WEBELOS

Engineer

National Capital Area Council

One of the great things about being a Webelos Leader is the opportunity to learn many things along with the boys.  Unless you are an engineer, there may be some knowledge to pick up with this activity badge to pass on to your boys.  Recruit the help of a father who is an engineer.

One of the purposes of Cub Scouting is "fostering a sense of personal achievement by developing new interests and skills" in boys.  This activity badge probably does this more than any of the other badges.  Engineering is one of the most exacting of the professions and the badge includes projects that will give a boy an insight into some types of engineering.

Den Activities

·         Arrange for boys to visit an engineer or surveyor in a municipal county office.  Plan for the boys to look through the surveyor's manual and read a rod.

·         Visit a construction site and see the plans which are being followed.

·         Visit the County water works, TV or radio station.

·         Have someone explain how to read topographic maps.

·         Have a builder or carpenter show and explain a floor plan of a house.

·         Make a block and tackle.  Be sure to explain its purpose.

·         Make catapults and demonstrate them at pack meeting, shooting candies or marshmallows into the audience for distance.

·         Discuss property lines.  Have a surveyor show how property lines are determined and measured.

·         Discuss different types of engineers.  If one can visit your den, let him describe briefly what his duties are.

·         Have boys collect pictures of bridges and note the differences in construction.

·         Take a field trip to an operating draw bridge (ex.  St Croix River), ship loading operation or other large industrial operation involving large cranes or other lifting equipment.

Fields Of Engineering

Aeronautical Engineering:  Deals with the whole field of design, manufacture, maintenance, testing, and the use of aircraft both for civilian and military purposes.

Astronautical Engineering:  Closely related to aeronautics, but is concerned with the flight of vehicles in space, beyond the earth's atmosphere, and includes the study and development of rocket engines, artificial satellites, and spacecraft for the exploration of outer space.

Chemical Engineering:  Concerned with the design, construction, and management of factories in which the essential processes consist of chemical reactions.

Civil Engineering:  Perhaps the broadest of the engineering fields; deals with the creation, improvement, and protection of the communal environment; providing facilities for living, industry, and transportation, including large buildings, roads, bridges, canals, railroad lines, airports, harbors, and other constructions.

Electrical Engineering/Computer Science:  Divided broadly into the engineering of electrical power distribution systems, electrical machinery, and communication, information, and control systems.

Geological & Mining Engineering:  Includes activities related to the discovery and exploration of mineral deposits and the financing, construction, development, operation, recovery, processing, purification, and marketing of crude minerals and mineral products.

Industrial or Management Engineering:  Pertains to the efficient use of machinery, labor, and raw materials in industrial production.

Mechanical Engineering:  Broadly speaking, covers the design and operation of all types of machinery and small structures.

Safety Engineering:  Concerned with the prevention of accidents.

Sanitary Engineering:  A branch of civil engineering that has acquired the importance of a specialized field due to its great importance for a healthy environment, especially in dense urban population areas.

Some Engineering Functions

Research:  A search for new scientific knowledge, with the objective of applying it to solving problems.

Development:  Applied research which results in working model.

Design:  Conversion of developed ideas into economical, reliable, and producible plans of manufacture, use or construction.

Maintenance:  Plan and direct the methods of making the design and transforming it into a useful product.

Sales:  Define and explain the application of the product and the sale of it.

Management:  Administrate any or all of the engineers which perform the functions listed above and any other personnel required to perform the assigned task.