If a society is going to move ahead in
today’s modern world, that society is going to have to generate engineers.
Machines have to be designed, they have to be built, they have to receive and
use electricity and they have to efficiently use some sort of fuel. Today’s
machines increasingly are monitored, governed and even operated by computer
chips and those chips have to be designed to work within the parameters of
their machine. Some machines move and that means they need aerodynamic
engineering.
But fewer engineers are coming out of
our universities than in the past. In the post-war era, when airplanes and
space travel captured the imaginations of our people, engineering was a highly-valued
skill and our universities produced many of them. Mechanical, electrical,
aerodynamic and other types of engineers seemed to come from every college in
the country. We led the world in pretty much everything and it was largely due
to our plethora of engineers.
When America split the atom, a
scientist figured out how to do it and a mechanic built it. When Chuck Yeager
broke the sound barrier, he flew a plane designed by a team of engineers. Neil
Armstrong was the first human to step foot on the moon and, you guessed it,
engineers made it possible. Thanks Goodness for the space race; it gave us Tang
and Velcro.
But universities and colleges now
crank out fewer engineers. Fewer high school students are interested.
Engineering is mathematics and math is dull. High schools, junior highs and
elementary schools are tasked with so much today, they have very little time to
actually teach students. Mediocracy is acceptable now and excellence is largely
ignored. State and federal governments now pour an unharnessed volume of money
to help struggling students but very little thought is given for those who
excel. For that reason, students who might have been very good at some form of
engineering never get the encouragement to reach for that worthy goal.
Gloom and doom stuff, to be sure. But
don’t worry, the answer to our engineering shortfall already exists. In fact,
the answer has been around for more than one hundred years. For some, the
answer has been a part of their daily lives for generations and it is something
America is already good at. Some of
our largest, best-known and most successful corporations have been involved
since the beginning. In fact, people watch it on television every week.
Automobile racing.
Think I’m wrong? You are entitled to
your opinion, but I’m right and you are wrong.
School aged kids should be exposed to
the wonder that is a modern-day racing car. They need structural engineering to
protect the drivers in the event of a crash, electrical engineering to make
every part work together, computer engineering to monitor and govern every
component on the car, material engineering to create and build the tires that
keep the cars on the track and whatever kind of engineering it is that creates
the surface the cars run on, well, racers need that too.
Race cars in every form of the sport
keep getting faster. That doesn’t happen by accident, squads of engineers are
needed to continue to push the edge of the envelope.
The operating systems in a modern race
car are fantastic. Take a National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel car as an
example. The technology in one of those things is fantastic. The Pro Mod class
is really dynamic because the rules allow so many different types of engines
and fuel systems, technology competes against technology in that category.
It seems clear to me that educators
should look for ways to spark an interest in the sciences and racing is an
obvious way to do so. If a student takes an interest in the sport and decides
to look at the engineering sciences as a possible future pathway, it doesn’t
matter if that student never joins the sport’s workforce. If they become mathematicians
or air quality management scientists or design new prosthetic limbs or help
develop the next generation of airplanes, all that matters is that we have our
engineers. Maybe some kid, tweaked by the racing bug, will develop a clean fuel
for the propulsion of all these machines we build.
If it is needed to help create
interest in the engineering sciences, I can guarantee that the auto racing
industry will get behind the effort. No industry better understands the need to
reach school kids. Think I’m wrong? Guess again. Every engineer you’ve ever heard of was a kid once. Racing can
help find more engineers among today’s kids.
What could be better than that?
Thanks for reading.
