Why ‘Realize Engineering’?  Well, if you look up ‘realize’ in the dictionary then one of the meanings, some way down the list, is ‘to be fully aware‘ and one of my aims in establishing this site is to make people more aware, and perhaps encourage them to become  fully aware, of some aspects of engineering.

There is much less talk about the public understanding of engineering than of science.  My intention is to make a small contribution towards correcting this imbalance.   In simple terms, engineering could be described as the application of science.  We have ‘popular science’ so why not ‘popular engineering’?  I have been working on how to engage undergraduates in principles of engineering (see EngageEngineering.org and EngineeringExamples.org), so this is natural extension.

The artwork in the header are series of paintings taken from a collection created by students at Okemos High School, Michigan as part of engineering and art collaboration in 2008.  For the complete set see: http://www.egr.msu.edu/me/artgallery/.