Category Archives: Engineering

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.

Lean Enterprise Value Student Publication Prize

I received an email on the Lean Enterprise Value Student Publication Prize, I don’t see the announcement online, so I’ll include the information I was sent below. For more information on lean thinking see our Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog: lean manufacturing posts.

Lean Enterprise Value Foundation, Inc. Student Publication Prize Call for Submissions

The Prize will consist of $500 and an engraved memento to be presented at the Lean Aerospace Initiative Plenary Conference in Cambridge, Maryland on April 17–19, 2007

Eligibility
Author: Any student at a US university. There may be co-authors and co-researchers but the entrant should be the principal author.
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Personal Water Wheel Power

Personal Water Wheel

Scots inventor cracks centuries-old puzzle

Ian Gilmartin, 60, has invented a mini water wheel capable of supplying enough electricity to power a house – for free. The contraption is designed to be used in small rivers or streams – ideal for potentially thousands of homes across Britain. It is the first off-the-shelf water-wheel system that can generate a good supply of electricity from as little as an eight-inch water fall.
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The water wheel produces one to two kilowatts of power and generates at least 24kw hours of sustainable green energy in a day – just under the average household’s daily consumption of about 28kw hours. It will cost some Â£2,000 to fully install – and pay for itself inside two years.
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A “high head”, such as a traditional water wheel, is large, expensive and needs civil engineering. But with low heads of under 18 inches, no-one had invented a method of successfully recovering the energy generated – until now. A conventional water wheel allows the water to escape prematurely as the wheel rotates, but the Beck Mickle hydro generator contains the water for the full drop of the device, converting about 70 per cent of the energy into electricity.

Related: Cheap energy hope from waterwheel (photo from BBC) “Mr Gilmartin is an electrician by trade, but does not own a TV and has never lived in a house with electricity.” – Electricity Savings – Engineers Save Energy – Wind Power – Safe Water Through Play

Northwest FIRST Robotics Competition

photo of FIRST robots competition

The Pacific Northwest FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules.

Newport High students look to future with robotics venture by Terry Dillman:

Founded in 1989 to “inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology,” the not-for-profit, New Hampshire-based FIRST designs “accessible, innovative programs” to encourage students to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while simultaneously building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.
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Teams build their robots using the parts kit for the basics, and procuring other parts as needed to augment the kit and make the robot do what’s required in competition.

Mixing Memory: Coolest Experiment

Coolest… Experiment… Ever

In short, change blindness is an issue of attention and representation. If we fail to represent an object in a scene either before or after a change, then we won’t notice the change, and we tend not to represent objects that aren’t important to the meaning of what we’re looking at, because we’re just not paying attention to them (though paying attention to them doesn’t guarantee representation).
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At this point, you’re thinking, “This is insane! I would notice if the stranger I was talking to suddenly looked like a completely different person!” I thought the same thing, and we’re not alone. In fact, this disbelief is so common that it has its own name: change blindness blindness.

Robot Heading for Antarctic Dive

Robot heading for Antarctic dive, BBC News:

Isis, the UK’s first deep-diving remotely operated vehicle (ROV), will be combing the sea-bed in the region in its inaugural science mission. Researchers hope to uncover more about the effects of glaciers on the ocean floor, and also find out about the animals that inhabit these waters. The mission begins in mid-January and will last for about three weeks. While the scientists and engineers begin their long journey to the Antarctic at the start of January, Isis left the UK shores in November and has only just arrived at its destination.
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Ten kilometres of cable connect it to its “mother ship”, allowing scientists to control the vehicle and receive the data it collects in real-time. On the ROV, Mr Mason said, were lights, cameras to produce high-quality video and still pictures, sonars for acoustic navigation and imaging, and two remotely controlled manipulator arms to collect samples or place scientific instruments on the sea-bed.
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“We are hoping to see a whole bunch of large creatures such as star fish, sea cucumbers, sea fans, sea pens, etc, that inhabit the deep shelf slope and abyssal depths.” He added: “Essentially no-one has explored Antarctica using a ROV at these depths.”

Delaying the Flow of Light on a Silicon Chip

IBM Milestone Demonstrates Optical Device to Advance Computer Performance

IBM today announced its researchers have built a device capable of delaying the flow of light on a silicon chip, a requirement to one day allow computers to use optical communications to achieve better performance.
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“Today’s more powerful microprocessors are capable of performing much more work if we can only find a way to increase the flow of information within a computer,” said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president of Science and Technology for IBM Research. “As more and more data is capable of being processed on a chip, we believe optical communications is the way to eliminate these bottlenecks. As a result, the focus in high-performance computing is shifting from improvements in computation to those in communication within the system.”

Additional information on silicon nanophotonics

Engineering Education Advocate

Jolly Good Fellow by Thomas K. Grose

He thinks one reason for the decline is the way engineering is taught in the United Kingdom, with a heavy, early emphasis on theory and math. “Kids come in and they want to design and build cars, but instead they’re fed theory and hard math. And they say, ‘What the heck is this?’” Degree programs should be made more palatable and exciting early on, Sharkey says, with more hands-on learning to go along with the theoretical so students can more easily see how it relates to real-life applications. “We need to get out the idea that engineering can be creative—and then make it so. Somehow, we need to teach innovation.”

But Sharkey also realizes that few schools have either the time or the money to reshape their curricula. “So we could use a government initiative.”Sharkey also takes a more long-term view toward revitalizing engineering enrollments, noting that it’s best to capture the imagination of budding engineers when they’re as young as 10 or 11. Toward that goal, and with EPSRC funding, he runs a series of robot-control and construction competitions for children and young adults. A recent one was in Rotherham, a hardscrabble area outside Sheffield. About 2,000 inner-city kids made and took home simple cardboard robots from kits he devised that use a photoelectric sensor. Many of these kids are considered unteachable, “but to me, they seemed happy to learn. They didn’t see me as a teacher.” Moreover, constructing robots engages and entertains youngsters, which makes learning easier.

Engineering Basketball Flop

Despite innovation, basketball maker loses grip on customers (newspaper broke the link so I removed it)

However, NBA players found many problems with the new ball, claiming that it caused finger cuts and friction burns. More important, they complained of control problems because of inconsistent bouncing by the new ball, its tendency to stick to the floor and backboards when dry, and the difficulty in gripping it when wet.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, asked researchers at the University of Texas in Arlington to compare the performances of both the synthetic and leather balls. Their investigation found that the microfiber composite ball did not bounce as high as the leather design and that it bounced 30 percent more erratically.

The investigators also used silicon sheets to replicate the surface of a player’s hands as they conducted frictional tests on the balls. The new balls were found to be slippery even when slightly moistened, whereas the leather balls actually became tackier when wet, making them easier to grip.

These results are not surprising because the synthetic covering is not as moisture absorbent as leather. These findings seemed to confirm the players’ concerns about the new ball.

State Foster Science for Future Jobs

State eager to foster young scientists for future jobs

The challenge for Massachusetts is to figure out how to inspire more youths to take the same steps. Across the region, observers from chief executives to policymakers are fretting that Massachusetts is not grooming a work force for the future. Part of that includes funneling enough young people into math, science, engineering and related professions to sustain the state’s companies and economy.
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“I think as citizens we need to have a basic literacy of principles of science and technology, and that the level of literacy needed to sift through decisions and certain public policy debates has become greater,” Mr. Schneider said. “As science is more in the public policy arena, having fundamental knowledge of basic scientific principles is key.”

I agree. Education in science and engineering is needed both to provide skilled workers for a strong economy and to provide a level of understanding for people to participate in the modern world.