welcome to MIT have you ever wondered what happens at a place like this what do people even do at a technology Institute well MIT is filled with people who do many exciting things we call these people Engineers not that kind of engineer and scientists but what does that even mean and where does math fit in let's start with some basic definitions an engineer is someone who uses scientific knowledge and math to develop solutions to problems there are people who develop technology that let you build Bridges drive cars cure diseases and many other things that make the world a better place humans have been doing engineering for a long time one very uh primitive way of describing engineering is that Engineers use the knowledge they have to solve problems when humans first invented the wheel that was the solution to the problem of how can we move heavy things around by learning more and more and solving one problem after another humans have been able to accomplish some pretty great feats how does science differ from engineering well if an engineer uses knowledge to solve problems the main job of a scientist is to find more knowledge scientists explore things in nature trying to figure out how the universe works scientists use the scientific method to figure out more about the world around us the scientific method basically means make a guess about what you think may be going on and then do very structured experiments to see if you were right or not scientists and Engineers often work together so if we were making a wheel a scientist would start by thinking about how Stones work what kind of molecules make up Stones how can we change them then the engineer would take that knowledge and try to figure out if I want to move something heavy can I use a stone to solve my problem how would I do that so the actual align between scientists and Engineers can be pretty thin scientists often need to engineer ways to do experiments an engineer use Knowledge from science in order to solve problems in that way the two support each other many people you've probably heard of are pretty famous for both like Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin science isn't the only thing that Engineers use to design things both engineers and scientists use math in order to solve problems as well math can be used to describe how things in the world behave and engineers and scientists use them that knowledge to their advantage humans have come a long way since the beginning of our engineering days Engineers try to solve problems in all different corners of society and that's led to many different kinds of Engineers there are mechanical engineers electrical engineers chemical engineers software Engineers biological Engineers nuclear engineers and many more sometimes Engineers can combine multiple disciplines in order to create something really amazing here in SBE Kims Lab at MIT they combine mechanical and electrical engineering in order to create robots inspired by biology here you can see a design for a robot cheetah hopefully now you know a little bit more about how science engineering and math can make the world a better place