Category Archives: Engineering

Illinois and Olin Aim to Transform Engineering Education

It appears Illinois is preparing to attempt to apply some of the idea piloted at Olin on a larger scale. It will be very interesting to see what happens. Illinois Partners with Olin College to Transform Engineering Education

“Illinois is to be commended for embarking on a serious initiative to demonstrate scalable innovation at a large land-grant school,” Miller stated. “Olin has pioneered many innovations in its multi-disciplinary, project-based engineering curriculum, but we still don’t know how widely applicable these reforms are. Through this partnership, Olin and Illinois will be able to explore how to diffuse innovation more broadly throughout the engineering education community. The partnership is a true collaboration, offering Illinois access to Olin’s unique educational Petri dish, and offering faculty and students at Olin special access to Illinois’ quality researchers and facilities, recognized as among the best in the world.”

As part of this effort Illinois seems to be using a new something (I am not sure what it should be called): iFoundry. Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education, is an interdepartmental curriculum incubator in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois designed to pilot principled change while respecting faculty governance.

Seventh-grader’s Solar Cell Research

photo of William Yuan

Seventh-grader shines with solar cell research

Yuan worked on his project for the past two years with the encouragement of his science teacher Susan Duncan; support of his parents Gang Yuan and Zhiming Mei; and counsel of professional mentors Professor Chunfei Li of Portland State University’s Center for Nanofabrication and Electron Microscopy, Fred Li of Applied Materials Inc. and Professor Shaofan Li of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of California – Berkeley.

“He is our youngest fellow in science that we’ve ever had,” Moessner said. “He is really spectacular. “His project will really make a difference in advancing the technology of solar cells. You would never know he’s 12 looking at the quality of his work.”

Beaverton boy lauded for solar cell invention

there have been many questions about the research by William Yuan. Some have even questioned whether he copied the research of others and claimed it as his own. That is far from the case. Yuan fully documented all of his sources and never tried to imply that he invented the 3D solar cell. He did create a new type of 3D solar cell that works for visible and UV light

William Yuan was awarded a 2008 Davidson Fellow award

In his project, “High Efficient 3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light,” William invented a novel solar panel that enables light absorption from visible to ultraviolet light. He designed carbon nanotubes to overcome the barriers of electron movement, doubling the light-electricity conversion efficiency. William also developed a model for solar towers and a computer program to simulate and optimize the tower parameters. His optimized design provides 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than the cutting-edge, three-dimensional solar cell.

Goldbergian Flash Fits Rube Goldberg Web Site

Intentionally, I hope, the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest web site illustrates how to use needlessly complex engineering to design a tool that fails to follow sensible engineering guidelines. Rather than aiming for well designed usable products, the desire is to produce a machine that sort-of complies with the requirements but in a extremely foolish, convoluted way. Obviously it would be much more sensible to design that web site with html and it would just work simply, easily and quickly for everyone. But flash is the perfect tool to use if you want to promote Goldbergian thinking.

The web site, for example, does display content to a web browser. If that web browser has a flash plugin installed and it is the proper type. And sure the conventions of the web don’t work in this crippled environment but who cares about that when designing Goldbergian web sites. Of course if you actually want to design a good web site such choices would be – lets see, oh yeah, lame. I could link to the contest information – but in good Flash Goldbergian fashion that is not possible with the non-website website they have.

15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations

15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations You Must See

Researchers at McMaster University (coolest name ever) have succeeded in ‘growing’ light-absorbing nanowires made of high-performance photovoltaic materials on carbon-nanotube fabric. In other words, hairy solar panels.

The aim is to produce flexible, affordable solar cells that, within five years, will achieve a conversion efficiency of 20%. Longer term, it’s theoretically possible to achieve 40% efficiency!
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while looking for a solution, researchers noticed that moths have very non-reflective eyes (“most likely an evolutionary defense against nocturnal predators”). The moth-eye process creates panels that reflect less than 2% of light. That’s a vast improvement over the 35 to 40% reflection rate seen without the anti-reflection coating layers.
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Some experts are speculating that First Solar might beat over 80 competitors to achieve manufacturing costs low enough to market solar panels at less than $1 per Watt, the target considered necessary for solar to compete with coal-burning electricity on the grid.

Best Research University Rankings – 2008

The annual ranking of research Universities are available from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. The methodology values publications and faculty awards which provides a better ranking of research (rather than teaching). Results from the 2008 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide, country representation of the top schools:

location	Top 100	% of World Population	% of World GDP	% of top 500
USA	54	4.6%	27.2%	31.6%
United Kingdom	11	0.9	4.9	8.3
Germany	6	1.3	6.0	8.0
Japan	4	2.0	9.0	6.2
Canada	4	0.5	2.6	4.2
Sweden	4	0.1	0.8	2.2
France	3	0.8	4.6	4.6
Switzerland	3	0.1	0.8	1.6
Australia	3	0.3	1.6	3.0
Netherlands	2	0.2	1.4	2.4
Denmark	2	0.1	0.6	0.8
Finland	1	0.1	0.4	1.2
Norway	1	0.1	0.7	0.8
Israel	1	0.1	0.3	1.2
Russia	1	2.2	2.0	0.4
China		20.5	6.6	6.0
India		17.0	1.9	0.4

There is little change in most of the data from last year, which I think is a good sign, it wouldn’t make much sense to have radical shifts over a year in these rankings. Japan lost 2 schools in the top 100, France lost 1. Denmark (Aarhus University) and Australia (University of Sydney) gained 1. Last year there was a tie so there were 101 schools in the top 100.

The most dramatic data I noticed is China’s number of top 500 schools went from 14 to 30, which made me a bit skeptical of what caused that quick change. Looking more closely last year they reported the China top 500 totals as (China 14, China-Taiwan 6 and China-Hong Kong 5). That still gives them an impressive gain of 5 schools.

Singapore has 1 in the 102-151 range. Taiwan has 1 ranked in the 152-200 range, as do Mexico, Korea and Brazil. China has 9 in the 201-302 range (including 3 in Hong Kong). India has 2 in the 303-401 range.

University of Wisconsin – Madison is 17th again 🙂 My father taught there while I grew up.
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Jetsone Jetplane Over English Channel

photo of personal jet wings

We first posted on Yves Rossy’s personal jetpack in 2006. Now he is preparing to fly over the English channel with this jetwings.

The plan is that on or around September 24, Yves will climb into a light aircraft somewhere near Calais with his wing firmly strapped on to his back and a live television crew from the National Geographic Channel filming his every move.

When the plane is at 8,000ft, he will fire up the four little jet engines attached to the underside of the wing and then jump out. In the plane, the wingtips are always folded or Yves would not fit through the door. Once in the open air, he will pull a cord and the two spring-loaded ends will snap open to give him a full wing span of just over eight feet.

He will open up his engines, dive for a few seconds to pick up a speed of around 200mph and then level out at around 5,000ft before flying in a straight line at roughly 115mph to England. As long as the wind is not above 10mph in the opposite direction, he should have enough juice to get him to Kent.

There, he will pull his parachute ripcords and drop safely on to Blighty’s fair shores.

What is an Engineer?

Guest post: What is an engineer? by Chris Gammell

I’ve been having what some would call an identity crisis. How, you ask? I’ve been working on digital electronics.

*GASP*!

I found out that in the early 90s and even earlier, analog engineers routinely switched from working in the analog domain to the digital domain…because it was paying really great. Not only that, most analog engineers had the expertise to do what most early digital engineers were doing (basically stringing together a lot of digital gates in DIP packages). It wasn’t until later that digital engineers started acting more as programmers and VHDL/Verilog experts.

So why do I bring this up? Because I’ve been thinking about the versatility required from engineers in general, not just analog or digital engineers. Routinely engineers are asked to switch modes or tasks or careers in order to get a job done. It’s not that other professions are never asked this; it’s just that the chameleon-like requirement placed on engineers seems to define the profession. Allow me to explain.

What is an engineer?

An engineer puts theories into practice using available devices and elements. They create new products and pass on knowledge through design iterations and trial and error. Their work should be directly applicable to the real world (sometimes in the form of an end-product, sometimes not) and hopefully able to be reproduced successfully in the same form for multiple parties (mass manufacturing). Engineers are often rooted in math and science but require a wide range of skill-sets in order to properly construct an end product.

I think it is important to note that an engineer is different from a scientist, although the line can often be blurred (especially when looking back at the inventors of the early 20th century). In modern times a scientist is usually tasked with pushing the barrier and finding new theories and concepts. This means that the concept will not necessarily be available in product form right away (although this is not always the case), as the product form must be iterated upon and improved for production.
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Autonomous Helicopters Teach Themselves to Fly

photo of Stanford Autonomous Learning Helicopters

Stanford’s “autonomous” helicopters teach themselves to fly

Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.
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The dazzling airshow is an important demonstration of “apprenticeship learning,” in which robots learn by observing an expert, rather than by having software engineers peck away at their keyboards in an attempt to write instructions from scratch.
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It might seem that an autonomous helicopter could fly stunts by simply replaying the exact finger movements of an expert pilot using the joy sticks on the helicopter’s remote controller. That approach, however, is doomed to failure because of uncontrollable variables such as gusting winds.

Saving Lives with Smarter Hurricane Evacuations

A sign indicating a hurricane evacuation route near Boca Raton, Florida. Photo / Wikimedia Commons

Software developed by a MIT student is aiding emergency officials as they decide on evacuation plans:
Saving lives through smarter hurricane evacuations

Michael Metzger’s software tool, created as part of the research for his PhD dissertation, could allow emergency managers to better decide early on whether and when to order evacuations — and, crucially, to do so more efficiently by clearing out people in stages. The tool could also help planners optimize the location of relief supplies before a hurricane hits.
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“All in all, this is a complex balancing act,” Metzger says.

The concept of evacuating an area in stages — focusing on different categories of people rather than different geographical locations — is one of the major innovations to come out of Metzger’s work, since congestion on evacuation routes has been a significant problem in some cases, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Metzger suggests that, for example, the elderly might be evacuated first, followed by tourists, families with children, and then the remaining population. The determination of the specific categories and their sequence could be determined based on the demographics of the particular area.

By spacing out the evacuation of different groups over a period of about two days, he says, the process would be more efficient, while many traditional systems of evacuating a given location all at once can and have caused serious congestion problems.
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Other factors that could help to make evacuations more effective, he says, include better planning in the preparation of places for evacuees to go to, making sure buses and other transportation are ready to transport people, and preparing supplies in advance at those locations.

A Journey Into the Human Eye

Zoom into a human eye

The webcast goes into the human eye while describing the microscopic details of the human eye. See more such videos: The Eyes of a Fly – Zoom Into a Fish – Zoom Into a Butterfly