Riding green — leafy green
It sounds like the opposite of high-tech engineering, but it’s not. High-end racing bikes built of bamboo. Today, on Engineering Works! If you’re a serious cyclist or know someone who is, you probably know that over the years, the stuff really good bikes are made of has changed. From steel and aluminum to exotic alloys [...]
Energy — there’s an app for that
csaila/flickr.com It seems sometimes like there’s an app for everything. Some of them are even useful. Save energy with your smart phone. Today, on Engineering Works! Smart phones are learning to do amazing things. What’s the weather going to be like this afternoon? Bring up your weather app and find out. Out to dinner with [...]
Riding green — leafy green
It sounds like the opposite of high-tech engineering, but it’s not. High-end racing bikes built of bamboo. Today, on Engineering Works! If you’re a serious cyclist or know someone who is, you probably know that over the years, the stuff really good bikes are made of has changed. From steel and aluminum to exotic alloys [...]
Energy — there’s an app for that
csaila/flickr.com It seems sometimes like there’s an app for everything. Some of them are even useful. Save energy with your smart phone. Today, on Engineering Works! Smart phones are learning to do amazing things. What’s the weather going to be like this afternoon? Bring up your weather app and find out. Out to dinner with [...]
Electric words
It’s hard to fix something if you don’t have words to describe what went wrong. We’ll look back at how they did it. Today, on Engineering Works! The problem started about 150 ago. That’s when the first transatlantic cable connected the east and west shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, people could send telegrams across [...]
Cyborgs, for real
If you liked Ahnald in the Terminator movies, you’re going to love this one. Cyborgs. Cyborg beetles, that is. Today, on Engineering Works! When you saw the Terminator movies or Star Trek, you know that mixing up computers and humans is standard stuff in science fiction. But now, engineers are doing the next best thing. [...]
Move ‘em out
We’ve all come across things that just don’t make sense, even though they work. Engineers do, too. We’ll look at one, today on Engineering Works! If you’ve been to a big concert, or a ball game, with a big crowd of other people, you know what happens when it’s time to leave. No matter how [...]
Between the ticks
We’re going to do this one on time. Come along with us as we figure out how. Atomic clocks, today on Engineering Works! Time never stops. We’ve been keeping track of it for a long time, and we’ve done it a lot of different ways – sundials, dripping water, candles with marks on them, springs [...]
The next nukes
Nuclear energy has been in the doghouse for decades. But now it’s getting another look from policy-makers. We’ll look, too. Today, on Engineering Works! People in the United States have always been a little skittish about nuclear energy. Accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in Ukraine didn’t help. Construction on the most recent nuclear [...]
Turning down the lights
Paris may be the city of lights, but engineers in France are trying a new way to reduce municipal electric bills. Streetlights. Today, on Engineering Works! It’s not Paris, but people in the French city of Toulouse still like to have their streets lit at night. There’s a problem, though. The city’s electric bills are [...]