• Question: Dear engineers, I am a young girl interested in the world of engineering and i just wanted to ask how do the principles of science and mathematics apply to your everyday tasks?

    Asked by putptre06 to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 17 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Hi! Science and mathematics do have a surprising number of roles outside the workplace. For example, maths very useful when doing finances and understanding the costs of some things you might want to buy, like a car which has lots of little costs that add up. That may sound boring (and it can be sometimes) but if you are comfortable with the numbers you can save a lot of money!

      Science knowledge is useful to understand the news and the scientific developments. For example, I don’t do any work in biology, but because I learnt about it, I can read and understand about the new and amazing discoveries happening in biology.

      More fundamentally, the ability to think rationally and analyse the world in a critical way is very important in making you a successful person. Scientific training will help you understand very different things like politics, music or even religion. I know for sure that my understanding of scientific principles allows me to see the world a little clearer than I could without knowing them, and that is deeply satisfying.

      Lastly, for many people, knowing a bit of science and maths is fun 🙂

    • Photo: Aron Kisdi

      Aron Kisdi answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      If you mean do we use the basic principles learned at school in our everyday job then the answers is yes! Basic maths and physics understanding is important even if at school you make a lot of assumptions you need to basics to build the more advance knowledge on. Also we use “school level” maths all the time.
      Of course there are computer software and program that can help you with understanding problems and using maths and physics but the knowledge you get from school is still very important.

    • Photo: Jessica Marshall

      Jessica Marshall answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      I use them all the time. I don’t think most of what i do is that hard though, it is just about applying knowledge to different situations. I do lots of drawings to explain things too!

      What’s nice about engineering is that it is ligical, and you can see your engineering and maths actually working, whereas in other industries you will need to use it but won’t see the results in the same way.

    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      They apply to everything I do. Maths turns out to be really good at helping us describe the way the universe works, and I use it to help with doing science and solving engineering problems. Why maths is good at describing the universe is a very interesting question as well, actually.

      The fun part for me is the connections between different types of observations we make, and how the same scientific theories and ideas can be used. For example, fridges and planetary atmospheres are great at moving heat around – so in someways the atmosphere of Venus and a fridge are quite similar!

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