Artfully Engineered: where left brain meets right brain

In this video, Dr. Richard C. Benson, recently retired president of The University of Texas at Dallas, presents examples from his personal experiences that demonstrate that great engineering can be — and very often is — a thing of great beauty. The talk begins with one of Benson’s earliest memories, the huffing, puffing, gigantic (to a toddler) steam engines that brought coal to Blacksburg, Virginia. Astonishingly, it was only a decade later when Benson, along with the rest of the world, was mesmerized by NASA missions that carried men to the moon. Viewers will consider great structures built only with manual and animal labor, from the ancient pyramids of Egypt, to Roman aqueducts, to the Great Wall of China, to, most recently, the Erie Canal. Along with Benson, they will contemplate the work of Frederick Eiffel, the artful engineer whose medium was iron. They will look at places of worship, both grand and humble, which somehow are equally effective in raising feelings of awe. They will look at bridges of tremendous span and height, all the way down to the simplest covered bridge. All beautiful. They will also find inspiration in the staggeringly rapid advancements in computer data storage, the mechanics of which was an early focus of Benson’s research career. You can learn more about UTD Engineering here: https://engineering.utdallas.edu/ Please consider donating to UT Dallas Geoscience Studio: https://giving.utdallas.edu/gss Workflow for effective educational video making （PDF）: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ning-Wang-72/publication/364821291_2022_Wang_workflow_for_designing_instructional_videospdf/data/635c029b6e0d367d91d570a4/2022-Wang-workflow-for-designing-instructional-videos.pdf #engineer #UTD #engineering #art #architecture #Earth #Science #utdallas