November 2007 Archives

And you thought you had to go all the way to Silver Dollar City to see glass blowing...As Lee Corso would say, Not so fast, my friend! At a university known for blowing up store-bought chickens, there is now a new glass blowing studio. The Hot Glass Shop, which was funded by Delbert Day's Mo-Sci Corp., will be formally dedicated at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, in Fulton Hall on campus. The dedication ceremony will feature glass blowing demos. “We are using an artistic approach to teach materials science,” says Dr. Richard Brow, Curators’ Professor of ceramic engineering. UMR is internationally known for glass science and materials research. We'll post a link to the official news release on this as soon as it's available.

This is a photo of Charles McField (see the post immediately below this one) by Gen Yamaguchi of the Kansas City Star. The KC Star was nice enough to provide the photo, which will be republished in the Spring 08 issue of Missouri S&T Magazine.

A little something extra on this Friday before Thanksgiving...

About 15 years ago, Kansas City Police dropped a freezing homeless man off at the Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Shelter. There, a volunteer rubbed his frostbitten feet. "Are you a minister?" the homeless man asked. "No," replied the volunteer. "I'm an engineer."

Teresa Williams recently told Charles McField's story in the Kansas City Star Magazine. The content has expired on the Star's website, but we'll give you some of the details...McField worked as an engineer with Allied Signal, now Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, for 13 years after earning his master's degree at UMR. Sure, he did some volunteer work. But it wasn't enough for McField. In 1996, he decided to go to the Harding Graduate School of Religion in Memphis.

"I spent much of my life pursuing goals set by society -- striving to achieve marketable accomplishments or American dream concepts," McField says in the magazine article. "I realized that after acquiring all my dreams, goals, plans, desires, then what?"

McField is no longer an engineer or even a volunteer. Now he really is a minister. To be more accurate, he's a full-time chaplain at City Union Mission Men's Center, 10th and Troost, back in Kansas City. One of his main jobs there is to help people feel better any way he can. In her article, Williams describes a poignant encounter McField had while on the job:

"A few months ago a young client grabbed McField's glasses in a burst of anger, snapped them in two and threw them to the ground. As McField reached down to pick up the pieces, the man punched him in the jaw. A client who saw the event says he actually saw the chaplain offer his other cheek to the aggressor and ask, 'Do you feel better now?"'

When a water supply is contaminated, people are usually ordered to boil their H2O. But if Dr. Curt Elmore’s emergency drinking water system proves reliable, people will be able to drink water that has been treated with ultraviolet energy. Elmore discusses the project on this month's TechnoFiles.

Adam Bussman of Moro, Ill., a sophomore in history at UMR, and his advisor, Patrick Huber, associate professor of history and political science, are researching national Prohibition as part of an Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experiences (OURE) project. Here's how Adam describes the work:

The era of National Prohibition has been studied since the anti-drinking law was repealed in 1933. However, most of these studies are limited to the organized crime activity that took place in New York City and Chicago. Dr. Huber and I decided to research another aspect of this era. We chose to focus on the economic impact prohibition had on St. Louis breweries and how the problems these breweries faced helped to shape the economic climate of the region.

Both my professor and I are soon to complete the research process of this project and are eagerly working toward a informative and successful finished product.

Photo courtesy of The Authenic History Center

We took a little heat last week for sending out an email to everyone on campus about the space shuttle flying over Missouri. There were supposed to be some sonic booms or something like that, and nobody really heard them. But now we have solid photographic evidence (probably) that the shuttle really did zoom over the Ozarks last week on its way to a landing in Florida a few minutes later.

Thanks to Linda Fulps who provided this photo of the shuttle (we're pretty sure it's the shuttle). This is what it looked like flying over her house in Rolla.

There's a way for police to test you for meth now (apart from checking for lesions and loose teeth and general sketchiness), and it apparently works. This in USA Today:

Greg Story, an atomic physics professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said the technology used in the scanner is not new.

Molecules energized by ultraviolet light emit a unique color spectrum that can be measured, Story said. Even when meth is created from different chemicals, the methamphetamine molecule would emit its own unique spectral signal, he says.

"I can't speculate on (the scanner's) accuracy, but yes, in principle, it's absolutely possible," Story said.

Read the full story here.

Halloween is over, and it's time to chuck those pumpkins...and UMR students were literally chucking pumpkins (albeit small ones) last night out at the UMR soccer field. Using various contraptions that ranged from catapults to mechanized boots, the students tried to launch the pumpkins into several circles painted on the grass. Teams with the most accuracy and power competed for the first annual UMR pumpkin chucking championship. (If anyone knows who the winners were, leave us their names in the comments.) The students who participated are all enrolled in Engineering 111, an experiential design class.

We would be remiss if we didn't mention that this whole pumpkin chucking thing reminds us of the time Chris on Northern Exposure got the idea (from a Monty Python movie) to build a huge catapult in order to fling a cow. (He ended up flinging a piano.)