and even the breakfast itself. You might

have a hard time thinking of a moment in your daily life when you aren’t

engaging with a technology in some way. No doubt about it: You are an

active participant in the designed world.

This world didn’t happen by accident. The technologies in it were purposefully created by

engineers to meet human needs and wants. But even if you have no plans of becoming an engineer,

your choices as a citizen and a consumer will influence what technologies get made and how. In

order to understand how your daily decisions create the world that future generations will inherit,

you must become technologically literate.

What does it mean to be technologically literate? Technological literacy means knowing

how to use new technologies. It means understanding how new technologies are developed. And it

means having the skills to analyze how new technologies affect us, our families, our nation, and the

world. Technological literacy is a tool for thinking about some of the most complex questions of our

time, questions such as:

There are no straightforward answers to these questions. But as technologically literate

individuals, we can chart the best courses of action for ourselves and our communities.

Introduction

What can we do to help our nation and others overcome serious

health and environmental problems?

What’s the best way to develop cities and towns so that the people

who live in them are happier, healthier, and more prosperous?

How can our nation become less dependent on polluting energy

sources and what’s at stake if we don’t?

This course is built around questions. As you build your technological literacy skills, you’ll develop

questions of your own, as well as increasingly complex answers to the following:

What is technology?

Technology refers to everything that people do to change the world to meet human needs and wants.

Technologies aren’t just objects like computers, telephones, or satellites, but complex systems like those found

in factories, waste treatment facilities, schools, and even homes. Throughout this course, you’ll broaden

your definition of technology and become more aware of the vast range of ways in which you interact with

technologies every day.

What do engineers do?

Engineers design running shoes, computer chips, cell phones, swing sets, sky scrapers, and any other technology

you can think of. Regardless of what they design, all engineers use some form of the design process—a way of

thinking about problems that leads to creative and effective solutions. Throughout this course, you’ll get plenty

of practice using the design process to develop your own technologies. You’ll also learn about the lives and work

of real engineers by reading the first-person stories in the chapters of this book.

What does an engineer need to know ?

A structural engineer must understand concepts of matter and energy and be able to make the calculations

necessary to ensure that her building can withstand an earthquake. An electrical engineer must understand how

electricity behaves to develop a means of communicating with a spacecraft orbiting Saturn. All engineers use

science and math in developing technologies. During this course you will also apply the science and math you

learn to a variety of design challenges.

How do new technologies impact society?

Technologies can have a profound effect on human societies. What would the world be like without

purified drinking water, the automobile, or the Internet? Throughout this course, you’ll analyze the effects of

technological revolutions of the past and present. Perhaps, most importantly, you’ll consider ways that your own

actions will impact the world of the future—for better and for worse.

Learning about technology will help you to participate more fully as a member of your community

and a citizen of the world. Becoming technologically literate is an exciting and challenging journey that will

profoundly change your perception of how the world operates and how you fit into the big picture. As you

embark on this journey, we, the creators of this course, encourage you to constantly reflect on how every new

idea that you learn relates to your own experience. After all, the personal and professional choices you make

throughout your life will ultimately shape the world for all of us. Indeed, you will engineer the future.

1 Welcome to the Designed World 15

2 Birth of a New Technology 23

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3 Designs that Take Flight 31

Beyond Words 39

5 The Art of Engineering 47

6 Bringing Designed Ideas to the Masses 53

7 A Universe of Systems 63

8 The Making of a New Balance Shoe 73

9 Like Nature Intended 83

Amy Smith, an engineering professor 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.

Mechanical engineer 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 firm, 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, 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 Griffith illustrates why nature knows best when it comes to building better manufacturing systems.

An Overview of Units

Unit 1: Creators of the Designed World Our world is filled with technologies—objects and systems designed by humans to fulfill 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.

10 Redesigning America 95

11 Bridging the Future 103

Tower in the Sky 113

Home Sweet Home 123

From the Ground Up 135

Going Green 145

A Race for the Sun 155

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.

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.

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

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

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

“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. .

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

Unit 2: Sustainable Cities A city is an ever-changing designed system filled with structures of all sorts, like houses, apartment buildings, factories

and stores, as well as subsystems, such as those that control traffic, water, electricity, and waste. A city’s various structures and subsystems must constantly evolve 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.

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An Ingenious Engine 195

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Down Deep

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221Down the Pipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unit 3: Going with the Flow What do a rocket engine and a sewer system have in common? Some of the concepts that explain how liquids flow through pipes can also be used to understand how moving fluids make engines run—including those that power our cars, boats, and airplanes. All of these systems involve the flow of matter and energy from one place to another. In this Unit, you’ll learn how engineers design the systems that harness the flow of energy and matter to do useful things.

Shooting for the Moon

Fuel from the Fields

Energy from the Earth

Good Chemistry

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23324 Designed Learning

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.

25 On the Grid 243

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 efficient.

26 Electricfying! 251

Cape Wind 261

Sunny Side Up 267

Teaching a Machine to Listen 275

Riding the Waves 281

A Highway for Ideas 289

Shedding Light on Communications 299

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

Entrepreneur Jim Gordon describes how his current venture, developing a wind farm off of the coast of Cape Cod, highlights the benefits 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.

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

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.

Computer scientist Dave 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 fiber optic cables and traces an e-mail message from sender to receiver.

Unit 4: Power to CommunicateEvery 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 find 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.

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