Category Archives: Engineering

Helium-3 Fusion Reactor

Nevertheless, UW fusion researchers believe their plan could get civilization off fossil fuels. That’s if crews could return to the moon to mine for helium-3, super-heat it out of the lunar soil to process the gas, and return it to the Earth.
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But scientists and investors have taken notice. Nearly all of UW fusion research is privately funded. And meanwhile, with China, India, the European Space Agency and at least one Russian corporation all pursuing plans for a manned lunar base in the coming decades, there is increasing talk of a race to control this fuel, one shuttle load of which could theoretically power the United States for a year.
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Aftergood doesn’t believe a race with China for lunar helium-3 has begun. Yet a race to the moon against China — whether real or superficial — may be in NASA’s best interest, he said. “There are some who wish this would be the case — this race with China. They believe it would recapture the dynamic of the United States’ and Russia’s race to the moon,” he said.

This sounds pretty incredible to me and I find the claims of using fuel from the Moon economically to power our needs on Earth. Still it is interesting and just because it sounds fantastic does not mean it can’t be true. But I am skeptical.

Hispanic Engineering Students

A Future Engineer:

While they are the largest minority group in the United States at 14.5 percent of the population, only 4 percent of engineers in the workforce in this country are Hispanic. Just 7 percent of the bachelor’s degrees in engineering, 5 percent of master’s degrees and even fewer doctoral degrees are awarded to Hispanics
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To this end, several universities host summer camps to expose young Hispanics and other minorities to STEM subjects. New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering, for instance, brings 180 middle and high school students to campus each summer for intense math and science workshops. “We target demographics that we really want to push engineering on,” says Castillo, who became interested in engineering himself at a summer camp at rival University of New Mexico. “It’s been an extremely successful program for us.”

Concrete Houses 1919 and 2007

Robo-builder threatens the brickie [the broken link was removed]

Is the writing on the wall for the brickie? Engineers are racing to unveil the world’s first robot capable of building a house at the touch of a button. The first prototype — a watertight shell of a two-storey house built in 24 hours without a single builder on site — will be erected in California before April.

Brickie?: a search seems to indicate that is a bricklayer.

By building almost an entire house from just two materials – concrete and gypsum – the robots will eliminate the need for dozens of traditional components, including floorboards, wooden window frames and possibly even wallpaper. It may eventually be possible to use specially treated gypsum instead of glass window panes. Engineers on both projects say the robots will not only cut costs and avoid human delays but liberate the normal family homes from the conventional designs of pitched roofs, right-angled walls and rectangular windows.

Edison patented a process for constructing concrete buildings in 1908 (1917 issued). Photo is of a concrete Edison house being constructed in one day in Union, NJ on October 9th, 1919. See more photos of concrete houses and much more at the great National Park Service Edison photo gallery [sadly the NPA broke the link and it has been removed].

Attracting Women to Engineering

Colleges focusing on attracting women to engineering

Mahera Philobos, director of Georgia Tech’s Women in Engineering program and a civil and environmental engineering professor, said she’s had success getting women to enroll in some areas of engineering, like biomedical and industrial. Both are perceived by women as fields that make contributions to the world, she said.

While frustrated by the stagnant enrollment, Philobos knows change happens slowly. She said the key is reaching the girls when they’re in middle and high school to encourage them to take rigorous math and science courses.
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That does not translate into a national trend. Women received 18 percent of the 78,200 engineering degrees given out in 2003-04, the latest data available from the U.S. Department of Education. That’s the same percentage as in 1998 and only slightly more than the 16 percent in 1996.

Robot Espionage

Robot tech on ground zero makes Lucknow, India lad a hero – Shadab Ahmed Ansari has developed a robot that

is capable of traversing any terrain and it can even be used for aerial reconnaissance as well as for submarine explorations. It consists of three parts – a military suit, an espionage robot and a base camp computer.
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The military suit is to be worn by soldiers in the battlefield and will control the movement of the espionage robot. The espionage robot has a robotic arm capable of mimicking the hand movement of the soldier. It is capable of transmitting audio-visual data to the soldier as well as to the base camp computer in real-time. This helps in taking on-the-spot decisions that play a crucial part in any military operation

For more see: Leading the Charge

Applied Engineering Education

Classroom projects translate into immediate workplace gains for working professionals in engineering

In the final semester of his UW–Madison master’s degree, Bob Aloisi didn’t just earn a letter grade in his quality engineering class: He saved his company $50,000. It wasn’t the typical classroom outcome — but it wasn’t a typical classroom. As a student in “Quality Engineering and Quality Management,” Aloisi accomplished a major class project in quality improvement at his own workplace.

The project is the capstone experience in the College of Engineering’s award-winning distance-education program, the Master of Engineering in Professional Practice (MEPP). Designed for mid-career engineers who live and work all over the country, MEPP’s Internet-based curriculum strives to provide knowledge students can apply immediately at their companies.
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“Our project was a very good example of the Kaizen approach,” says Aloisi. “It wasn’t one specific thing, a home run type of thing, that we changed to make our improvements.” Instead, his team met its targets through many small steps, including adjustments to equipment settings and better training for machine operators.

MacRobert Award Nominations

Three weeks left to enter the UK’s biggest innovation prize:

Now in its 38th year, the MacRobert Award is Britain’s pre-eminent award for innovation in engineering. Open to individuals or teams of up to five people from any size of company who have exploited a major engineering breakthrough
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the MacRobert Award honours the winning company with a gold medal and up to five team members with a tax-free prize of Â£50,000 between them. HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, Senior Fellow of the Academy, takes a close interest in the MacRobert Award and has presented it almost every year since it was created.

Apply. Previous awards granted for: the roof structure of the Millennium Dome (1999), Light-emitting polymers (2002), development and commercialisation of a unique non-invasive retinal imager (2006).

Want to be a Computer Game Programmer?

You need to understand math, physics and more to become a computer game programmer. Things You Need to Know before Interviewing for a Game Programming Position:

You do need to have very good linear algebra skills. If you don’t know what the formula for a dot product is (a dot b = a.x * b.x + a.y * b.y + a.z * b.z ) and what it means geometrically (|a| * |b| * cosine of the angle between a and b), then there’s no chance you can get a job. You need to know how to project a vector onto another vector (a projected onto b = ( a dot b ) / |b|^2 * b) and onto a plane. You need to know what the cross product is (a x b = [a.y * b.z – a.z * b.y, a.z * b.x – a.x * b.z, a.x * b.y – a.y * b.x]) and what it means geometrically (a vector perpendicular to the vectors with a length equal to the sine of the angle between them).
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You should be very familiar with all the projectile equations. If you can’t either derive or remember d = v0 * t + 0.5 * a * t^2, you’ll be in trouble when you interview or take a programming test. Any problem that involves a projectile with gravity should be easy for you to solve. Whether the unknown is gravity, launch angle, y velocity, xz velocity, time, distance or any combinations that are solvable, you should have no problems determining the solution. You should also be familiar with momentum and kinetic energy for elastic and inelastic collisions. Drag and friction should be concepts you understand also.

If that all looks like great fun to you, perhaps game programming is the career for you.

$100 Laptop Update

Green $100 Laptop photo

Public can purchase $100 laptop. I am not sure I understand the headline – this seems a more accurate picture of situation: OLPC aims for mass production in third quarter, 2007. At this time the cost each is about $150 and you will have to pay for 2 (you buy one for yourself and one for the developing world). The aim is to reach the $100 price level, but that has not quite been achieved yet.

The first countries to sign up to buying the machine, which is officially dubbed XO, include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.

The XO’s software has been designed to work specifically in an educational context. It has built-in wireless networking and video conferencing so that groups of children can work together. The project is also working to ensure that children using the laptop around the world can be in contact.

The project continues to move forward even with the bumps along the road – it is quite an ambitious plan. Take a look at this great story: What kids can learn when you just give them access to a computer.

Cheap, Superefficient Solar

Technologies collectively known as concentrating photovoltaics are starting to enjoy their day in the sun, thanks to advances in solar cells, which absorb light and convert it into electricity, and the mirror- or lens-based concentrator systems that focus light on them. The technology could soon make solar power as cheap as electricity from the grid.
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“I’d much rather make a few square miles of plastic lenses–it would cost me less–than a few square miles of silicon solar cells,” Olson says. Today solar power is still more expensive than electricity from the grid, but concentrator technology has the potential to change this. Indeed, if manufacturers can meet the challenges of ramping up production and selling, distributing, and installing the systems, their prices could easily meet prices for electricity from the grid, says solar-industry analyst Michael Rogol