I've read before that habits take about 27 days to form. So I'm wondering if I'll be able to take the weekend off from writing without breaking the habit. Perhaps, I might just write less on the weekend, or change topics for a bit. We'll see how it goes! More importantly though, I want you guys to start commenting below when my posts get a bit more technical and specific! Or if you would like me to write about something specific, I can.
Great! Now that we've covered all the intro stuff, let's talk about civil engineering!
ENGINEERING FOR CIVILIZATION
As the name implies, Civil engineering is a field that deals with systems that supports civilization. This would include highways, roads, buildings, water resources, anything that is attached to earth and how we interact with the environment. All of these subsets require different skills and specific knowledge, even though they all stem from the same major. Regardless of which subset you choose, there is an emphasis on physics, so you'll end up spending a considerable amount of time learning how to calculate forces involved with body's at rest. Aside from the gratuitous amount of work involved, the good thing is that civil engineers have a unique view of the world since most structures we interact with do not move. Here's a brief look at the subsets involved.
#HIGHWAY BRIDGES AND ROADS
A highway engineer will design roadways to meet traffic demands. Typically, field work is performed to collect data regarding traffic flow at an existing traffic corridor and then used to determine how many lanes are needed, how to minimize the effect of the geography to driver behavior and what is an acceptable "Level of Service". Notice that the word acceptable is used. That's when I realized that there's no such thing as "no traffic".
Most highway designs are preengineered by the local Department of Transportation, so the real job of a traffic engineer is in reducing traffic, which is more often an eminent domain issue.
Some engineers in this subset will design bridges, which sounds cool, but the reality is that most bridges are simply long span steel beams that are tightly spaced. Very seldom will you design a suspension type bridge, simply because they are costly to construct and they aren't usually necessary for most bridge applications. Most of your duty in this specialty will involve rehabilitation of existing bridges.
ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER RESOURCES
A result of living on earth is the need to consume to survive. Consumption is a drain on resources and often creates pollution and it's the job of an Environmental Engineer to develop methods to control resource consumption and pollution. While this subset has nearly nothing to do with what is studied in school, it's perhaps one of the most interesting and fun subsets of civil engineering in my opinion.
One of the most common areas an environmental engineer may potentially work is with the processing of drinking water. While it may seem relatively useless, an environmental engineering plays a huge role in how you get clean water and how to maintain that resource.
GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
Everything we build starts from the ground up, so it's only fitting to try and understand the very ground we build on. Geotechnical engineers will look at soil structures and employ various empirical methods to determine the strength of earth. You'd think that this is straightforward, but because of soils physical composition, a pile of dirt could potentially support a skyscraper, or less than your own body weight.
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
Structural engineering is a classic engineering term that gets thrown around rather loosely. Almost rightfully so. Anything that could be called a structure could be designed by a structural engineer. From a self supporting structure to a tunnel intended to support a massive amount of weight above it. A structural engineer's job is quite literally to make sure nothing falls down. How we do this is one of the most interesting aspects of civil engineering since it is a fundamental part of higher society.
We largely design with steel, concrete, wood and sometimes aluminum and we are largely finding different ways to manipulate frames. A frame is something rigid and able to support a weight, such as a roof or walls.
That's it for today. Tomorrow, I think I'm going to take a pause from this topic and write about something else to keep my mind fresh!
