May 18, 2015
Biomedical engineer Madhavan (Practicing Sustainability) sets out to “reverse-engineer the engineering mind-set” to show lay readers the versatility of engineering techniques in everyday life. He considers different engineers or individuals who have solved engineering problems as exemplars of aspects of this mind-set, such as modular systems thinking or working on functional prototyping. His wide-ranging examples include Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval’s redesign of French cannons and Alfred Hitchcock’s approach to filmmaking, and demonstrate that engineering methods can be applied to every walk of life. While Madhavan does use some jargon, his problem-solving vignettes are accessible to non-engineers, particularly as he uses examples of familiar problems or inventions such as traffic congestion, sewage treatment, or the coordination of GPS and 911 services. Madhavan’s work will help readers move from the common understanding of engineering as a set of technical skills for building objects to the realization that engineering is a way of looking at and solving problems, and is not limited to situations involving science and math.