Observing community Prompt #5

Post by David DeMeo

        This week observed and participated in the Greenpeace club at Michigan State. This club appears to be a club based on the environment from the outside and that is what it is. Every Wednesday there are meetings where topics such as fossil fuels are discussed and plans of action are created. This may seem irrelevant to the topic of engineering but it is very much a key to the field at this time. From windmills being created to be as efficient as possible to tesla creating affordable electric cars engineering is a huge part of the energy field in our current world.
          The Greenpeace club mainly shows themselves to the public through Facebook. A lot of what the public sees is events that the group supports or host and this is what it is actually like within the group as well.
          My experience in the club was very good. I went to a meeting on Wednesday and was able to help brainstorm fundraising ideas and sign up for events I can volunteer at to do my part in the community. The club's representation to the pubic is very similar to what I experienced. The group of people were very nice activist toward protecting the environment. I highly recommend people join this club if you care about our issues with the environment.

The tiny environment created by Engineering

Weiyu Li

This environment mentioned in the topic doesn't mean the space which has different kinds of planets, animals or something else, the environment is the space in the sneakers.

As we all know, there are plenty kinds of shoes, soccer shoes, basketball shoes, training shoes and else. The most creative one and the most fashion one will be the basketball shoes.

In-game sneakers have evolved considerably over the years. From the earlier years where Converse Chuck Taylor and Nike Blazers were the norm and laid the blueprint for sneakers to now where Air Jordans and others offer more variety.

With the use of modern technology designers are able to create footwear the adheres to individual players based on foot structure, on-court movement, and impact of movement. This personalization adds more control, strength, and power to already freakishly gifted athletes.

Basketball researchers use data collected to compile an understanding of a player’s on-court movement in order to create sneakers that are lighter, stronger, and safer. Designers, in partnership with researchers, use high-tech fabric that is both lightweight and durable when designing sneakers that give the players effective footwear.

As a result of this design we have the 9.8 ounce Adidas AdiZero Crazy Light, which is the lightest basketball shoe on the market. Many shoe designers are steering away from using leather as it is heavier and does not serve a useful purpose.

Adidas produces lightweight and comfortable sneakers by mimicking an automobile manufacturing processes to heat-stem individual pea-size thermoplastic polyurethane foam capsules together to offer more cushioning and energy return versus traditional EVA foam.

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Artificial Photosynthesis

By Joao Martins

An article recently posted on The Engineer website describes recent developments made in artificial

photosynthesis. Artificial photosynthesis works just like the photosynthesis that plants use to get their energy, except that instead of being performed by plants, it is performed by man-made chemicals. This technology uses sunlight to convert solar energy into hydrogen and oxygen. The discovery of these materials was made by Rice University Chemistry professor Kenton Whitmire. This new technology can be used as clean and renewable way of generating hydrogen, which is what scientists want to use to power cars in the future due to their clean operation. They way the artificial photosynthesis material is made is by combining iron, manganese and phosphorus into a molecule that changes to a gas when a vacuum is applied. Scientists then take these molecules and make them into a film that is then applied to titanium dioxide rods.

Source:
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/new-catalyst-promotes-artificial-photosynthesis/

Rechargeable batteries

By: Alex Vu

Personally I have never really preferred rechargeable batteries, because I always found myself constantly recharging the batteries and never really getting the maximum performance we were promised.  A few advantages I found with rechargeable batteries is a main reason they were made for, which is not having to constantly buy more and more batteries to power my controllers, remotes and other household items. A major disadvantage I found with them is that even though they are not disposable anymore, the charge on them is considerably low.  One major factor I thought of is that this problem could because the battery charge is constantly fading even when it is not in use.

I came across an article that is working on a way to improve the technology to minimize the capacity loss in lithium-sulfur batteries.  Professor Bingqing Wei states that a phenomenon called the polysulfide shuttle effect is responsible for the rapid capacity fade. As the polysulfide begins to disappear in the batteries, it allows other materials to be loss thus losing the capacity in the battery.  Currently they are trying to include ferroelectric nano particles hoping that it would prevent the loss the of the polysulfide particles and the batteries would be able to hold a charge.

Source: Batteries

Women and Minorities in Engineering

Blog By: David DeMeo

          This article discussing an issue that is often brought up with the field of engineering is showing the beginning to a more equal future in the career. Several high school girls were interviewed and discussed their participation in a engineering conference. They discussed the lack of women in the engineering field and their enjoyment in this conference.  It was stated that women only occupy 15% of the engineering career field. This number is extremely low and the conference being held is pushing to get a greater involvement of women and minorities in the field.

          The one day conferences being held are getting minorities and women more excited for the field. I believe that women and minorities are not supplying a large portion of engineers because it is not a social norm for them to be in the field so they are not pursuing it. This is the problem we have and these conferences are fixing that. This article is showing how the conferences are bringing to light the exciting field that it is to women and minorities. Once they see this and their interest begins to grow we will see differences in numbers in the field.
       
           Because of conferences like this one, it will soon become normal to see equal amounts of women and men in the STEM fields.

Source: Engineering

The century product- Super computer

Weiyu Li

The super computers are the computers could work out the large amount of data at the same time that the common computers or people couldn't work out. It is a computer with a high level of computing performance compared to a general-purposed computer. Performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions per second (MIPS). As of 2015, there are supercomputers which can perform up to quadrillions of FLOPS.

The supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s, made initially, and for decades primarily, by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), Cray Research and subsequent companies bearing his name or monogram. While the supercomputers of the 1970s used only a few processors, in the 1990s, machines with thousands of processors began to appear and, by the end of the 20th century, massively parallel supercomputers with tens of thousands of off-the-shelf processors were the norm.

As of June 2016, the fastest supercomputer in the world is the Sunway TaihuLight, in mainland China, with a LINPACK benchmark score of 93 PFLOPS (P=peta), exceeding the previous record holder, Tianhe-2, by around 59 PFLOPS. It tops the rankings in the TOP500 supercomputer list. Sunway TaihuLight's emergence is also notable for its use of indigenous chips, and is the first Chinese computer to enter the TOP500 list without using hardware from the United States. As of June 2016, China, for the first time, had more computers (167) on the TOP500 list than the United States (165). However, U.S. built computers held ten of the top 20 positions.

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Picture From

Nikola Tesla

By Joao Martins

Born in July 1856 in what is now Croatia, Nikola Tesla developed his interest in electronics at a very young age after constantly watching his mother build small household appliances. After getting his electrical engineering degree at the Polytechnic institute in Graz, Austria, Tesla moved to Budapest and starting working at the Central Telephone Exchange. Tesla began having ideas for many new inventions, but after failing to acquire the necessary funding do develop them, Tesla decided to leave Europe and move to America. Upon reaching The United States in 1885, Tesla was hired by famous inventor Thomas Edison. They worked alongside each other for a few months but Tesla ultimately quit after having conflicting interests. Tesla, however, now had enough money to start his own company, which he called the Tesla Electric Company. Tesla now had the necessary funding he needed and in 1887, he successfully filed many patents for his Alternating Current based inventions.
Tesla new Alternating Current (AC) system was seen as a better alternative for providing long distance power, as opposed to Edison's Direct Current (DC). People began investing in Tesla's AC systems so Edison created a negative-press campaign in attempt to stop Tesla. This, however, did not work and Tesla and his team were chosen to design the first AC Hydroelectric Power Plant at the Niagara Falls. The power plant was a huge success and AC technology quickly became the better choice for providing electrical power, which is still used world wide to this day.

Source:
http://www.biography.com/people/nikola-tesla-9504443

Prompt #4 Considering Delivery and Style

By: Alex Vu

Depending on what kind of article you come across, it can either peak your interest or completely bore you to death and that all depends on the delivery, style and targeted audience.

The first example, is a magazine article about 3D image correlation but the main is how they present their delivery. The targeted audience for something like this is usually professors or people looking for random knowledge.  The author of this magazine article uses so much detail explaining every single process of the procedure. It is almost as if you are conducting the process yourself. The style of the article is more of a direct approach to tell you exactly how and why is happening the way it is.

The second example is a scholarly article focused on more about how people are changing technology and how people are getting involved in engineering projects around the world.  The delivery on this is to emphasize how important these projects are to our community around the world.  The style of the article is trying to influence people to get out and become a part of this technology revolution.  The targeted audience is mainly towards people that want to get out and make a change to the world.

The purpose of the magazine is to show you how a process is done and the purpose of the scholarly article is to hopefully influence you to try and make a difference in the world.  Its really difficult to say which one we trust, because each have their own purpose in what each want to accomplish.

Scholarly article:
http://www.jstor.org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/stable/pdf/24164202.pdf
Magazine article:
link

The miracle in Engineering-Empire State Building

Weiyu Li
The Empire State Building is one of the Seven Miracles Of Engineering in the World judged by ASCE(The American Society of Civil Engineers). It is one of the most tallest buildings in the world.

The Empire State Building was supposed to be built about 1050 feet to be the tallest building at that time. At that time, it was Great Depression. The rich showed off their wealthiness by competing the height of the buildings they built. John Jakob Raskob, the owner of the Empire State Building was not happy about the height, he wanted it to be higher. The designer then added an 200-feet tower at the top of the building, made it reach the height of 1250 feet.
The miracle of the Empire State Building isn't only about the height, also about the seed of it. In 1945, the B-25 plane hit the Empire State Building at speed of 320 kilometers per hour. However, the Empire State Building didn't be destroyed, it only took 2 days to reopen the building to the public.

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Artificial Intelligence in Civil Engineering

By: Alex Vu

The idea of artificial intelligence is to be able to make a program that can perform a single human function without accounting for the human error.

In any field that is run by people can not escape the fact of human error, even if you have the brightest people in the world working on a project there will still be human error.  In Civil engineering the engineering design, construction management, and the decision making were mainly influenced by many uncertainties that included math, physics and mechanics.

link here

Essentially we would be engineering a mechanical human that can be programmed to solve complex problems without any uncertainty and we would have a "perfect world".

Even with super intelligence, it is made by people so it will have human error no matter how hard we try. If used in the wrong way, it can be used for dangerous weapons or it can sometimes veer off the path of the function we programmed it to perform.

Sources:

~ Artificial Intelligence in Civil Engineering

~ Benefits and Risks of Artificial Intelligence

Prompt 10: Recognizing Truth

By Joao Martins

The QS Top Universities website, which ranks Universities throughout the world, posted a video that is titled "5 Signs You're an Engineering Student". The signs that are described in the video include knowing everything there is to know about bridges, thinking Legos are the best toys ever, always trying to fix things that are broken, and having been to two lectures before your friends are even awake.
Many of the things described are not representative assumptions of engineering in general. For example, only a few fields of engineering require complete knowledge of bridges, and thinking legos are the best toys ever is a personal opinion which can be shared by students of other majors too. Always trying to fix everything is also not representative because there are some engineering students that just want their degree because of the potential for making a great amount of money int the future. These students are not interested in fixing things because they are not passionate about the field in general, while at the same time, people can enjoy fixing things but pursue a different, unrelated major. The part about having lectures before your friends are even awake is also false. As an engineering student myself, I know for a fact that many of my friends that are not engineers wake up much earlier than I do.
This video being titled "5 Signs You're an Engineering Student" is a misinterpretation of the engineering field because after watching, the viewer (who can be inexperienced with the engineering fields) expects this to be true for every engineer student, when in many cases it is not.

Source:
https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/videos/5-signs-youre-engineering-student

Reverse Engineering

Post by: David DeMeo

          In an article posted by Space.com a project by a aerospace company, NovaWorks who are using a unique strategy to build satellites. The usually process includes shrinking technology down as much as possible and getting all of the equipment to fit in the body of a satellite. For a small company like tis with less funding to get smaller technology they came up with a new plan. They decided to start engineering the body of the satellite around their equipment. This type of thinking is exactly what is taught to engineering students. In my classes I see this where the teachers assign us with problems and we need to find a unique way to solve it. The key to engineering is problem solving.
         
         What I took from this article is that there is always another way to do a task. There is never only one way to engineering something and this is also connecting back to my classes. In my engineering class a task was assigned to build a robot with a claw that could pick up a ball, and no two robots were the same, even similar. This small company came up with a great idea, that will save money, and has never been done before. Their satellites have been taking trips to space already, one going to the international space station and another planning on taking a trip with a SpaceX rocket. Their design ideas will most likely be seen implemented in  other projects. Engineering is about thinking outside the box and completing task in the most efficient way possible and that is what NovaWorks accomplished. Ill be sure to use this type of thinking when handling my own projects.

Source: http://www.space.com/35885-novawurks-building-satellites-around-instruments.html