I hear and I forget, I see and I believe, I do and I understand – Confucius
Engineering is the creative implementation of both art and science. As teachers, teaching science is something we do quite well. Teaching creativity is an entirely different thing. A student may successfully complete schooling and do higher studies in any field while never having the opportunity to learn or even consider the need to learn creativity. Creating anything is an art, whether it is a small piece of furniture or a space craft. This requires talent. We all possess creative talent in some degree and although talent is innate, we can help students develop and expand the talent they possess. Teaching students to focus intently on a problem is one way of developing creative talent. In the history of technology, many stunning inventions and developments have resulted when ordinary individuals have relentlessly focussed on the problem at hand.
Reverse engineering, by definition, is the thorough and methodical examination of a device, product or process in order to understand as much as possible about its material, manufacture, function and use. Most Chinese products ranging from mobile phones to big cars are built using this principle. Even if you don’t have the technology you can use the existing technology to analyze how they are working, make improvements on them and probably build new and better ones. The next step would be to see how we can minimize costs by using alternate feasible materials in place of the existing ones. This is how many Chinese companies produce low-cost goods. Reverse engineering is also practised in other areas. For instance….
The article has been contributed by Butterfly Fields, a company working in the domain of innovative teaching-learning techniques. To know more about the work the company does, visit www.butterflyfields.com or call 040 2771 1020.