Category Archives: Engineering

Black and Decker Codeless Lawn Mower Review

My old version of this mower just stopped working and the repair guy said it would cost $250 for a new starter, new battery… So I bought a new one: Black & Decker 19-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Electric Mulching Lawn Mower #CMM1200. He said that the new ones were not as well manufactured. I couldn’t imagine how you could make things worse (it is a simple product and just adopting improvement over the years should be really easy).

But, the starter on this model is horrible. You have to tun this incredibly cheap key in a very poorly designed socket. Fails over 80% of the time. The old model started easily essentially every time. The design was just as you would expect, foolproof. Whatever pointy haired boss approved this design needs to go into another line of work.

The ability of the mower to cope with high grass is very poor – much worse than the previous model. I had a good test at first given the time between my mower breaking and getting the new one. Not often an issue, but still not a good thing.

They had a poor indication of the charge left in the battery previously. They now provide no indication of the charge left. It makes you realize that a poor indication was much better than none.

Battery technology has improved a great deal, and that was one of biggest the weaknesses of the last one. Well they seem to have managed to provide worse battery performance after 5 years of improvement in that technology. Pretty sad.

The bag design is much better than the previous model. You have to assemble it yourself but it is much more sturdy and much better designed – you can replace the fabric and keep the frame. The old model the entire things needed to be replaced if the fabric broke. And given the flimsy design mine broke very early on.
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Science, Engineering and Math Fellowships

I work at the American Society for Engineering Education as an Information Technology Program Manager (this blog is not affiliated with ASEE). A large portion of the computer applications I work on are related to the science and engineering fellowships we administer. The fellowship applications are all open now (for certain fields the NSF application deadline is next week). Those fellowships include:

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship has the earliest deadline, starting November 3rd for some while some fields are as late as November 12th. The fellowship provides support for 3 years (a yearly stipend of $30,000 plus educational expense) to approximately 1,000 students and is open to most science, engineering and math fields.
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship applications are accepted until January 5th, 2009. 200 students receive $31,000 for 3 years plus educational expenses.
Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation Scholarship for Service Program is another Department of Defense fellowship with a deadline of December 15th, 2008. This program offers awards to 200 science and engineering undergraduate and graduate students with awards between $25,000 and $41,000 a year as well as education expenses, health insurance, internships and employment placement after graduation.
NASA Aeronautics Scholarship offers 20 two-year undergraduate scholarships and 5 two-year graduate scholarships to students in Aeronautics and related fields. The deadline is January 16th, 2009.

Other scholarships and fellowships (these are not managed by ASEE): Gates Millennium Scholars Program (January 12th deadline) – NASA Graduate Student Researchers (February 1st) – Goldwater Science Scholarships (January 30th)

Dean Kamen: Stirling Engines

Dean Kamen: part man, part machine

Conceived in Scotland almost 200 years ago, the Stirling [engine] is a marvel of thermo-dynamics that could help to replace the internal combustion engine – in theory it can turn any source of heat into electricity, in silence and with 100 per cent efficiency. But corporations including Phillips, Ford and Nasa have devoted decades of research, and millions of dollars, to developing the engine, and all retired defeated, having failed to find a way of turning the theoretical principles of the engine into a workable everyday application. Kamen, nevertheless, has spent the past 10 years and, he estimates, up to $40 million working on the problem.

Now he and his engineers have built and tested a range of Stirling engines suitable for mass production that can be run on anything from jet fuel to cow dung. The one in the boot of the small blue car is designed to extend its range and constantly recharge its batteries to make a new kind of hybrid vehicle: one fit for the roads of the 21st century. A Stirling-electric hybrid, Kamen tells me, can travel farther and more efficiently than conventional electric cars; it generates enough power to run energy-hungry devices such as heaters and defrosters that are essential for drivers who, unlike those he calls the ‘tofu heads’ of California, must cope with a cold climate; and even using petrol, the engine runs far cleaner than petrol-electric hybrids such as Toyota’s Prius.

However, Kamen confesses, his new creation isn’t quite finished yet: ‘The Stirling engine’s not hooked up. Which really pisses me off.’

But it could work?

‘It will work,’ he says. ‘Trust me.’

Webcast: Engineering Education in the 21st Century

National Academy of Engineering President, William A. Wulf, discusses the future of engineering education. Very good quick overview (skip to 1m 45s point for start of the speech) – see links below for additional resources. From the speech:

“the practices of engineering has changed enormously in the last 20 years and engineering education has changed hardly at all.”
“It is a disgrace: about half the students who start in engineering do not finish in engineering… we are not weeding out the poor students we are turning off half the students with the way that we teach”
“engineering schools generally have not provided courses for the general liberal arts students but they must.”

view the rest of the talk

Electrifying a New Generation of Engineers

Ybarra’s K-12 education efforts began informally in 1993 while he was a newly arrived professor at Duke, toting lasers and other captivating bits of engineering equipment to local schools to drum up excitement for science and engineering and an array of programs grew from there.
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Based on his growing awareness of the value of hands-on learning, Ybarra was longing for a way to help get more hands-on learning into the classroom. A few years later, in 1999, he was able to secure his first significant grant in the area. With support from the National Science Foundation Ybarra formalized his interactions with local schools by establishing a fellowship program that would put Duke engineering students in the classrooms to vastly expand the number of schools impacted.
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To date, Ybarra’s programs have impacted more than 150,000 kids, and with so many programs now in place and spreading, that number increases by about 50,000 students per year. But personal stories, rather than numbers, are what Ybarra finds most gratifying. “When students contact me years later to tell me that the experiences they had in my programs inspired them to pursue a career in engineering or one of the sciences, it gives me a very deep sense of satisfaction.”

William G. Hunter Award 2008: Ronald Does

The recipient of the 2008 William G. Hunter Award is Ronald Does. The Statistics Division of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) uses the attributes that characterize Bill Hunter’s (my father – John Hunter) career – consultant, educator for practitioners, communicator, and integrator of statistical thinking into other disciplines to decide the recipient. In his acceptance speech Ronald Does said:

The first advice I received from my new colleagues was to read the book by Box, Hunter and Hunter. The reason was clear. Because I was not familiar with industrial statistics I had to learn this from the authors who were really practicing statisticians. It took them years to write this landmark book.
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For the past 15 years I have been the managing director of the Institute for Business and Industrial Statistics. This is a consultancy firm owned by the University of Amsterdam. The interaction between scientific research and the application of quality technology via our consultancy work is the core operating principle of the institute. This is reflected in the type of people that work for the institute, all of whom are young professionals having strong ambitions in both the academic world and in business and industry.
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The kickoff conference attracted approximately 80 statisticians and statistical practitioners from all over Europe. ENBIS was officially founded in June 2001 as “an autonomous Society having as its objective the development and improvement of statistical methods, and their application, throughout Europe, all this in the widest sense of the words” Since the first meeting membership has grown to about 1300 from nearly all European countries.

Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel

photo of Hampton Roads Virginia Bridge-Tunnel

Now that is some cool engineering: a bridge that becomes a tunnel. The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel is a 4.6 miles (7.4 km) crossing for Interstate 664 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA. It is a four-lane bridge-tunnel composed of bridges, trestles, man-made islands, and tunnels under a portion of the Hampton Roads harbor where the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth Rivers come together in the southeastern portion of Virginia.

If you like this post, please look at our other popular posts, and consider adding our blog feed to your blog reader. Posts such as: Bacteriophages: The Most Common Life-Like Form on Earth, Robot Finds Lost Shoppers and Provides Directions and The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer

It was completed in 1992, after 7 years of construction, at a cost $400 million, and it includes a four-lane tunnel that is 4,800 feet (1,463 m) long, two man-made portal islands, and 3.2 miles (5.1 km) of twin trestle.

Photos by Virginia Department of Transportation. Details from wikipedia. Google satellite view of the bridge-tunnel.

Reducing Poverty

photo of Rita Bashnet

Today is blog action day, which this year is focused on poverty. We have highlighted various uses of appropriate technology, many of which help those in poverty improve their lives. Such as: Water Pump Merry-go-Round and Smokeless Stove Uses 80% Less Fuel.

I am also very interested in using micro loans to help entrepreneur improve their lives – I have written about Kiva before. Kiva fellows are funded by Kiva (fellows are unpaid) to go to spend time in the countries Kiva facilitates loans for working with the local partners. This post is about Rita Bashnet (in photo) an entrepreneur from Nepal:

Field visits are by far the best part about being a Kiva Fellow. You’re given the opportunity to hop on a motorbike, hike up a village trail, and actually see the impact of a Kiva loan firsthand.
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Five years ago, Ms. Rita took her first loan of NRs. 10,000 (USD $150) and purchased some extra seed and fertilizer in the hopes of expanding her small vegetable patch. With the profits from this initial investment and a second loan from Patan Business and Professional Women (they offer a graduated loan program), she then purchased her first dairy cow.
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After hearing about a program that subsidized the installation of methane gas storage tanks, Ms. Rita took another loan and applied for the program. With this new system, she is now able to capture the valuable gas released from her cow’s waste in a simple controlled-release storage tank. Today she no longer purchases gas from the city and can even sell some during times of shortage.
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Ms. Rita exemplifies the potential of microfinance. A combination of access to capital and strategic investment has allowed her and her family to drastically improve their economic situation in a short five years.

Great story, and exactly my hope for using capitalism to improve the standard of living for people around the globe.

If you haven’t loaned money through Kiva, please consider it now. If you do (or already have a Kiva page), send me your Kiva lender link and I will add it to Curious Cat Kivans. I would love to add more of our readers to that page.

Silk E.coli Sensors

“Edible Optics” Could Make Food Safer

Scientists at Tufts University’s School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to design such “living” optical elements that could enable an entirely new class of sensors. These sensors would combine sophisticated nanoscale optics with biological readout functions, be biocompatible and biodegradable, and be manufactured and stored at room temperatures without use of toxic chemicals. The Tufts team used fibers from silkworms to develop the platform devices.
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The possibility of integrating optical readout and biological function in a single biocompatible device unconstrained by these limitations is tantalizing. Silk optics has captured the interest of the Defense Department, which has funded and been instrumental in enabling rapid progress on the topic. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Tufts a research contract in 2007 and is funding Tufts and others on groundbreaking projects that could someday result in biodegradable optical sensing communications technology.
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To form the devices, Tufts scientists boiled cocoons of the Bombyx mori silkworm in a water solution and extracted the glue-like sericin proteins. The purified silk protein solution was ultimately poured onto negative molds of ruled and holographic diffraction gratings with spacing as fine as 3600 grooves/mm.
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The Tufts team embedded three very different biological agents in the silk solution: a protein (hemoglobin), an enzyme (horseradish peroxidase) and an organic pH indicator (phenol red). In the hardened silk optical element, all three agents maintained their activity for long periods when simply stored on a shelf. “We have optical devices embedded with enzymes that are still active after almost a year of storage at room temperature.

59 MPG Toyota iQ Diesel Available in Europe

image of seating in the toyota iQ

59 MPG Toyota iQ On Sale In Europe, US Plans Unclear

With lower carbon dioxide emissions than the Prius — around 159 grams of CO2 emitted per mile by the 1.0 liter gas engine and 166 g/mile for the diesel version — not only does the iQ deliver on fuel economy, but its straight-up conventional engine is a pollution winner too.
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At just about 9.8 feet long, 5.5 feet wide and 4.9 feet tall, Toyota certainly has pulled of a near engineering miracle with the amount of stuff they’ve crammed into this tiny vehicle. Toyota claims the iQ can fit 3 adults and 1 child “comfortably.”
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Toyota expects to sell about 80,000 of them a year in Europe.

I own some Toyota stock (and bought a bit more recently) based on their excellent management and production system and the results they have achieved (so I pay attention to what they are doing – plus I own them because they do things I see as wise so it is a self reinforcing dynamic). Business week recently wrote about Ford’s 65 mpg Diesel Car the U.S. Can’t Have.

I owned Ford stock back when they were adopting Deming based management principles but when they dropped those to pursue short sighted goals and poor management practices I sold and bought Toyota (turned out to be a very wise decision – my mistake was holding Ford too long hoping they would realize their mistake).