Design

    Through some brief searching, there seems to be a consensus on what does and does not work in online communication. The wording isn't always that same and some of the finer points might be different, but the main ideas seem to point in the same direction. To sum up what I found here, designs should have contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

    To exemplify these principles, we can look at this blog. The first principle is contrast. This means that things that are not alike should be quite noticeably different. You can see this by looking at the the differences in the font sizes from the title to the actual post. There are also different backgrounds for the posts and the site. You can see contrast in the noticeable separation of the post from the sidebar and the borders around pictures separating them from the text. Also there is the double space between each paragraph to give the reader a chance to pause.

    The next principle is repetition. This means thing that are similar, should be similar. This can be seen in using the same color scheme, text font, and paragraph format throughout the whole blog. It can also be seen in the similar sizes of all the posts. There placing of the title and side bar are also consistent throughout the blog. There is also common voice throughout the blog in that it doesn't seem like many different people are contributing.

   The third principle is alignment. This is meant to mean that everything should direct the reader and be where it is expected. This is seen in this blog by the centralization of the body and that all of the paragraphs line up. The title is also in line with the edge of the post's background, and the post and sidebar are directly across from each other at the top. In posts with pictures, they are always right, left, or center aligned and not somewhere in between. In the Introducing Experts post, there are both left and right aligned post, but they have balance and are not placed in such a way as to crowd part of the page. In the other two post, the pictures are centered and about halfway through the post to give readers a place to pause.

    The final principle is proximity. Proximity is meant to keep relevant pieces together. One example is that the hyperlinks to sources are at the first mention of something, or in the case of some pictures on the picture themselves. Another example would be in the sidebar. The Blog Archive keeps all blogs that were created organized chronologically. In the About Me section, it gives a brief biography, but it also gives a link to my Google+ page for more information. After the post, all of the various ways to share the blog on social media are also grouped together.

    With these four logical, and simple principles, I  have accomplished my task of creating a visually appealing blog with minimal effort. The principles of alignment and repetition helped establish a baseline between all of the posts. Contrast helped spark interest in the various areas of the blog, and proximity kept all of the information relevant in each part of the blog together.

Introducing Experts in the Field

    In general, mechanical engineering is not a field that someone goes into with the interest of becoming famous. However there are a few that have made names for themselves. They are those that become media icons through television and those that became successful entrepreneurs. I would like to highlight one of each.

    First off is William Nye, more commonly called Bill Nye, the Science Guy. He was a mechanical engineer, but quit to become an entertainer. He became famous in he show titled Bill Nye the Science Guy. In it, he tried to teach kids about different science topics. Since the end of his show, he has been active in politics. His main focus has been educating the public on a variety of scientific topics. These include global warming and GMOs. He has advocated strongly for international action against global warming and has expressed that he is for the use of GMOs. Bill has also made a number of guest appearances in high profile places such as on television and in the White House trying to spread his message of using the sciences as the basis of facts instead of opinions.

    Next we have Elon Musk. Though does not technically have a degree in  mechanical engineering, he is another key figure in the field. He is the CEO of Tesla Motors, a leading electric car company, a co-founder of SpaceX, the leading private space company in the US. He has also put into the work the Hyperloop, a proposed hypersonic rail system . With all three of these projects, he is pushing the envelope for transportation and as such is a key figure in the mechanical engineering field. In December 2015, he announce the creation of OpenAI, an open-souce non-profit AI research company. This is another large opening for mechanical engineers to get involved in.

    The last prominent figures to take a look at aren't people. They are the nations of China and India.  Since the turn of the millennium, they have been producing between 5 and 10 times the number of engineers the US and Europe have been producing. This mean that we have to be able to communicate with them. Dave Schmidt, an engineer in Underwood, says that there a number of times he has had to create a technical document such as blue prints or an analysis of some kind that has to be sent off to an overseas company. When he does these he has to be sure of his writing and the standards for the technical document to avoid any confusions that could arise from the language barrier. Dave's other writing includes reviews of his subordinates as he has an immediate supervisory position.

An Ethical Argument

    There are plenty of ethical arguments to take a look at in a field with as large of an impact as mechanical engineering. Many times mechanical engineers have to make a decision which will have a direct impact on people's lives and the environment either directly or indirectly. The two sides of most of these arguments can be summarized money versus safety.  The fact that there even has to be this kind of choice is that engineers have to work for businesses, and as such there has to be a profit or that business won' t around very long.

    Contrary to what is generally thought of people, the average person wants everyone to be as safe as possible. This is the same with mechanical engineers. If it were up to them, everything they ever designed would be made with the best materials available and would probably be a little overkill just to make sure it never even had a chance of breaking.

    

    On the opposite side of this spectrum, the average person also wants to make the most money for any given product they sell. This is the same for mechanical engineers. They also would like the greatest amount of money for each product they design. As such they would like every product they are involved with to have the greatest possible margin. This means minimizing costs. In order to do this, the mechanical engineer would want to have the product made from the cheapest material that barely gets the job done while barely not breaking. 

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    As you can see there is a contradiction within every choice that a mechanical engineer has to make. Even if they are not the one with the final say, they have to show that they are not being a greedy mechanical engineer who is skimming by on safety just to maximize profits, but also that they are not being an overly-cautious mechanical engineer who is over spending way too much on materials just to make sure that the product won't break.  

    These two sides of a mechanical are balanced out by factors of safety. These are used to act as buffers in almost every calculation computer. The higher the factor of safety the more cautious the engineer is being. The lower the factor of safety the more frugal the engineer is being. Normally the factor of safety for a project or calculation is not left to the engineer performing the calculation. It is usually left to some form of management since it is a very important decision. 

     If ever something actually does go wrong in a product, everything will get reviewed. Therefore the engineer has to be able to back up all of his/her choices in design with logical calculations. They have to be able to say that while they were paying attention to cost, they also left a reasonable margin of safety by using a factor of safety in their calculations.  Therefore the problem in the product is coming from somewhere else, and they should not be sued for some form of negligence that resulted in loss of property or even a death. 

Introducing the Mechanical Engineering Field

    The field of mechanical engineering is a very broad and old field.  Its origins can be traced back as far as Archimedes and his water screw in the third century BC. However, it came into its own as a field during the industrial revolution when it was possible to start separating the engineering fields. In its broadest sense, mechanical engineering is the field responsible for designing, analyzing, and maintaining machines and mechanical systems.  These machines and mechanical systems can be anything from airplanes to robots or artificial heart valves and giant air conditioners. Its focus is anything that can in the loosest way be described as a machine.

    Since mechanical engineering is such a broad field, there is a lot of room for specialization. This allows people with many different interests to work in the same field. However the common thread for these engineers tends to be an inclination towards mathematics, science, and problem solving.  The curriculum for mechanical engineers is chalk full of math and physics which is also lots of math. In fact, most mechanical engineers are two classes away from getting a minor in math by the time they graduate. As for the science, there are many different forms of physics in which you are taught general formulas and are expected to use your problem solving abilities to apply them in unrelated situations. So mechanical engineers have to be interested in the challenges of solving unfamiliar problems.

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     In general, mechanical engineers are viewed as poster boys/girls for engineering to people outside of engineering because the field is so broad. As such, this leads to the creation of some assumptions about mechanical engineers and engineers in general. One of these is that they are capable of fixing any random piece of machinery. While it may have been a mechanical engineer who designed it, that does not mean any mechanical engineer will immediately know how to fix it: e.g. a mechanical engineer who has specialized in refrigeration will most likely not know all of the intricacies of a tractor's transmission. 

    The mechanical engineering field aims to improve the populations quality of life through the use of machines by minimizing input and maximizing output, with the inputs and outputs viewed as money, resources, energy, or effort. In this way, that statement is nearly all-encompassing. The various specializations all aim to accomplish goals by spending the least amount of money and using the smallest amount of resources. They also want to maximize their outputs of energy or resources. And the most important part of the fields aim is improving quality of life, never ending it. The worst part of mechanical engineering is that there are often cases where people's lives end up on the line, e.g. they're designing an important airplane part. In theses situations, it becomes an ethical issue in balancing lives versus cost and practicality. This seems like a coldhearted thing to do, but in the end it is an unfortunate but necessary thing to do in order to get anything done.