The Map of Engineering

The field of Engineering is amazingly diverse touching just about everything in our world. In this video I attempt to capture all of that diversity in one picture: the Map of Engineering, so that we can get our heads around it all and set some bounds on the subject. If you are interested in learning about engineering or want to pursue it as a career this video might help you figure out what direction to pursue.
#engineering #domainofscience

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Credits
Writer, art, animation and edited by Dominic Walliman
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:37 Civil Engineering
04:55 Chemical Engineering
06:55 Bio-engineering
08:23 Mechanical Engineering
13:04 Aerospace Engineering
13:38 Marine Engineering
14:18 Electrical Engineering
17:50 Computer Engineering
19:33 Photonics
20:43 Sponsorship Message

[ornotgortwormiii]

Aerospace engineers build missiles. Electrical engineers build guidance systems. Civil engineers build targets.

[andy_lamax]

This video has reminded me of no matter how well versed I am in my Electrical Engineering field, I am an expert of only a small portion of the whole Engineering map

[KevinWoW]

The fun thing about being an engineer is that multidisciplinary knowledge is as valuable, or sometimes even more valuable, then specialized knowledge. I, for instance, am a civil engineer specialized in structural engineering. But I work for an oil company as a software engineer, writing software that deals with structures of oil rigs and ships. I don't know about ships as marine engineers do, about oil rigs as petroleum engineers do, about software as software engineers do, but knowing a decent amount about all those areas got me a really good job.

[SnigdhaVasireddy]

My toxic trait is to think that once I understand math and physics I can conquer everything

[MedlifeCrisis]

My natural tendency is to come here to say something sarcastic about engineers but I’ll be serious for a change. My grandfather was a district (civil) engineer in India. I was really close to him but he died when I was young. Years later I went to see a bridge, the construction of which he led (I also broke Indian law by taking a photograph lol). I remember thinking how amazing it was that that bridge outlived him and will outlive me. This monument to him and his team had helped god knows how many thousands of people. Not many jobs let you leave such huge legacies. So much work in this video, amazing stuff.

[domainofscience]

I'd like to formally apologise for the number of times I said the word Engineering 🤣

[InsertNamehere]

I really love what you said at the end about engineers having the "engineering mindset". I have a degree in Mechatronics and are currently getting a degree in Aerospace engineering, and the one true red string through both of them is what was taught to me at the very beginning of my studies: engineers are problem solvers. We try to analyse, structure, divide, test, iterate and solve given problems for the benefit of everyone. In order to do so, there is no "best engineering discipline", every situation requires different sets of skills and knowledge, and also like you said, ingenuity. Interdisciplinary knowledge is a very great asset in that regard. I believe having the engineering mindset just means, that you are not afraid to approach problems in a systematic way and work towards a solution, which very often involves teaching yourself new skills.

[tobias_dahlberg]

For those who didn't quite understand industrial engineering as it was only touched upon very briefly:
Industrial engineering could be simply explained as more of a general engineering field focussed on the optimization of complex systems. How do we optimize flows in a factory? How do we prioritize? How do we create supply chains that are cost-effective, efficient and robust? Industrial engineering is huge and an integral part when it comes to producing and moving things and is basically the discipline that takes into account how we move information, goods, money, and other things through a system, physically and digitally.

An example is the automotive production line. We're dealing with vast numbers and varieties of supplier parts coming in to one spot to be assembled. The factory needs to be set up in an optimized way, the internal logistics needs to function well to minimize down-time, and nowadays we are focusing more and more on external systems or entire supply chains and optimizing them. In industrial engineering we say that companies are no longer competing with other companies. Supply chains are competing with other supply chains. This is very complex and requires an engineer that is more of a generalist and has his or her hand in many cookie jars. Everything from economics and negotiations, to production engineering and supply chains.

[G-Rat]

one thing i have noticed about engineering is how multidisciplinary the whole field is. My personal interests lie in thermal properties and the movement of energy, so I'm a mechanical engineer and i specifically like refrigeration cycles (AC, HVAC, refrigeration). Within that field, we have mechanical engineers that work in several areas that cross over into other disciplines. we have controls engineers that tune our controlled devices to get the desired thermal properties, we have software engineers designing predictive software to determine system behavior, and we have materials experts that know the properties of refrigerants inside and out. All of these people are Mechanical engineers in this case, but do interdisciplinary work at the crossover between 2 disciplines. its fascinating.

Also, I'm glad you said mechanical is about energy conversion. throughout my schooling, everyone, including other MEs, would think i was crazy for saying that because they only focused on solid mechanics and couldn't recognize that that, too, is a energy related process.

[kdjhd]

These maps remind me there are experts in each of these fields who have forgotten more about the subject than I will ever hope to know.
When I become tempted to reject the counsel of experts, I will remind myself that I can almost always trust the consensus [of] experts to help me choose a path for myself.
Thank you for another awesome video.

[powerkartoffel]

I would love to get a map of Aerospace Engineering!

[martasings]

I was reading all the comments, and I see that almost everyone is some kind of engineer. I am not - I'm a performing musician and a personal trainer. But I loved this video. I am very curious about all kinds of things - physics, natural sciences, math, biology, etc. In order to become certified as a personal trainer I had to learn a lot about the inner workings of our body - bones, musculature, chemical processes.and so on. Your videos are just wonderful and give me insights into so many other topics. Thank you so much!

[Teeh]

Network Engineering?! Hey! That's me!! I suffer from imposter syndrome so being represented here is awesomely validating. Seeing all of the other fields represented here also helps bring into perspective how not-simple and not-obvious the problems in my field can be to solve. Very cool video! Love it as always!

[jexyl]

I greatly appreciate your efforts in making all these maps

[myideaproductions]

My son’s an electrical engineer and I understand his work a teeny bit better after watching this. I love these maps! They are cool to look at and the information is explained and described beautifully. Thank you!

[hammadshah]

I feel like a Map of Finance/Economics would make a great video too. Its a very vast subject and I would like to see the nitty-gritties of it.

[msquaredsciencehistory]

I read a great popsci book on engineering last year called Structures and was stoked at the chapter dedicated to the properties of textiles. I was working in heavy duty textile manufacturing at the time and had an "oh duh" moment when i realised that the author of the book was a naval engineer, and one of the biggest clients we had at the factory was the australian navy - another one of those interdisciplinary things that was so obvious in hindsight! A funny thing the book mentioned was that in the 1920s or so a huge breakthrough was made in sail efficiency (re-orienting the fabric's bias with regards to the mast) but that breakthrough came from a Madeleine Vionnet, a fashion designer who created the bias cut dress

[jon]

The one change I would make would be to move the power grid into electrical engineering, while it certainly does branch off into other domains of engineering at its core it is electrical engineering. In fact power is probably the oldest form of electrical engineering. Eventually electrical engineers figured out how to harness electricity to do other useful things but originally it was all about power distribution enabling the decoupling of power generation from power consumption.

[marcus.the.younger]

i am a computer engineering student and i used to complain about some of the subjects like applied mechanics and thermodynamics because at that time, i thought they were irrelevant to computer engineering degree but thanks to your video, now i understand that all the disciplines of engineering are related.

[paulo.mendes]

please keep doing these, our world needs more understanding of science in all matters 👏