Engineering Innovation

Alice10

I have a project to do where I must research the background to a problem in engineering, the problem, and an innovation invented to solve the problemAny ideas what I could do?

godtabh

google it. Research it. Come back and ask questions about the elements of your research

Alice10

I did but I'm looking for examples of problems and innovations

mal1

I'm not sure what's the difference between asking for suggestions on boards or just 'google it'. Surely the result is much the same??

Anyway, my suggest would be something like AC versus DC transmission of electricity. Tesla versus Edison.

reverenddave

tesla edison is an awesome topic



good luck

godtabh

Alice10 wrote: »

I did but I'm looking for examples of problems and innovations

That would suggest to me that you haven't done enough research.

As I said before do research and once you have ideas then start asking questions

Turbulent Bill

Alice10 wrote: »

I did but I'm looking for examples of problems and innovations

Most innovative things in engineering were conceived as solutions to problems (or adapted as solutions) - they're rarely invented just for the sake of it.

You don't even have to Google it to start. Look at anything you're interested in, what problem(s) it addresses and why it's better than comparable items.

dahamster

Alice10 wrote: »

I have a project to do where I must research the background to a problem in engineering, the problem, and an innovation invented to solve the problemAny ideas what I could do?

what discipline?

CatFromHue

turbulent bill is right

take renewable energy which is very popular at the moment and look at areas where it fails i.e. in efficiencys in wind turbines, and do a project on how to remedy these problems

the irish times do a magazine on engineering innovation see if you can get your hands on an old copy it might give you an idea or two.

Poly

read up about Brunel, he was an incredible engineer, visionary,and businessman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

FesterBeatty

Necessity is the mother of all invention...take her from there lad!

dan_d

Literally...look around. Choose something in your environment, and go from there.

I'm genuinely not being smart.

ted1

pens that write in space banal locks are great debts of engineering.

who_am_I?

You could look up Genrich Altshuller, He developed the innovation algorithm.

mikhail

ted1 wrote: »

pens that write in space

That's actually a really neat little one if the information is there. There's an old joke about NASA wasting millions on developing one of these. The punchline is "The Russians just used a pencil." However, in a weightless environment, the dust from pencils can get into electrical circuits and short them out. Also, NASA actually farmed the project out to a private company. That'd make for a fun introduction to a report.

Sky King

The Longitude problem and its eventual resolution was a great story, Newton and Galilleo, the most brilliant scientific minds of the time both failed to provide real-world practical solutions, in the end the guy who solved it was a carpenter and part time watch maker called John Harrison.

He designed and built a maritime chronometer - a timepiece of unparalleled accuracy, even for land based pendulum clocks, thus changing the course (pardon nautical pun) of maritime navigation forever.

It's looks effin class too.

motthomas

I did a project very like this in 1st year. You in UL? I did it on the russian Ekranoplans or WIG craft. Pretty cool things too and its interesting to see why they were developed from a military strategy point of view.

CoalBucket

Alice10 wrote: »

I have a project to do where I must research the background to a problem in engineering, the problem, and an innovation invented to solve the problemAny ideas what I could do?

Problem : Not knowing what topic to pick

Innovation: Boards to find the solution

apoeiguq3094y

kilkenny flyer wrote: »

The Longitude problem and its eventual resolution was a great story, Newton and Galilleo, the most brilliant scientific minds of the time both failed to provide real-world practical solutions, in the end the guy who solved it was a carpenter and part time watch maker called John Harrison.

He designed and built a maritime chronometer - a timepiece of unparalleled accuracy, even for land based pendulum clocks, thus changing the course (pardon nautical pun) of maritime navigation forever.

It's looks effin class too.

+1 for the longitude problem

read a great book on this once, it was a good mix of interesting backstory and personal side along with the technical engineering & physics involved. Its amazing how difficult it was to accurately tell the time at sea.

Think this would suit the OP very well, there is a lot of innovation, and also a lot went into actually defining the problem. This is often an engineers biggest challenge. In this case accurately telling the time after weeks at sea was the problem that needed to be solved, even though the end application was figuring out your longitude.