Rules for the Game of Engineering

Karl Terzaghi had this in mind when he gave his students at Harvard a set of rules for which he called the game of engineering. The rules are full of wisdom:

1. Engineering is a noble sport which calls for good sportsmanship. Occasional blundering is part of the game. Let it be your ambition to be the first one to discover and announce your blunders. If somebody else gets ahead of you, take it with a smile and thank him for his interest. Once you begin to feel tempted to deny your blunders in the face of reasonable evidence, you have ceased to be a good sport. You are already a crank or a grouch.
2. The worst habit you can possibly acquire is to become uncritical towards your own concepts and at the same time skeptical towards those of others. Once you arrive at that state, you are in the grip of senility, regardless of your age.
3. When you commit one of your ideas to print, emphasize every controversial aspect of your thesis which you can perceive. Thus, you win the respect of your readers and are kept aware of the possibilities for further improvement. A departure from this rule is the safest way to wreck your reputation and to paralyze your mental activities.
4. Very few people are either so dumb or so dishonest that you could not learn anything from them.

Engineering is indeed a noble sport, and the legacy of good engineers is a better physical world for those who follow them. You are well started on a career that can leave such a legacy and, as you pursue that career, I give you my very best wishes.

I really like this...might have to print it out and hang in above my monitor at work!

Thanks for sharing!

That's some good stuff there. I'm glad I made the time to read it.

Thanks JR

Thanks JR.

Good rules to practice engineering by. I just wish I could say that I followed them a bit better.

^^I think admitting that satisfies at least three of the rules!

I just cut'n'pasted the rules into Word and posted them on my office wall, in 2 places (one where I can see it, and one where my guests can see it).

^^ Same here.

Those are wise words. Unfortunately, Terzaghi would probably be disappointed to see the state of engineering today, at least in its common practice.

Thanks, I'm going to be printing that out and posting it at work as well.

jregieng said:

........Engineering is indeed a noble sport, and the legacy of good engineers is a better physical world for those who follow them. You are well started on a career that can leave such a legacy and, as you pursue that career, I give you my very best wishes.

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How true. My soils professor was a student of Terzaghi's. He told us many stories of being one of his grad students. My professor always drilled into us to not memorize formulas. "Go back to First Principles. Learn how to derive your own formulas you'll get to the correct answer faster and you won't be in a situation where you can't find the correct formula."

^^That's good advice for the PE exam, too. I took that approach when I studied for the Environmental PE last year.