Tag: ENGINEERING

A University of Toronto engineering graduate student recently set a new world record for man-powered flight. According to Physorg, Todd Reichert flew an ornithopter -- an aircraft that flaps its wings like a bird -- over a field in Tottenham, Ontario, Canada for about 19.3 seconds at 16 mph. It's the first recorded, sustained, man-powered ornithopter flight in history. Reichert filed a claim for ...

Airbus recently published the forward-looking "The Future, By Airbus" (PDF) report, chock full of concepts and cutting-edge ideas about the future of flight. Airbus engineers explore hydrogen as a fuel source in the 'cryoplane' concept, and mention both biofuels and solar power as alternatives. An invisible plane concept -- hardly a new idea, as Wonder Woman has been flying one for over 60 years ...

Share Back-to-school season leaves us feeling bittersweet. Sure, we're psyched that we'll never have to cram for another final or tweak the margins of a term paper, but a part of us actually misses the atmosphere of academia. We don't think we're alone in saying that, after a few years out of school, we actually miss the relatively hassle-free life of learning for learning's sake. Since we aren't ...

In today's new world economic order, China's supposed to be the one providing us with cheap products, and India's supposed to be the guy we call when said cheap products break down. Now, though, the mighty subcontinent has decided to throw its hat into the low-cost manufacturing ring with the release of a new $35 tablet. According to Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, the ...

To most city-dwellers, the concept of "gas mileage" means about as much as "cow tipping." But, for the driving and eco-conscious people of the world, getting the most fossil-fuel bang for your buck is pretty darned important. And, in the great race to build the most fuel efficient car in the world, a group of students from Cal Poly may have just raised the bar to insurmountable heights. In ...

When University of Arizona student Matt Bunting was assigned a class project to build a robot, he naturally wanted to do it on the cheap. To complete the assignment, Bunting (a lifelong robot enthusiast) used spare parts from previous creations to build a spider-like bot. But the resulting "Frankenstein" garnered the student more than just an A in his engineering class. According to Fox News, ...

Trust us, there's nothing we'd like more than to zoom around the skies in a personal, electric aircraft. Of course, we've never held our breath. Some aerospace engineers at NASA, though, have given us reason to salivate. According to DVICE, NASA has designed an experimental, one-man, electric aircraft called Puffin. It's ten times quieter than a helicopter, can fly 300 mph, and has a range of 50 ...

If you ask us, hands-on education is the best way to learn. Along that line of thinking, Kokoro, a Japanese robotics company also known for this creepy bot, unveiled an exciting new kit for students at the International Robot Exhibition 2009. According to Akihabara News, 'Human-Type Head Basic' teaches students how to build their own robotic head -- complete with movable mouth and eyes (which ...

It's not going to win any foot races, but a new robot being developed for the U.S. Army still has a leg (or two) up on its competition. The "Petman" prototype is a bipedal robot that simulates human walking (video after the break) more realistically than any other robot we've seen. According to Wired, the robot, which is being developed by Boston Dynamics, will be used to test how protective ...

Engineers at North Carolina State University have created a computer chip that holds one terabyte -- or 1,000 gigabytes -- of data and is no larger than a fingernail. For perspective, that means you could store 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text on this tiny chip. According to Computer World, this modern marvel is made possible by a process called selective doping, in which ...

Thanks to those imagineers at Walt Disney World, you no longer have to be an engineer to design a theme park ride, or be a nerd to have fun doing math. A new interactive feature, developed by Disney and military contractor Raytheon, and called Sum of All Thrills, opened yesterday at Disney's Epcot park. Both of the parties involved hope it'll teach kids that engineering and math can be fun and ...

Eating five-year-old food doesn't sound too appetizing to us. But to the astronauts that NASA will eventually send to Mars, it'll taste as good as any five-star restaurant's fare. Well, maybe not that good, but it will be the sole sustenance for that group of men and women during their grueling trip into outer space. According to the Los Angeles Times, NASA will need to pack enough food to feed ...

What happens when you take one large group of nerds, throw them in a convention, and tell them to cut loose? Well, we'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve boatloads of booze, loud music, or a conga line. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers challenged the attendants of its convention to create a big, bad bot to ultimately win a one-on-one tournament in DEFCON -- a strategy ...

If you've ever had a question about hierarchical multiple regression or parametric graphs and didn't know where to turn, we've got a bookmark-worthy Web page just for you. Mary Spiro of The Examiner has compiled the 'Top 20 Web Sites Every Scientist (or Engineer) Ought to Know,' a list intended for science geeks, engineer brainiacs, or just curious nerds-to-be. The list has a little bit for ...

Featuring a setup made of pipes and rods running in and out of a still-beating heart, a lab at North Carolina State University (NCSU) could be mistaken for that of a mad scientist. Researchers there have recently created a computer-controlled machine that can keep a heart beating outside the body, according to NCSU's Web site. Researchers said they plan to use the machine (designed by NCSU ...