To Engineer Something That Lasts Forever

Wow, been awhile since I posted...Lets keep the ball rolling

About a decade ago when I was young, I had this (perhaps overpiqued?) curiosity of working out how things work. Whether its the clock or the toy gun or even the toaster, I want to get inside the thing and see it for myself, with my own eyes, science books and pretty coloured diagrams and pics weren't enough, I want to know firsthand the inner mechanisms of devices. Alright, trusty philips screwdriver in my hand, anything in my sight has to be taken apart (though not necessarily could be put back together...but thats a different story). Heck, I even unscrewed the wall socket once just for the heck of it when I was 8!

Putting the background story aside, around that time I discovered this wonderful toy. So beautiful, so robust and extremely flexible while actually functional, while any failure of the toy is most likely your own creativity to blame. A medium which you sculpt your ideas and see your ideas become reality.

Two words.


Leg Godt.

Before you google that up I'll tell you. Its Danish for a word you've probably heard of before. Literally, it means *Play Well*.

We all however, know it more commonly as Lego.

My first Lego set I ever had if my memory doesn't fail me was a bicycle set. I was struggling building it probably because I misread the instructions, but when it worked, it did so beautifully. Lego are sold as sets typically; you just follow the instructions and if you pay close attention, everything is pretty much a no-brainer actually. The true beauty of Lego through my eyes is the fact that since its all parts, parts which are so well optimised to work with each other, you have the freedom to build anything you like! As far as your imagination goes. These aren't just any toy...

Few years later when I used the internet to search up on Lego, I stumbled across a few websites where people posted up their own creations. Ever since I needed a jaw retainer; it literally dropped seeing the multitude and sheer genius of certain inventions! You have fully mechanical cars that know if they knocked a wall and automatically reverse and change directions, you have semi mechanical calculators that work on air, automatic gearboxes that can controls cars to slow down or speed up to higher or lower gear, or even robots that can play tic tac toe with you or sort out a Rubiks Cube! It just strikes a chord in my head like "What, he designed this all by himself? This is so f***ing awesome!*, I just had to reconstruct it with my rather meager selection of parts I had at home so that I can visualise through the complexity of how they ...work. They are just proof of concept things though; in large scale real projects more problems show up which wouldn't be apparent in the prototype.

Skip this paragraph if you feel you can't wade through the geekiness. I actually did a year of research on and off on using Lego pneumatic pistons as control devices for automated machinery and walking robots; basically just pump in air into the robot using a bicycle pump or a compresser and everything works automatically. They work via feedback from pistons, the basic concept being pistons controlling switches that control the pistons. Have two pistons controlling a switch each that controls each piston in turn and you get a feedback loop, where the system oscillates through. It gets kinda complex though in more complicated robots; and after going through a few bumps before heading towards a huge brick wall the interest in that specific field became dormant.

It was like a decade ago. Thanks to this toy, I fixed my mind early on that damn, mechanical engineering is so beautiful, I'm gonna do something related to it in my future career! Probably for the cool aspect of it, with all the complex and intricate mechanisms going on. Yeah sounds kinda childish I must say, with all the fantasies of conjuring up awesome complex stuff that do funny things which may not even be practical..Lol.

However, now I tell myself that (brushing aside the coolness thought), I realise that I wanted to create something. Something useful. Something that people will appreciate, perhaps a new idea? My heart tells me that I want to contribute something to the world that could help even just that little bit. Its more or less derived from what my friend once told me, roughly recalling his words, "I would like to contribute something to mankind. Even if its just something so small that people would at least make use of, I'm happy enough." Thinking about what he said made me realise, well. We live only once, or twice if you're lucky enough to have a turning point in your life to completely change. Once you die, if you left something behind that is used by the people, your spirit/name lives on forever. Then again, it could be I'm doing this just for the sake of doing it. If however I could genuinely create something that ...helps people, its a win-win situation I believe.

Realistically a course in mechanical engineering isn't all about making cool stuff though. Its more of application of concepts in machines and plenty of calculations and measurements. Ideally I prefer working with just concepts rather than all those tedious work of number crunching and repetitive testing, though of course those are things you do especially in the R&D Dept. . I still have a little more time to decide what I plan to do though.

As previously mentioned, in the case of Lego it literally means "Play Well". And its *invention* has became a form of joy and entertainment for millions across the globe. The guy who created Lego has created a phenomenon that would probably be remembered by people for years to come...Even after he passed away. I wish I could be someone like him.

Now if only those failed Lego project of my own actually worked...At least the effort is there I guess. The will to do something will eventually bear fruit if taken far enough. Oh well, it was fun.