Engineers in Training - A Shodor Foundation SUCCEED Workshop

It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character,
and make it either good or bad.- Plutarch

On the third 'beep', a gate opens and the Olympic skier shoots out onto the slope. Electronic clocks pace her time in hundredths of a second as she hugs the inside of the first curve, barely brushing the slalom marker as she flies past.

In ski racing, there is one measurement that determines whether or not an athlete is 'the best' - the time it takes them to ski from start to finish. Optimization is the process of finding all the best pieces - the shortest distance down the hill (along the inside of each curve), the perfect length of ski, the strongest starting pushes - in order to get the best (smallest) time.

In engineering, a measurement of how good something is is called a metric, and the goal is to optimize the system by making the metric as big (if perhaps it is the 'number of pounds carried') or as small (if instead it is the 'cost in dollars') as possible. In Measure to Measure, students familiarize themselves with various engineering measurements, exploring the relationship between surface area and volume and using weight as a metric to optimize the carrying capacity of a constructed box.