Category Archives: Engineering

Purdue Graduate Fellows Teach Middle School Science

Purdue to break ground on teaching center for improving science and engineering education.

The $10 million Discovery Learning Center, slated for completion in 2008, will focus on teaching techniques and environments conducive to learning. Also a focal point will be the way people learn best. An emphasis will be placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, also known as the STEM disciplines.
…
Wilella Burgess, managing director of the Discovery Learning Center, said projects like GK12 help make science seem more reachable for students in the primary grades.

“A lot of these kids don’t know there is such a thing as graduate school and it lets them meet scientists and grad students and learn that they’re not all weird, nerdy people,” she said. “It also lets classroom teachers have the access to cutting edge research.”

The Purdue Discovery Learning Center Gk-12 program brings graduate students to middle schools. Graduate “fellows will develop lesson plans and teach interdisciplinary-focused experiments geared toward science in everyday life.”

Sports Science Open Access Journal

Sport Science is a Peer-Reviewed Site for Sport Research (open access). An interesting recent publication: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Rowing Faster by Stephen Seiler:

Improvements in rowing technique have increased boat speed by reducing boat yaw, pitch and roll, and by improving the pattern of force application. New tools for real-time measurement and feedback of boat kinematics and force patterns are opening new approaches to training of individual rowers and to selection of rowers for team boats.

They also moderate a email list with items of interest including academic positions in areas such as: Mechanical Engineering, focusing on Biomechanics; Sports Physiologist; Exercise and Sport Science.

How Does a Missile Turns in Flight?

An interesting and detailed explanation of the dynamics of missile flight: Missile Control Systems:

In order to turn the missile during flight, at least one set of aerodynamic surfaces is designed to rotate about a center pivot point. In so doing, the angle of attack of the fin is changed so that the lift force acting on it changes. The changes in the direction and magnitude of the forces acting on the missile cause it to move in a different direction and allow the vehicle to maneuver along its path and guide itself towards its intended target.

Engine on a Chip – the Future Battery

micro engine - battery replacement

Engine on a chip promises to best the battery

MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.
…
The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second — 100 times faster than those in jet engines.

Continue reading →

2006 MacArthur Fellows

photo of Edith Widder photo of Kenneth Catania photo of Linda Griffith
25 New MacArthur Fellows Announced. Photos from left to right: Edith Widder, Kenneth Catania and Linda Griffith.

My statement from last year seems worth repeating: “I think the fellowships are a great idea: give money to people who have done excellent work. I am not sure of the motivations of the MacArthur Foundation, but if it were me I would trust by providing funds to those people they would (as a group, not every single person) take advantage of those funds to create great advances for all of humanity.”

Each fellow will receive $500,000 over the next 5 years to do with as they please. Among the winners are scientist and engineers, including:

Edith Widder – biologist and deep-sea explorer, “Working with engineers, she has built a number of unique devices that enable scientists to see the ocean in new ways, including HIDEX, a bathyphotometer that measures how much bioluminescence there is in the oceans, and LoLAR, the most sensitive deep-sea light meter.”

Continue reading →

Engineering the Future Economy

Today most nations, that have their act together, realize high tech jobs and a highly educated workforce are a huge key to economic success and they (governments often, but also companies, rich individuals and foundations) are taking action to position their country to do well. Anyone that is serious about this should read about How to cultivate Your Own Silicon Valley.

Where’d The Whiz Kids Go? by Nick Perry:
Continue reading →

UW- Madison Wins 4th Concrete Canoe Competition

Concrete Canoe Race

University of Wisconsin-Madison Takes First Place for 4th Straight year in 2006 National Concrete Canoe Competition:

This was no ordinary boat race. The competitors weren’t sleek sailboats riding the winds or high-powered yachts muscling their way across the finish line. These were canoes. Made of concrete. Hundreds of pounds of concrete. And the only thing propelling these water-worthy crafts was the determination of the engineering students that created them in a bid to win the ‘America’s Cup of Civil Engineering.’

Manipulating Carbon Nanotubes

Photo: At left, the high conductance state has two molecular orbitals, shown in green. Some molecules even let the nanotube switch between highly conductive, left, and poorly conductive. MIT materials scientists tame tricky carbon nanotubes:

Now Young-Su Lee, an MIT graduate student in materials science and engineering, and Nicola Marzari, an associate professor in the same department, have identified a class of chemical molecules that preserve the metallic properties of carbon nanotubes and their near-perfect ability to conduct electricity with little resistance.

Using these molecules as handles, Marzari and Lee said, could overcome fabrication problems and lend the nanotubes new properties for a host of potential applications as detectors, sensors or components in novel optoelectronics.

Middle School Engineers

Burnsville’s budding engineers?:

The exercise is part of a pre-engineering program called Project Lead the Way, which aims to whet students’ appetites for engineering education and possibly careers.

Through a Kern Family Foundation grant, District 191 is providing PLTW in seventh grade this year, with plans to extend it to eighth grade next year and possibly to the high school level in subsequent years.
…
“Problem-solving is the rest of their lives,” she said. “If they’re seeing the relevance between the math they’re learning out of a book and a project they’re doing, it sticks.”

Great stuff. Getting kids to actually apply concepts is not only fun but the best way to learn. A bunch of previous posts about k-12 engineering education and experiential learning: k-12 Engineering Education – Middle School Students in Solar Car Competition – Robots Wrestling, Students Learning – What’s so Exciting About Engineering? – Middle School Science Teacher – K-12 Engineering Outreach Programs – NSF Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education – Science Opportunities for Students – Why Schools Don’t Educate – Engineering is Elementary – Excellence in K-12 Mathematics and Science Teaching – Fun k-12 Science and Engineering Learning – K-12 Engineering Education Grant for Purdue – Colorado Science Teacher of the Year and on and on…

Inspiring Students to be Engineers

Celeste Baine

Celeste Baine Recognized for Exciting Students About Engineering

Celeste Baine, a biomedical engineer and director of the Engineering Education Service Center based in Eugene, Oregon, was acknowledged for her outstanding accomplishments in motivating and inspiring students to pursue careers in engineering. Winner of the 2005 Norm Augustine Award, Ms. Baine is credited for being an outstanding contributor to the nationwide efforts to increase engineering student enrollment.

A new monthly journal, Engineering Education Advocate is available from the Engineering Education Service Center.