Portfolio 1

After reading the articles "Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering" and "The expanding world of engineers", I found that the world of engineers has really changed. Engineers are not merely dealing with constructions again, instead, we can see engineering-educated individuals everywhere, even includes the financial area that people have never thought there will be engineers involved.

Hence, engineers are now not only facing the complicated mathematics, their scope of challenges is getting wider and wider. One challenge that has captured most of my attention is the issue of energy sources. As stated in the first article, the Earth that we are living on possesses finite resources. We need energy, especially electric energy nowadays, to keep our lifestyle uninterrupted. Without energy, any other work that engineers do or will do is just a waste of time.

As we all know, most electricity generating stations are based on the "turbine" technique, which requires and external force to spin the turbine to generate electricity. However, heat engine is the most widely used method to produce this external force. In fact, heat engine is the most economic solution in this field, but it is also the most polluting solution that we cannot avoid. Burning fossil fuels simply produces carbon dioxide which is categorized as a member of green house gases, directly worsen the environmental condition of the Earth.

Although various alternatives have been invented by engineers, there is still no replacement for fossil fuels. There are two main concerns that engineers should aware. First, fossil fuels cannot be created by human-beings in a large amount. We know that millions years are required to have fossil fuel usable, yet our oil consumption is at a tremendous rate every day. This leads to an assumption that fossil fuels are going to deplete very soon. Therefore, engineers' time to invent a whole new alternative energy source is limited. They need to be more productive. Second, they must aware that they need to find a balance between economic and environmental friendly issues. Facts tell us that environment is less concerned than the the economic factor. Nonetheless, the invented alternatives should consist of both factors. This will be the ultimate goal for engineers to pursuit the mainstream energy in the future.

Engineers are alive with the existence of energy, without energy, engineers can do nothing. "Pursuit a new energy source", will become the greatest challenge this profession will meet.