Quote:
Originally Posted by 4throck
It seems that many people are completely misunderstanding the "black magic" analogy that Kelly and Rachel have brought up. Perhaps this will clear it up.
The idea is something like this. Most people's conception of engineering is that an engineer goes into a room for a while, produces blueprints, which then [black] magically get turned into some really useful/cool technology. People understand that this happens, and they might even have a good idea of how it happens. You can watch a TV special on, say, the Manhattan Project, and look at every single step that they took when designing what they were working on. This would be roughly analogous to students watching a mentor designed and built robot. What would be more useful (and inspiring, perhaps), would be for the students to do it themselves. There is a big gap between watching someone else go through the process and doing it yourself. When the intellectual and technological burden is on you, and you are able to make a functioning and overall decent (at least) robot, you can see the engineering process as a whole, and, what's more, come out with the knowledge and confidence that you can do this, that you can solve the problem and work from there.
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How is that different from the analogy that your teammates are using and others are replying to? Engineer produces blueprints which become technology. The main difference I see is when the "black magic" happens--which side of the blueprints/production drawings it's on. And exactly when it happens doesn't matter for this.
I do not think that you see the engineering process from simply building a robot. I could go out there, grab a Kitbot, follow the instruction manuals on assembly and the wiring diagrams on the wiring, hook it up, and have a running, decent, functioning, halfway competitive robot. That is NOT engineering process! That's assembly. Now, I might need engineering process to make it rules-compliant, but I'm just as likely to try the seat-of-the-pants approach because all you need is a pole and some non-duct-tape tape, or some cardboard, and you can have a rules-compliant robot as well, no engineering process required.
Engineering process involves determining requirements that must be met, finding solutions to the objective that meet those requirements, analyzing to see which is best, and then detail-designing and building the solution. It's kind of hard to learn that without engineers. You're right, there is a big gap between watching someone go through it and going through it yourself, specifically that it's a whole lot more interesting when you go through it. However, if you go through it without guidance, then you may be like a traveler without a map or compass--you get out all right a time or two, but you need help the rest of the times you're lost.
BTW, there isn't a SINGLE robot in FIRST that I'm aware of that is mentor-designed and -built. If you can think of one, you're going to need proof that that is the case before you say they are. So your entire "video" analogy is not applicable to FIRST that I'm aware of.