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.

Science, Engineering and Technology Graduates Paid Well

ForfÃ¡s report says starting salaries for science engineering and technology graduates are amongst the highest of all Irish graduates.

Speaking at the awards ceremony Minister Martin said, “This report highlights the exciting careers and levels of opportunity open to graduates and students in the science, engineering and technology sector. These graduates and students are at the forefront of Ireland’s transition as a world leading knowledge economy, working at the cutting edge of innovation and research.
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Across a range of qualifications from primary degree to PhD level the report shows that graduates in disciplines with a strong science and technology content tend to be better paid than graduates in other disciplines.

This is another example of countries targeting science and engineering education to improve future economic progress and the high pay of engineering graduates. Previous related posts:

Science, Education and Community

Science, Education and Community: Organically Grown

In 2001, Krasny received a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Informal Science Education program to create Garden Mosaics, a project that merges gardening with education in urban areas. Since then, the project has expanded into dozens of cities across the United States and abroad, and has received recognition from national educational groups and gardening associations.

Garden Mosaics web site, including a cartoon explanation of the scientific process. Continue reading →

The Art and Science of Imaging

Cancer Cell

The Art of Imaging from Invitrogen (via Molecular Probes’ protocols for pretty pictures). See interesting images and details on exactly how to scientists create such images.

image: -catenin in HeLa human cervical cancer cells was labeled using mouse anti–catenin and visualized with Alexa Fluor 488 goat anti-mouse IgG (green). Filamentous actin was visualized using red-fluorescent Alexa Fluor 635 phalloidin. Nuclear DNA was stained with blue-fluorescent DAPI. Larger photo and more details

The image gallery includes many more images.

Drilling to the Center of the Earth

The Deepest Hole by Alan Bellows:

In the 1960s the Soviet Union began a project to drill through the upper crust of the earth to reach the “mysterious area where the crust and mantle intermingle.” That project continued over 4 decades but they never were able to succeed. In order to drill at the depths they did reach they needed to engineer new drilling techniques.

Inside the project’s 200-foot-tall enclosure resides a unique drilling apparatus. Most deep-drilling rigs use a rotating shaft to bore through the ground– using a series of extensions which are incrementally added as the hole grows deeper– but such a method was unworkable with a hole as deep as Kola was planned to be. To overcome this, the Russian researchers devised a solution where only the drill bit at the end of the shaft was rotated. They accomplished this by forcing the pressurized “drilling mud”– the lubricant pumped down the drill shaft– through the specially-designed drill bit to cause it to spin.

Rare “Rainbow” Over Idaho

Rainbow like clouds

Rare “Rainbow” Spotted Over Idaho by Victoria Gilman:

The arc isn’t a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58Â° above the horizon). What’s more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.

When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus’s crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

Arctic Seed Vault

Work begins on Arctic seed vault:

More than 100 countries have backed the vault, which will store seeds, packaged in foil, at sub-zero temperatures.
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The vault’s purpose is to ensure survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change; and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

At temperatures of minus 18C (minus 0.4F), the seeds could last hundreds, even thousands, of years. Even if all cooling systems failed, explained Mr Riis-Johansen, the temperature in the frozen mountain would never rise above freezing due to the permafrost on the mountainside.

Robot Football (Soccer)

In addition to the World Cup another international football event is taking place in Germany this month: RoboCup 2006

Researcher Founds a Robot Soccer Dynasty (including video webcast):

RoboCup is an international project to foster advances in artificial intelligence and intelligent robotics research. The ultimate goal of RoboCup is to develop, by 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can beat the human world champion soccer team. Veloso and Carnegie Mellon have been participating since “pre-RoboCup” events in 1996 and the first official RoboCup games in 1997. Veloso was general chair of RoboCup 2001 in Seattle.

Gecko Tape

Sticking Around with Gecko Tape:

The tape is a simple version of the adhesive on a gecko’s feet. The soles of the lizard’s feet are covered with millions of tiny little hairs, too small to see with the naked eye. The molecules in these hairs snuggle up to the molecules of any surface the gecko walks on. The molecules are attracted to each other, forming a temporary bond that keeps the gecko firmly in place.

Also see, Caught on tape: Gecko-inspired adhesive is superstrong, for more details.

Photo: An array of tiny plastic pegs mimics the microscopic structure of a gecko’s sticky sole.

MIT Hosts Student Vehicle Design Summit

Solar concept car drawing

Student summit set on vehicle design by Deborah Halbe

Seventy-three students from 21 universities around the world will gather at MIT this summer to design and build between five and 10 commuter vehicles that exploit human power, biofuels, solar technologies and fuel cells to travel at least 500 miles per gallon of fuel.
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An added goal for the June 13-Aug. 13 program is to lay a foundation for ongoing multidisciplinary transportation research involving all five MIT schools. “We hope to create a project-based, socially conscious engineering curriculum for the ’06-’07 academic year,” said Anna S. Jaffe, a junior in civil and environmental engineering and one of the summit student organizers.

Image by Mitchell Joachim and William Lark, sketch of a concept solar car was created for the MIT Vehicle Design Summit.

Lego Learning

Lego Mindstorms (via Amazon.com) are a great example of the learning opportunities available today. It seems true that the extracurricular learning options are much greater today than 50 years ago.

I Hear Rumors That Our Education Institutions Are In Trouble by Tom Hill:

We have living proof in my 60 short years that the education construction toy has progressed from the 20th century Erector SetÂ® to 21st century programmable LEGO Mindstormsâ„¢ robots.

We don’t have to worry about the future of education. Today’s youth will demand a superior local education system or they will go to any Internet institution that can satisfy their needs. All we have to do as the adults is make sure the local school systems and Internet institutions are capable of living up to our children’s expanding expectations.

I think the educational institutions may not be keeping pace with those advancements. But I agree that we need to see to it that those schools do keep pace with a changing world and changing expectations.

More posts on k-12 science and engineering education.