Casting call for Discovery channel - Top Engineer

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

I think that's my problem. They're going to bill it as a show about engineering, and I have a feeling there will be very little engineering that goes on. It will be more about cobbling something together that works in a junkyard wars fashion. That gives the general public the wrong impression of what engineering is all about.

I hope I'm wrong.

We aren't boring people -- we're just easily amused by very boring things.

I agree that it won't be engineering in the sense that engineers think about their desk job, but in my view that is probably okay. I don't know very many engineering students my age who didn't watch Junkyard Wars and think "Hey! That is Awesome!" Did that solely push them to engineering? Probably not, but it certainly didn't hurt. It's similar to how Mythbusters is widely hailed for doing "science" but anyone with a brain (including the Mythbusters themselves) know they are only scientists in the very loosest sense of the word. On the other hand, they are certainly STEM heroes.

If your experience is strictly behind the keyboard, then this show is NOT for you!

This is quite telling that it won't be about "real" engineering -- because the really cool stuff is so out of the box you need a computer to analyse it. I'm not getting on a test flight that hasn't been proofed out in a computer first!