Engineering is design that is intended to solve a problem or better the lives of a certain people. Throughout history, people have been faced with obstacles and challenges that stood in their way. How they responded to these problems determined whether they thrived and passed on their genes, or died off and were forgotten to history. Many of these obstacles require physically engineered objects, while others require redesigned methods or ways of doing things. One of the first topics we looked at in this class were bridges. Bridges were originally engineered as a way to simply connect two land masses, but have evolved into artistic masterpieces and often serve as historic placemarks. This shows how engineering has transformed and how it can serve different purposes. We also looked at the architecture of ancient civilizations, such as the Incans and Aztecs, to study how engineering affected their ways of life. In these cases, engineering was heavily influenced by religious beliefs, rather than simply solving problems.

When I first started taking this class I literally thought that I would be learning a lot about the engineering in equipment in our history such as war vehicles, and other types of old operations pieces throughout history. Turns out I was completely wrong and there is much more to the word engineering that I thought that there was. Engineering does not strictly mean the engineering of things like vehicles or equipment like most people things. It means so much more, engineering means the building of something. One example that we have studied this year is Hagias Sophia, this is a famous structure that was engineered by humans and hold a very significant spot in our history. Also a good example of engineering is water. Humans have engineered water into so many different things and have made it extremely helpful and important to things in our everyday life that we would have never thought of before.