Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultramaroon
Engineering is the discipline of using established physical and mathematical law to minimize risk/cost incurred in arriving at a solution. I've done my share of design work. I'm no stranger to "winging it" and am damn good at it. Still, it's not engineering. /threadjack
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To belabour the threadjack, trial and error is always at the root of engineering development. We engineers just spend a lot of effort minimizing the risk (& consequence) of error after the trial. The irony, to me, is that we do that through trial and error but on a smaller scale or in a different way. For example, we often create a computer model that is "tried" analytically, but we're still looking for the same types of error. The big difference is that pure trial and error just gives you a result, the failure, to analyze after the fact and feed back into the design. The engineering method, with modelling or testing loops in between, gives you more insight into the physics that lead up to the failure. Even if the model doesn't perfectly predict the failure, you usually have a much better idea of why the failure occurred and how to prevent it. OK, rant over.
The Atom is pretty special. Just too much $$ for me. I still giggle when I think of Clarkson's jowls.