'Things break, we fix them'
"She was four, my niece, at Christmas a couple of years ago. I had sought out a present for her that wasn’t pink and fluffy with enormous eyes for a change.
Lego had a special range of women scientists. There was one with a telescope and one with a genetic sequencing kit. Anyway, all wrapped up and ready to go.
She opened it and instantly said “Uh-oh! Boys' toy!” as if something awkward had happened.
I concluded that people can get very fixed ideas about gender very early, that gender identities are powerful and can make someone reject a fun toy because they think it’s not right or appropriate.
In the past I had a thought at the back of my mind that women are just not interested in the things that engineers are into. There aren’t many female engineers, so they don’t want to do it. Except in Sweden and the NHS.
Sweden has 25% female engineers compared to less than 10% in the UK. In our hospitals women become doctors of all specialties.
So it seems that in the UK we are somehow making it very clear that women do not do engineering. And I believe this is one of the biggest risks to UK engineering as a whole.
Imagine you are a bright A-level student contemplating careers. You could work for Google in their fun office with frisbees or you could go to McEstablishment (Turbine Blades) Ltd where the office smells of old coffee and the only woman is cooped up doing something boring.
So what to do? Is your workplace as welcoming to all genders and ethnicities? Have you checked? Could you schedule gender awareness training for the senior management?
Or we could try doing nothing. But that is not what engineers do. Things break, we fix them."
Jack Lavender, Oxford
Uneducated politicians
"Alfred Reading writes about the lack of engineering knowledge amongst politicians (Letters, Professional Engineering July/ August). It may be of interest that the Campaign for Science and Engineering lists the names of all politicians and their occupations after each election.
They reported in 2014 that only two MPs out of 650 had any STEM research background.
Our voluntary group, the Hands on the Future team, which works to get more youngsters into engineering careers, went through the entire list of 650 and found that only 11 had any active knowledge/experience in engineering. The list takes a bit of interpretation, so we would welcome any correction of this figure, since we have not analysed the list since the last election.
We too have found an astonishing lack of understanding by our politicians of even the simplest engineering concepts."
Peter Mucci, Durley, Hampshire
Food for thought
"After reading the article “Flights of fancy?” and Airbus’s proposal for a hybrid electric airliner, I may have the answer to your reader’s conundrum in Letters regarding the in-flight meal deal (Professional Engineering July/ August).
On the flight in question Airbus were using the aircraft as a test bed for powering the 2MW generator to charge the 2MWh battery pack (please note correct units for battery capacity). The discounted sandwiches (baked bean and ham would be best) are consumed by the anaerobic digesters (sorry, passengers) prior to take-off.
The seats have been modified with ducted suction fans. These fans extract the gases (methane) emitted by the anaerobic digesters and these are fed into the gas turbine powering the generator and charging the batteries.
Hoping the anaerobic digesters can convert the sandwiches into 200m3 of methane to enable the gas turbine generator to generate the 2MWh required (assuming 100% efficiency). This will reduce the liquid fuel load by 170kg. This will allow the airliner to carry two extra anaerobic digesters (passengers) which equates to more sandwich sales. However 170kg of jet fuel is being replaced by 6,700kg of batteries (plus generator) so the passenger (anaerobic digester) manifest will be reduced by at least 96. Whoops, I don’t think the figures add up.
If the experiment is successful, this method of providing fuel for the battery charging system would be more suited to long-haul flights to enable the anaerobic digesters to reach full output."
P Neville Cooper, Staffordshire
Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.