Recently in Engineering Category

Missouri S&T's resident waterjet expert, David A. Summers, is known for sometimes wearing a necktie depicting a whale because he is, as he puts it, "always spouting off about waterjets." A little more than three years ago, Summers found something else to spout off about -- energy -- and co-founded a place to do so. Summers is the co-founder of the wildly popular blog known as The Oil Drum, where he posts critiques and commentary under the nom de blog Heading Out. (Note: any blog which gets more traffic than this one is "wildly popular," in our opinion. But TOD really fits the bill. Summers and his legion of bloggers are read by thousands. "We did hit 42,000 unique readers in one day on Sept. 12," he wrote in a recent email.)

Recently, Summers and his fellow oil drummers received the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. They received the award last month during ASPO's annual conference in Sacramento. Summers says the award will reside in Colorado with his colleague and TOD co-founder Kyle Saunders, aka Professor Goose.

Congratulations to Summers, Saunders and their co-bloggers for this recognition. And thanks to them for sharing their expertise on energy with the rest of the online world. There's not a better time for doing so than right now.

Using Google mapping tools and their exceptional modeling skills, seven Missouri S&T students put the campus on the map -- on Google Maps, specifically. And in the process, their creation was one of nine winners in Google's 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition.

As our official news release explains:

Each team used Google SketchUp modeling software to create models of campus buildings, then referenced them in Google Earth – a utility that uses satellite imagery and allows web users to “fly” in to anywhere on the planet. The teams then uploaded their creations to the Google 3D Warehouse. The winners were selected by a panel of industry experts.

For their efforts, they each will receive some pretty cool swag: an Apple iPod Touch, a Nintendo Wii Console, and a Google T-shirt and hat.

The judges praised each winning team for the way they "captured the right level of detail to efficiently reflect the character and complexity of the campuses they represented," "used good judgment about what to detail so that interesting aspects of the buildings were captured," and for their "overall consistency to all the models on each campus." The judges also noted: "The photo-texturing was exceptional – people, cars and vegetation were removed so that the building textures were plainly visible."

Great work, team! You really know how to put Missouri S&T on the map.

The student branch of IEEE-AESS will compete in a UAV competition Sept. 23-25 in Kingaroy, Queensland Australia.

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.

Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the Soviet satellite that shocked America into a cold war battle for space supremacy. Already, the news media are examining the anniversary from all angles. I typed "sputnik" into A Google News' search engine and retrieved 327 articles and blog posts. Expect to read even more about Sputnik 1 (pictured) and the golden anniversary this weekend.

Several of the articles I skimmed look back at the Sputnik launch on Oct. 4, 1957, as a pivotal moment in U.S. history, perhaps as defining a moment for the space race as Pearl Harbor was for U.S. involvement in World War II.

The fact that the Soviets beat us into space was a blow to our collective ego. But it -- as Pearl Harbor 16 years earlier -- was a clarion call for us to get our act together and rally around the cause of beating our cold war adversaries to the moon. It was, as The New York Times puts it, a time When Science Suddenly Mattered, in Space and in Class. Times reporter Cornelia Dean writes:

For many, Sputnik was proof that American education, particularly in science, had fallen behind. Scientists and engineers warned Congress that the cold war was being fought with slide rules, not rifles. In response Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, providing, among other things, college scholarships and other help for aspiring scientists, engineers and mathematicians. Meanwhile, some of the nation’s eminent scientists were collaborating on new ways to teach high school physics, biology and chemistry.

These days, the cold war is ancient history, the U.S. is not investing in science and technology as it should, and the head of NASA thinks China will be on the moon before we ever return. But if the 50th anniversary of Sputnik 1 teaches us anything, it is that, given the right cause, vision and national leadership, we can pull together and achieve something great.

UMR's own "Moondust Miners" (aka Lunar Miners) got a mention in the September 2007 edition of Wired magazine. Ok, so they only mention the students as being from the University of Missouri, but we know the truth.

The tallest of the bunch, standing about 5 feet high, is a clattering assemblage of aluminum scoops mounted on a red conveyor. It represents a year and a half of work by 11 University of Missouri students, two of whom drove 30 hours to get the thing here. They're still scrambling to apply the finishing touches, slapping masking tape on the cups and adjusting bungee cords to keep it upright.

In the wake of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minnesota, many Missourians are wondering if the same tragedy could strike in their state.

It’s an important question, as a recent study found many of Missouri’s bridges are in desperate need of repair. Of the state’s 24,024 bridges, nearly 20 percent (or 4,595) were deficient, according to a 2006 study by the Federal Highway Administration. Only Iowa, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma have more bridges in poor condition, according to the study.

How do we fix the problems? How do we know when a little crack doesn't spell disaster? These are questions UMR researchers -- like DJ Belarbi, Genda Chen, Nick Marianos, and John Myers, to name a few -- are tackling.

A couple of days ago I mentioned I had the chance to watch UMR researchers use high explosives to demolish a test structure they had built. I promised to share more at later date. Well, the time is now. If you want to read about how their new retrofitting technique can improve the blast resistance of bridges, check this out. But if you just want to see some high-explosive action, watch this (WMV).

Electric motors are cool. Unlike their gas-powered cousins, electric motors have fewer emissions. But sometimes, well, they're just plain noisy. And they vibrate.

Enter Daniel Stutts and his colleagues. They've received a patent for a system can mitigate the torque ripple -- which contributes to noise and vibration -- that is found in many electric motors and generators.

The Associated Press' ASAP news site got wind of our Explosives Camp -- and somehow found a cheesy photo of resident pyromaniac/camp director Paul Worsey -- and decided to write about it. The result -- Blowing up a summer tradition -- is Chicago-based ASAP reporter Caryn Rousseau's summary of the week's events. She chatted with Worsey to get the story, and even quoted fellow Visions blogger Lance Feyh, who plays the role of university spokesman.