Narrowing It Down

There are many different types of engineers; civil, mechanical, chemical, environmental, agricultural, aerospace, and biochemical, to name a few. I have chosen to be a civil engineer, due to my interest in structural aspects of buildings, bridges, and dams. Now to be a civil engineer, you must narrow down the field in which you wish to have an expertise in. I have interest in buildings, but that field is very crowded with work. That is the career choice of many upcoming engineers, and I figure that there will not be many available jobs due to the popularity. So I thought long and hard about what expertise would be most interesting and would deliver the most potential jobs. I read that many of the bridges that were built in the beginning of the century are due to be renovated and possibly rebuilt in the near future. I decided that bridges would be the desired expertise in my mind. There will most likely be big money in the future when many bridges are inspected and will be needing renovation. I am hoping to land a job possibly in NYC or another city with big business and a need for many bridges to be up kept. There are far less bridge experts than there are building experts, due to the liability factors an engineer must undertake within building a bridge.

Pre- Requisites

Before one comes an engineer, he/she must take on an unyielding schedule of math and science courses to complete a degree. I will delve into the difficult yet rewarding classes I am required to take. 

Like I said, the engineering discipline requires a very strong mathematical background. Since their are a lot of precise calculations involved in the field, this is necessary.  Calculus I, Calculus II, Multivariate Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations are all required courses for the Engineering major, and are to be taken in the order presented. The second most important series of classes one must take is physics. Engineering Graphics, Physics I, Physics II, Physics III, Dynamics, and Statics are all required for my field. The prior classes I have listed are required for all engineering majors, but there are a few specific courses I must take in order to fulfill the requirements for the Civil Engineering major. Physical Geology and Strength of Materials are both required for Civil Engineering major. 

Along with these classes, I must complete some ridiculous courses for a reason unknown to me. I must complete an economics class, god only knows why. I must also complete two physical education classes. The most idiotic requirement I must fulfill is to take four performing arts classes, including; theatre, orchestra, choir. Come on now, talk about a waste of money. Am I going to sing to my computer to have my design plans appear on CAD? Or maybe I'll dance on top of the keyboard.

Engineering Schools

We can talk about famous engineers, acts of invention, unthinkable structures, and new design all we want. But unfortunately, we need to do some studying to get to this point. Since my current residence at East Stroudsburg University only offers a pre-engineering major, I've been looking into some respectable schools around the area that I may consider transferring to. While I was surfing the Internet about this topic, I wondered, "If I had unlimited financial capabilities and a 4.0 GPA, where would I go to school?” So I proceeded to type into the Google search bar, "best engineering schools in the USA". I immediately looked for a reliable website and shortly after found www.usnews.com. They rated the top engineering schools in the USA from 1-10 in this order: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (no surprise there), Stanford University, University of California- Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Cornell University, Carnegie- Mellon, and last but certainly not least, Purdue University. It shocked me that one of the top ten engineering institutes in America is only about 4 hours away from here. Carnegie- Melon is a prestigious university with much respect. Hey who knows, with the right amount of money, you can go to school wherever you’d like. 

WTC- Some Engineering Aspects

Height- 1,368 and 1,362

Owners- Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Architect- Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and sons consulting

Engineer- John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson

Ground Breaking- August 5, 1966

Opened- 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon cutting

Destroyed- September 11, 2001

Faced with difficulties of building to unthinkable heights, Yamasaki and engineers innovated a unique design: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. "The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all."(http://www.skyscraper.org/) Another unique aspect about the design of the buildings was that they were the first buildings of this size built without any masonry. Engineers used a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. "The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures."(http://www.greatbuildings.com/)

Do you beleive the World Trade Center was taken down by controlled demolition?

On a recent survey taken by over 1,000 people on RichardDawkins.net, the majority of the voters (61%) claimed to beleive that "No, things happened pretty much the way the mainstream media presents it (even if the Bushies are evil enough to conceivably do something that harmful, no one could have pulled that big a job off without being caught)." This did not surprise me, since I believe most of the American population believe what they see on the news and other television programs. Though it us upsetting to think that American's can be brainwashed by a simple news anchor telling a story which is edited and "lightened up" for the masses. I concur that mostly everything we hear in the newspaper and on the news is edited to be more pleasing for us to hear, and we are left in the dark about a lot of details. The second highest percentage of voters (16%) voted "No, but the Bushies might have left the barn door open. I'm not sure." This site may be completely democratic, but with all variables constant this shows that American's believe that the last presidential party was very deceitful and secretive. Upsetting to think that most of the majority of voters think that the World Trade Center wasn't taken down by controlled demolition, but yet have little trust in the presidential party? Very odd if you ask me. The third highest percentage of voters (13%) agreed upon "Yes, and there's plenty of evidence for it, damn it." I believe this group of voters are the people who have read and researched about the conspiracies and see pliable evidence. I didn't expect this group to be very large because of the time needed to research this matter, but I'm glad people care and aren't brainwashed by whatever the government says. The lowest percentage of voters (5%) agreed on No, and I'm offended that you'd say such a thing about the US's fine administration. We ought to lock you up in Gitmo for suggesting it." These are the "die hard" American's who believe the United States is the most loyal,honest, trustworthy country on this Earth. I have nothing to say to that.

Debunking 9/11 Myths

The magazine/website Popular Mechanics, has investigated 15 of the top World Trade Center Conspiracies with a group of over 100 researchers and reporters. They were apparently able to "debunk" every single theory with "hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense." One of the most talked about theories the site talks about is how North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) did not intercept the off-route planes before they struck their targets. Over the years NORAD has intercepted hundreds of planes and have successfully investigated their purpose or problem. The Air Traffic Control monitors the radar signals of all passenger flights in Northern America. They are the transponders of information to NORAD. Yet on this day, no planes were even within hundreds of miles of all three hijacked planes. Conspiracists believe that the government had ordered NORAD to stand down, assuming that the government had an involvement in the attacks. Popular mechanics said, "Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors." Now this may make sense, but with common sense in mind, why would an airline company install a switch to turn off a transponder. Absurd in my opinion. Second of all, is their any proof that the transponder was actually de-activated? There are loopholes in all stories stated. My point is that no-one can quote to have "solved the issue" or "cracked the case". Anyone can find a loophole in anyone's story. 

"World Trade Center Report Puts 9/11 Conspiracy To Rest"

On September 15, 2008 the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) realeased the long awaited report on the collapse of WTC 7. Pat Dollard says, "Today’s report confirms that a fire was, indeed, the cause." I do not agree. “Our take-home message today is that the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder told journalists at this morning’s press conference in Gaithersburg, Md. “WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.” I can't personally beleive this. I think that there were no other alternative conclusions for the cause of the collapse and the NIST left this resource as a last resort. Assumingly, every other office building that had caught fire in the history had to have had some sort of office furnishings in it. But these buildings did not collapse nearly within the same time frame as WTC 7. I'm not deeming this an impossibility, but it just seems very far fetched. In the case of WTC 7, there just seem to be too many first case scenarios that had happened. In any case, there could be thousands of possible scenarios that could cause anything. The unknown is infinite. But these were all researched after the fact that the building was fallen. Noone can prove a pinpoint reason why or how the building fell, but to conclude that burning office furnishings caused the building to fall is absoloutly rediculous to me.