Watch this fun webcast on how to make a rocket.
Related: Home Engineering: Bird Feeder That Automatically Takes Photos When Birds Feed – Lego Autopilot Project Update – Young Engineers Build Bridges with Spaghetti – Home Engineering: Building a Hovercraft
Robocup 2010 took place in Singapore and 2 German team faced each other in the finals. Robocup is an international research and education initiative. RoboCupRescue is a related effort to develop rescue robots for hostile environments.
Related: RoboCup 2008: Robot Football (Soccer) – Robot Playing Table Tennis – Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair
The hole in the wall experiments are exactly the kind of thing I love to lean about. I wrote about them in 2006, what kids can learn.
Research finding from the Hole in the Wall foundation:
I believe traditional education is helpful. I believe people are “wired” to learn. They want to learn. We need to create environments that let them learn. We need to avoid crushing the desire to learn (stop de-motivating people).
If you want to get right to talking about the hole in the wall experiments, skip to the 8 minute mark.
Related: Providing Computer to Remote Students in Nepal – Teaching Through Tinkering – Kids Need Adventurous Play – Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, in the Austrian Empire (today’s Croatia), he was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. Nikoka Tesla studied electrical engineering at Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague.
Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, which helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.
In 1882 he moved to Paris, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment brought overseas from Edison’s ideas.
According to his autobiography, in the same year he conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.
He emigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse the following year.
In 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single terminal vacuum tubes.
Tesla introduced his motors and electrical systems in a classic paper, “A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers” which he delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1888. One of the most impressed was the industrialist and inventor George Westinghouse.
The Tesla coil, which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and other electronic equipment. Among his discoveries are the fluorescent light , laser beam, wireless communications, wireless transmission of electrical energy, remote control, robotics, Tesla’s turbines and vertical take off aircraft. Tesla is the father of the radio and the modern electrical transmissions systems. He registered over 700 patents worldwide. His vision included exploration of solar energy and the power of the sea. He foresaw interplanetary communications and satellites.
“Within a few years a simple and inexpensive device, readily carried about, will enable one to receive on land or sea the principal news, to hear a speech, a lecture, a song or play of a musical instrument, conveyed from any other region of the globe.” – Nikola Tesla, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy without wires as a means for furthering Peace” in Electrical World and Engineer (7 January 1905)
“Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.” – Nikola Tesla
Related: PBS – Tesla, Master of Lightning – Werner Heisenberg – Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair – Neil Degrasse Tyson: Scientifically Literate See a Different World
Hans Rosling provides another interesting TED talk. As he mentions economics plays a huge role in whether we will slow population growth. The economic condition plays a huge role in child survival which he calls “the new green.” Meaning the fate of the environment is tied to increasing child survival (and decreasing poverty). There are many important factors that will impact the fate of the environment but a big factor is world population.
Related: Data Visualization Example – Statistics Insights for Scientists and Engineers – Very Cool Wearable Computing Gadget from MIT – Understanding the Nature of Compounding – Population Action
University of Wisconsin-Stout wins 2010 Rube Goldberg contest
The task for the Rube Goldberg machines this year was to dispense sanitizer into a hand. Wisconsin-Stout’s machine dispensed the sanitizer into a mummy’s hand. The Rube Goldberg competition, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity.
Machines must use at least 20 steps to complete the task in no more than two minutes. Teams have three tries to complete two runs. Points are deducted if students have to assist the machine once it has started. The Wisconsin-Stout machine has 120 steps. The team completed two perfect runs with no interventions in about a minute and a half each.
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St. Olaf’ College of Northfield, Minn., last year’s national winner, took second place with a medieval-themed machine. Pennsylvania State University placed third with an “Indiana Jones” theme.
Related: Rube Goldberg Machine Contest (2005) – Goldbergian Flash Fits Rube Goldberg Web Site – Botball 2009 Finals – UW- Madison Wins 4th Concrete Canoe Competition
The hummingbird did survive.
Related: Cat and Crow Friends – Darwin’s Jellyfishes – Bird Using Bait to Fish
This video shows the robot has a ways to go to become a decent ping pong opponent. But progress is being made. How soon before I can have fun competing with some robot basketball players?
TOPIO can play table tennis with human beings. It has a head, two hands and six legs. It can hit the ball, calculate scores and express feelings upon losing or winning a game. Four high-speed cameras help TOPIO identify the trajectory of the ball and accurately return shots. TOPIO knows how to hit an incoming ping pong ball when it has traveled only 20 cm from the opponents paddle.
The made-in-Vietnam robot TOPIO captured special attention at the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) held in Tokyo in late 2007.
Related: RoboCup: Robot Football (Soccer) – RoboCup German Open 2008 – Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair
Steve Jobs introduces the Apple iPad. A touch screen tablet with wireless internet connectivity and a touch screen keyboard (when desired).
Related: Freeware Wi-Fi app turns iPod into a Phone – Low-Cost Multi-touch Whiteboard Using Wii Remote – Build Your Own Tabletop Interactive Multi-touch Computer – Very Cool Wearable Computing Gadget from MIT
A pod of bottle-nose dolphins off the coast of Florida have developed a hunting technique unknown in other dolphins. One swims in a circle stirring up mud and then the dolphins wait to catch fish that jump out of the water to escape the contracting circle of muddy water.
Related: Dolphins Using Tools to Hunt – Do Dolphins Sleep? – Dolphin Delivers Deviously for Rewards – Bird Using Bait to Fish – Dolphin Rescues Beached Whales
“After a certain basic point, which translates, more or less, to just a few thousand dollars above the minimum poverty level, increases in material well being don’t see to affect how happy people are.”
The speech includes, the first purpose of incorporation at Sony:
To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content.
Excellent books by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991. People enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction.
Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning.
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1997. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders to poets and artists, the author uses his famous “flow” theory to explain the creative process.
Related: Honda Engineering – The Science of Happiness – Curious Cat Management: posts on psychology – Engineers Should Follow Their Hearts – The Purpose of an Organization
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