New Experiences

November 5, 2020 Carma Henry Local News 0

Criteria-and-Constraints — Here is an example of a decision matrix that I personally used for an assignment

The image to the left is just a random object, but I engineered it and gave it a purpose, which you can see on the left.

Growing the Voices of Our Future

The Westside Gazette Newspaper is honored to feature these editorial contributions made by local students.

By Samara Rawls

This being my first year in high school, I wanted to try something new with my extracurricular activities. In middle school, I was introduced to the flute, track and field, and soccer, but I never quite got a grip on it. So this year in high school, I decided to test out an engineering class.

I always wanted to try a class that was in science, technology, math, and engineering (S.T.E.M.) field. One of the very first things we learned in my engineering class was what an engineer does which is solving problems.

An example of an engineer is Marie Brown who created home security systems. Brown realized that houses were being broken into, so she developed a solution to this problem. After we learned what an engineer does, we studied the design process, the steps you take in order to solve a problem because you cannot just go at it.

The first step in the design process is to define the problem so you would know what you’re doing. Next you generate concepts or ideas to solve the problem. When doing this, there is a quite efficient way to figure out the most effective solution, which is using a decision matrix. This is a point system used to determine the best possible solution.

After this step, you develop the solution, and test it to see if it needs improvement. The next unit I have learned this year was technical sketching and drawing. In this unit, we learned how to sketch properly using dimensions.

In engineering it is especially important to have the right proportions in sketching, so when you build your model, it will be exact. The unit I am on right now is called measurements and statistics. In this unit we are learning how to measure objects precisely as possible, although it is very difficult to get a perfect measurement. With measurements we take, we recreate the shape on an online website design.

I am pleased this year that I stepped out of the box to try something new because I really enjoy engineering. I encourage everyone to at least try one class of engineering because you may learn that you enjoy it!