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Kyle Trepanier Professor Leslie Wolcott ENC 1102 21 September 2012 Mechanical Engineering Genre Study There are many professional fields of work in the world, but one in particular stands out as being very productive and efficient, and its called engineering. Everything that you come into contact with on a daily basis from your phone to the car you drive is the result of an engineers ideas and hard work. Mechanical engineering is one of the many branches of engineering, and in my opinion the most interesting in all aspects. Mechanical engineers and engineers in general are unique in the sense that they tend to think in different ways than most people. For example, when the average Joe picks up the new iPhone hes going to look through all of the features and new apps that the newly updated phone has. He is more concerned with the physical features of the phone rather than its inner workings. When an engineer checks out the new iPhone he is likely to become interested in the technological aspects of the phone, like the updated resolution, memory space, operating software, and its processor. An engineer is more concerned with how the device will operate and perform in real world scenarios rather than how fast he can browse through Instagram or Twitter. If you are an engineer or an engineering college student chances are you suck at English class and excel in math and physics. Engineers are not your best readers and writers because that isnt

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their main focus. They have their entire college career and working career based around mathematics and design. Where a mechanical engineer lacks in written or verbal communication abilities he excels in the lexis of technology and gadgets. For example, if you take the nerdiest engineer on campus that you can find and tell him to go ask for Miss Teen USAs phone number he would probably piss himself. On the other hand if you asked the same student to go build a robot out of specific materials and then program it to do specific tasks he would be a lot more comfortable with doing so, and therefore do it successfully. The specific lexis that you may hear a mechanical engineer use can be very difficult to understand if you are not familiar with the material of the topic. If I were to ask the janitor of a school to sketch the design for some product and then run the program through the CNC machine he would have no clue what I just asked him to do. If I were to ask a mechanical engineer the same thing he would get to work right away. The mechanical engineers lexis is very in depth and can take a long time to completely grasp. In one of the articles I choose called The Ethics of the Mechanical Engineer the author mentions and explains what a code of ethics is and how it pertains to mechanical engineers in the workforce. When this article was written in 1922 it was intended to be a formal letter to any professional engineers working during the time. Around the mid 1800s there was no code of ethics present for any engineers (Rice). There wasnt even different branches of engineers, there were just engineers (Rice). For many years there was an absence of a code for mechanical engineers to follow until a group of highly skilled mechanical engineers met up to help form a code of ethics. The code basically just indicates behaviors and actions that are expected from mechanical engineers in a professional working environment.

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In the article called American Society of Mechanical Engineers the author talks about an annual meeting that is held to gather thousands of mechanical engineers so that they may share their studies amongst themselves. The main focus of the engineers studies and projects talked about in the article seem to focus on trying to make things work efficiently and effectively. In the mechanical engineering genre it is common for the community to collaborate and work together in order to accomplish a goal. When a mechanical engineer comes across a problem or situation they tend to first analyze and understand whats going on, think of options for a solution, narrow the solution down to the best choice, and then act upon it. The mechanical engineering discourse community is very professional and focused on the advancement of new ideas to bring society. The whole engineering community as a whole is responsible for all of the technology that we experience now and into the distant future.

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Works Cited Rice, Calvin W. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 101, The Ethics of the Professions and Business (May, 1922), pp.72-76.

Science, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 153 (Dec. 3, 1897), pp.821-822.

Science, New Series, Vol. 32, No. 810 (Jul. 8, 1910), pp. 33-41.