About

An engineering commentary for everyone every Wednesday since 2012

Eann Patterson
Writer, engineer and professor (not necessarily in that order)

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 the principles of engineering, so this blog is natural extension, which I was stimulated to start by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

My early research was in the field of experimental mechanics which is described in a series of early posts on this blog called ‘Experimental Mechanics‘ [on 11/07/2012], ‘Art & Expermental Mechanics‘ [on 17/07/2012] and ‘Why Mechanics?’ [on 19/07/2012] . More details can be found at www.ExperimentalStress.com. However, in last decade the focus of my research has shifted to applied mechanics and applications in biology, aerospace engineering and civil nuclear power.

You are free to share, copy and redistribute in any medium or format and to adapt, remix, transform and build upon the material in this blog, providing you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material in this blog for commercial purposes (Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International). The attribution should be to Eann A. Patterson, The University of Liverpool.