Category Archives: Students

Items for students and others, interested in learning about science and engineering and the application of science in our lives. We post many of the general interest items here.

Google Tech Webcasts #3

Here are some more technology webcasts from Google:

Competing On The Basis Of Speed by Mary Poppendieck discussing complexity, queuing theory, and constant innovation (see more on lean software development and see articles by the Poppendieck’s)
Ubuntu Linux by Mark Shuttleworth. The new computer I bought last month is running Ubuntu. So far it has been great.
Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really) by Dr. Robert Bussard – “Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that’s been made new.”
Keeping Up With The Human Genome by Tim Hubbard
Ruby And Google Maps by Andre Lewis
Third Millennium Problem Solving by David Brin and Sheldon Brown.

Too Much Choice

When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? by Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper:

In 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville commented that, “In America I have seen the freest and best educated of men in circumstances the happiest to be found in the world; yet it seemed to me that a cloud habitually hung on their brow, and they seemed serious and almost sad even in their pleasures.” (p.536) More than one hundred years later, we are confronted with empirical findings which may support the paradox that de Tocqueville observed.

The three studies described in this report demonstrate for the first time the possibility, that while having more choices might appear desirable, it may sometimes have detrimental consequences for human motivation.

See more on this from our management blog: The Psychology of Too Much Choice.

Related: Choices = Headaches – The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (videocast)

Midichloria mitochondrii

Use the force, bacteria (sadly, the site broke the link so our link was removed):

When his team took a tick apart to look for the new bug, they found it in the ovaries. And, when they looked closely at electron micrographs of infected ovarian tissues, they could see that the microbes were intracellular – living not in the cytoplasm of tick ova, but within their mitochondria.

“We’d never seen anything like this before,” Lo says, as he opens the image files on his laptop on a rainy afternoon in Sydney. “They seem to get in between the inner and outer mitochondrial membranes and eat the mitochondria up. In the end you’ve just got this empty sack.”
…
says he wasn’t aware of any other bacteria that live inside mitochondria. “It’s pretty surprising to see a bacterial species living inside the mitochondrion, which itself was a bacterium,”

Meteorite Lands in New Jersey Bathroom

What Landed in New Jersey? It Came From Outer Space:

The object that tore through the roof of a house in the New Jersey suburbs this week was an iron meteorite, perhaps billions of years old and maybe ripped from the belly of an asteroid, experts who examined it said yesterday.
…
The meteorite now belongs to the family whose house it ended up in, said Lt. Robert Brightman of the Freehold Township Police Department, adding that they had asked not to be identified. The family has not yet given permission for physical testing of the meteorite, but from looking at it, Dr. Delaney and other experts were able to tell that the object it had been part of — perhaps an asteroid — cooled relatively fast.

It is magnetic, and reasonably dense, they determined. The leading edge — the one that faced forward as it traveled through the earth’s atmosphere — was much smoother, while the so-called trailing edge seemed to have caught pieces of molten metal. In fact, Mr. Delaney said, it seemed very similar to another meteorite fragment, the Ahnighito, now on display at the American Museum of Natural History.

The meteorite was about the size of a golf ball.

Internet Underwater Fiber

Underwater Peril:

Laying undersea cable systems is a monumental process. After surveying landing sites, studying seabed geology, and assessing risks, engineers plot a route. A company like Corning delivers strands of fiber-optic glass to a manufacturer say, Tyco Telecommunications which encases the fiber in metal. Then gigantic spools of cable, repeaters that transmit signals long distances, and other gear are loaded on cable-laying vessels. For months, the ships lower the cables thousands of feet to the seabed. In congested spots, engineers use robots to dig trenches for the cable that protect it from wayward anchors and fishing nets. Then crews haul the cable ends above water and connect them to land-based stations.
…
Engineering experts say the Taiwan incident should persuade all operators to do more to prepare for quakes. It’s not good enough if you have a variety of routes but then bring them into shore at the same location–especially if, as in the Taiwan case, they’re crossing a fault line right there.
…
But there’s another lesson: The global telecom network really is quite resilient, even in the face of such a crippling blow. Within 12 hours of the undersea rock slides, at least partial service had been restored to most of the affected networks. This was done by rerouting traffic via land and sea through Europe to the U.S.

2007 Draper Prize to Berners-Lee

Timothy J. Berners-Lee will receive the prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering from the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for developing the World Wide Web.

Also, Yuan-Cheng “Bert” Fung will receive the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize — a $500,000 biennial award (since 1999) recognizing engineering achievement that significantly improves the human condition — “for the characterization and modeling of human tissue mechanics and function leading to prevention and mitigation of trauma.”

Timothy J. Berners-Lee imaginatively combined ideas to create the World Wide Web, an extraordinary innovation that is rapidly transforming the way people store, access, and share information around the globe. Despite its short existence, the Web has contributed greatly to intellectual development and plays an important role in health care, environmental protection, commerce, banking, education, crime prevention, and the global dissemination of information.
Continue reading →

MIT for Free

How to go to M.I.T. for free by Gregory M. Lamb:

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world’s most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won’t have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted. The cost? It’s all free of charge.

The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide, aims to disperse knowledge far beyond the ivy-clad walls of elite campuses to anyone who has an Internet connection and a desire to learn.
…
MIT’s OCW website features even more glowing feedback from learners. “[B]ecause of money, many good students with great talent and [who are] diligent do not have the chance to learn the newest knowledge and understanding of the universe,” says Chen Zhiying, a student in the People’s Republic of China. “But now, due to the OCW, the knowledge will spread to more and more people, and it will benefit the whole [world of] human-beings.”

Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap

A Dialogue with Sarah, aged 3: in which it is shown that if your dad is a chemistry professor, asking “why” can be dangerous [the broken link was removed] by Stephen McNeil.

DAD: Why does the soap grab the dirt?
SARAH: Yes.
DAD: Because soap is a surfactant.
SARAH: Why?
DAD: Why is soap a surfactant?
SARAH: Yes.
DAD: That is an EXCELLENT question. Soap is a surfactant because it forms water-soluble micelles that trap the otherwise insoluble dirt and oil particles.

Great. I remember such discussions with Dad (Chemical Engineering professor). The only danger I saw was him getting tied of -why? (when I was older). And sometimes giving me answers the teacher didn’t like (a way of doing math problems that wasn’t the way my teacher was teaching).

Boiling Water in Space

Bizarre Boiling, NASA:

The next time you’re watching a pot of water boil, perhaps for coffee or a cup of soup, pause for a moment and consider: what would this look like in space? Would the turbulent bubbles rise or fall? And how big would they be? Would the liquid stay in the pan at all?

Until a few years ago, nobody knew. Indeed, physicists have trouble understanding the complex behavior of boiling fluids here on Earth. Perhaps boiling in space would prove even more baffling…. It’s an important question because boiling happens not only in coffee pots, but also in power plants and spacecraft cooling systems. Engineers need to know how boiling works.

I had trouble seeing what was happening in the first video. Try this video first.

Because a smaller volume of water is being heated, it comes to a boil much more quickly. As bubbles of vapor form, though, they don’t shoot to the surface — they coalesce into a giant bubble that wobbles around within the liquid.

Engineers Week Ideas

Ideas for engineers to use during engineering week, from the Engineering Education Service Center (on the USA engineering week):

Engineers week is a unique time that takes place every February during Presidents week. 40,000 engineers go into classrooms to promote the profession and give students a better understanding of engineering. This is our chance to show the world that engineering is an exciting career and that engineers really can do anything!

If you know of other similar activities in other countries please add a comment.