ASSIGNMENT:NO:1CASE STUDIES RELATING NON PROFESIONAL ATTITUDE LEADING TO DESASTERS: The role of the engineer is to respond to a need by building or creating something along a certain set of guidelines (or specifications) which performs a given function. Just as importantly, that device, plan or creation should perform its function without fail. Everything, however, must eventually fail (in some way) to perform its given function with a sought after level of performance. Hence, the engineer must struggle to design in such a way as to avoid failure, and, more importantly, catastrophic failure which could result in loss of property, damage to the environment of the user of that technology, and possibly injury or loss of life. Through analysis and study of engineering disasters, we being the upcoming engineering designers can learn what not to do and how to create designs with less of a chance of failure. Following are some case studies relating this scenario.

CASE:1:SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER DISASTER:On January 28, 1986, seven astronauts were killed when the space shuttle they were piloting, the Challenger, exploded just over a minute into the flight. The failure of the solid rocket booster O-rings to seat properly allowed hot combustion gases to leak from the side of the booster and burn through the external fuel tank. The failure of the O-ring was attributed to several factors, including faulty design of the solid rocket boosters, insufficient low- temperature testing of the O-ring material and the joints that the O-ring sealed, and lack of proper communication between different levels of NASA management. CASE:02:CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR MELTDOWN:On April 26, 1986, the world witnessed the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. The resulting explosion resulted in the release of significant amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, producing over four hundred times more fallout than the bombing of Hiroshima. While human error may have played a role in the disaster, flaws in the design of the control rods are thought to have been the root cause of the accident. The authorities remain largely unsure of the effects of the radiation exposure.CASE:03:NEW ORLEANS LEVEE SYSTEM:In August of 2005, a series of hurricanes hammered the areas in and around New Orleans, Louisiana. It is believed that there were over 50 individual failures in the levee systems and flood walls intended to protect the city of New Orleans. These levee failures contributed to the flooding of over 85% of the city, with some areas under ten feet of water or more. In 2006, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, in testimony before the U.S Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water, conceded that there were "problems with the design of the structure." New Orleans, Louisiana remains a disaster zone to this day.CASE:04:THE TACCOMA NARROWS BRIDGE:On November 7,1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, in Washington state, twisted wildly and collapsed. The twisting was caused by wind forces the designers had ignored. CASE 05:THE MARINER 1 CRASH:In 1962, Mariner 1, the first US spacecraft sent to explore the planet Venus, went off-course shortly after launch because of an error in its guidance computer program. The error was small: a wrong punctuation character in one line of code. The result was large: instead of going to Venus, Mariner 1 went into the Atlantic Ocean.

CASE : 06: COLLAPSE OF FM ANTENNA:Total collapse during installation of a 6-ton FM antenna being placed on a new 1800 ft. tower. 5 technicians killed, 3 on the hoist and 2 on the tower. It was determined that insufficient sized bolts on a makeshift lifting lug extension failed. The falling debris severed one of the tower's guy wires, causing the tower to collapse.CONCLUSION:From the above cases it can be concluded that primary causes of engineering disasters are mostly human factors (including both 'ethical' failure and accidents) design flaws (many of which are also the result of unethical practices) materials failures extreme conditions or environments, and, most commonly and importantly combinations of these reasons .References: Top Twenty Technological Screw-ups of the 20th Century By Marc Abraham 3 Worst Engineering Disasters Ever By Brandon Weber