Engineering is the application of science—the knowledge of laws of nature—to the betterment of mankind. Through the engineering perspective on technology, we come to understand how technology transforms matter and energy into forms that are more readily usable, such as solar radiation into electric energy. We can describe any transformation process in terms of its inputs and its outputs.

The word technology refers to the process of transformation or, more deeply, the knowledge of the laws of nature that underlie the transformation process. We may also use the word technology to refer to a class of devices that use the same transformation process. Devices that employ the same technology differ most noticeably in their ...

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