Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Civil Engineering Construction Engineering Design Engineering Ethics Engineering Mechanics General Engineering, Engineering Science Materials Engineering Mechanical Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Textbook |
| Media Type: |
Audio |
| Author(s): |
Henry Petroski |
| Description: | Review from the Publisher Weekly. "Petroski (The Evolution of Useful Things) again meets his usual high standard when it comes to writing about technology, but this collection of articles from American Scientist, some dating back to the early 1990s, never quite coheres as a unified text. The tendency of chapters to drift toward soft conclusions isn't disruptive in the first half of the book, devoted to bridges around the world, but the second half, which encompasses subjects ranging from the creation of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to the destruction of the World Trade Center, becomes noticeably choppy, especially when Petroski attempts to wrap things up with millennial reflections that already feel dated. The book also fails to deliver on the promise of its title; though many of his examples, especially in the bridges section, pushed the limits of engineering in their day, they can hardly be called new. (One notable exception is a long chapter on China's planned Three Gorges Dam, which also demonstrates Petroski's skillfully light touch at travel writing.) But the most glaring flaw is the frustrating paucity of illustrations (only 29) - the meticulously detailed descriptive passages can go only so far in conveying a sense of awesome beauty. At his best, Petroski is a charming guide to the landmarks he admires, and it's a shame that the presentation falls short of his talent." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | failure analysis learning from failure successful design design failure critical thinking self-reflection knowledge management |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(b) Design and conduct experiments, analyze and interpret data (c) Design a system, component, or process |
| Use of Resource: |
Elsevier Publishers. Editorial Review From The Washington Post: "Norman Mailer, a onetime engineering student himself, once remarked that "Physics was love, engineering was marriage." He was right. A physicist looking at a bridge sees gravity pulling relentlessly down while the atoms in the iron and concrete squeeze against each other to exert a countervailing force and keep the bridge standing. An engineer looking at the same bridge will see some of this, of course, but will see a lot of other things as well. He or she will see the economic factors that dictated the use of materials, the complex strategies that had to be worked out to keep the structure standing during construction, the endless permits and forms that had to be filled out before the first shovelful of dirt was turned over, the court cases brought by environmental groups, and all the other elements that had to be dealt with before the grand principles of the physicist could be realized in this particular structure." |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
Very low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | June 2010 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Limits-New-Adventures-Engineering/d |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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