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If you ever wondered why it is so important to be exact in math, particularly in engineering math, then take a look at cases in which a math error resulted in deaths. Remember the Hyatt Regency disaster in Kansas City some 30 years ago?
When designing their newest hotel to be built in downtown Kansas City, the fine people at Hyatt Regency wanted all the bells and whistles in it. The architectural firm in charge of the building design came up with a series of aerial walkways suspended from the ceiling so that guests could people-watch from a heightened vantage point. All in all, it was a pretty nifty feature. Until it suddenly collapsed and killed more than a hundred people.
Now they know what design flaw caused it, and my mouth dropped open to see how simple it was. Read the rest of the story and others at Cracked. Link -via Digg
This shopping center in Reading, Pennsylvania has a crosswalk that leads to nowhere. Codes required a certain number of pedestrian crosswalks, despite the fact that there are no sidewalks. This is the required accessible crosswalk with curb ramps. But it isn’t going to get you anywhere, whether you are in a wheelchair or walking. Get an explanation of how this kind of thing happens at Greater Greater Washington. Link -via Metafilter
If you had all your family’s worldy possessions and supplies for a long trip inside a wagon, do you think a couple of horses or oxen could haul it up a mountain? Minnesotastan explains how it was done, at TYWKIWDBI. Link
(Image from the book Hard Road West, by Keith Heyer Meldahl)
The British television show The Gadget Show has created a simulator for Battlefield 3 that will appeal to those who feel the game isn’t realistic enough.
Featuring a treadmill floor, projection screens and a motion controlled gun that looks kind of cheesy but doesn’t seem to detract from the tester’s enjoyment of this unique gaming experience. I don’t know about you, but I want one!
–via Joystiq
The man calling himself the Eyeborg has put together a short documentary detailing modern bionics and cutting edge prosthetics, part of which was filmed using his eye camera.
Rob Spence lost his eye in a firearm accident a few years back, but the filmmaker refused to stop doing what he loved, so he had a prosthetic eye camera specially designed, and thus became the first person to have a implanted camera replace their eye.
Square Enix are Rob’s newest sponsors, and they have commissioned him to make a video that compares modern prosthetics and bionics to the bodily enhancements found in the new game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Follow either of the links below and check out this amazing, cutting edge video by the first bionic cameraman, and see how medical science is quickly catching up to science fiction.
If you’re upset about the state of education in America, here’s a ray of hope in the form of a robotic hand. Created by Colorado high school student Easton LaChappelle, this mechanical marvel was ingeniously printed out of paper and fiberglass, and is controlled remotely by Easton via glove control, which allows the young inventor the privilege of congratulating himself. Watch the hand in action over at PopSci.
Link -image by Easton LaChappelle
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In the future, dancing mini robots will initiate the robotic revolution against mankind! Well, maybe not, but this video demonstrates how they can be programmed to get down, Dance Dance Revolution style. Watch in amazement as those little mechanical feet step in an extremely robotic manner! Marvel at how cute he is, albeit in a sinister way! Just don’t expect to see this little guy crushing high scores until he can play without hanging on to the bar.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory announced today that they have observed a rare property in a special class of metals called multiferroics: they have both magnetic and electric properties, which normally don’t happen in the same material. Ferromagnets are, of course, magnetic metals, and ferroelectrics are materials that have a permanent electric polarization.
Now, scientists have found a new way that electric and magnetic properties can be coupled in a material. The group used extremely bright beams of x-rays at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) to examine the electronic structure of a particular metal oxide made of yttrium, manganese, and oxygen. They determined that the magnetic-electric coupling is caused by the outer cloud of electrons surrounding the atom.
“Previously, this mechanism had only been predicted theoretically and its existence was hotly debated,” [Brookhaven physicist Stuart] Wilkins said.
In this particular material, the manganese and oxygen electrons mix atomic orbitals in a process that creates atomic bonds and keeps the material together. The researchers’ measurements show that this process is dependent upon the magnetic structure of the material, which in this case, causes the material to become ferroelectric, i.e. have an electric polarization. In other words, any change in the material’s magnetic structure will result in a change in direction of its ferroelectric state. By definition, that makes the material a multiferroic.
You’ll find more technical information at the Brookhaven National Laboratory site.
Engineers at MIT have been busy creating all sorts of solar powered fun, but their latest innovation promises to make the solar panel manufacturing process easier than ever before. They have discovered a process in which solar panels can be printed on an average sheet of paper, and what’s more this solar cell is foldable, bendable and manufactured with a simpler vapor deposition process, a process MIT brains claim most manufacturing facilities can handle with ease. Read more about this fascinating development over at PopSci,
Bill Hammock, the Engineer Guy, tears a hard drive apart to show us what’s inside and what the parts do. -Thanks, Bill!
Inventing is a great way to leave your mark on the world, but in some unfortunate circumstances, inventions have been known to leave the mark of death on their inventors. A few years ago, we wrote a post about five inventors who were killed by their own inventions, but that is not the full extent of these poor creators. Here are five more people whose own inventions resulted in their untimely demise.
Perhaps the most influential inventor on this list is Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Maria co-discovered both radium and polonium and revolutionized modern chemistry when she discovered a method to isolate radioactive isotopes. She was so well-respected that she became the first female professor at the University of Paris. If that weren’t impressive enough, she was not only the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, she was also the first person to receive two Nobel Prizes. Even the word “radioactive” was her creation.
Unfortunately, being one of the first researchers to work with radioactive particles, she did not understand the dangers they presented to the human body. Most of her work was carried out in a shed without any protective measures whatsoever. Eventually, she died from aplastic anemia caused by extensive exposure to ionized radiation that emanated from her research materials.
Her shed has now been converted to a museum, but her paperwork, even her cookbook, is so radioactive that they are too dangerous to handle without protective gear and are stored in lead-lined boxes.
Horace had a number of careers, serving as a legislator, a lawyer and a confederate marine engineer in his short 40 years, but it was his role as a marine engineer that he will be best remembered for. Horace was the inventor of the first combat submarine. His creation, the H.L. Hunley, was known to be dangerous after five out of nine crew members died on the device’s first run in an attempt to attack the Union blockade in the Charleston Harbor, but that didn’t stop the inventor or the confederacy from investing more time and manpower into the device.
Like any good inventor, Horace knew he couldn’t quit. He kept working on the sub and was so willing to stand by his work that he served on the second run to attack the blockade. Again the sub sank, this time killing all eight crew members, including Horace.
more …
In the 1920s, architect Hermann Soergel had a wild idea to build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, drain water into the Sahara Desert, and form lots of new land in the Mediterranean basin to colonize.
The master plan at work was that the world would be divided into three economic spheres in the future, all beginning with the letter “A”: American, Asia, and the new land to be created by Soergel, “Atlantropa”, which was the former Europe expanded into the new dry beds of the Mediterranean and North Africa. And also of course Egypt, which would be covered with “thousands” of canals and become semi-submerged by the new borders of the meandering sea. This would be the way for Europa to compete with the rest of the world in the future.
Soergel’s purpose in this plan was political: to unite Europe and Africa (and the Americas) against Asia. Of course, this plan was never more than an idea, which Soergel published in 1929. Link -via io9
Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy, explains how a smoke detector works. It’s pretty geeky, which makes me marvel at the people who designed these things. Smoke detectors are very handy! Every time ours goes off, the kids run downstairs because they know dinner must be ready. -Thanks, Bill!
Engineers like to think big. Some plan extremely big in order to take on projects like unlimited energy, room for a growing population, or settlements in outer space. Take, for example, Larry Niven’s concept called Ringworld.
The idea of rather simple: take most of the planets in the solar system, chew them up, and then turn them into a ring as long as Earth’s orbit, as wide as the planet, with 1000 mile high edges to keep the air in. A Ringworld would certainly give you lots of extra space – something on the order of three million earths – and, like Globus Cassus, it would be spun to make fake gravity. You could even make parts of it higher off the surface if you like your air a bit thinner, and if missed days and nights then you could put a row of black squares in an inner orbit to cast shadows.
This is just one of the megastructures you’ll see at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: Stephan Martiniere)
A virtual high-five goes out to the engineer(s) that came up with this idea. As wonderfully fast as the bullet train is, all that stopping and starting takes time, which adds up. “A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!”
Little known outside of its home states of Nevada and Arizona, this new bridge has been overshadowed by its more venerable and certainly larger neighbor but the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge is certainly something to be seen.
Were it not so near the Hoover Dam it would probably be a tourist spot all on its own. Due to be completed next year this amazing bridge is still very much under construction, as pictures in the link will show. Once the arch meets in the middle the biggest party since Prohibition will no doubt ensue.
The longer, more proper and formal name is the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Perhaps it is already known as The Mike and Pat locally. O’Callaghan was the Governor of Nevada in the nineteen seventies as well as a veteran of the Korean War. Tillman is by far the more controversial choice. He gave up a millionaire lifestyle and superstar footballer status to serve in the US Army in Afghanistan where he was killed in 2004. His death has been subject to military investigations and more than the occasional conspiracy theory.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
People love to overlook certain things that pollute, just because we don’t have an alternative yet. We never talk about the emissions caused from cement, which produces more carbon dioxide than the entire aviation industry. Did you know that 5% of all CO2 production comes from cement?
There is finally an alternative. The British engineering firm, Novacem, has created a new cement that uses magnesium silicates, which emit no carbon dioxide when they are heated. As the cement hardens, it absorbs CO2. In all, it removes about .6 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of cement used.
