This year PBS’s Design Squad (hosted by mechanical engineer Nate Ball) is hosting another Trash to Treasure competition, where students ages 5-19 are invited to “recycle, re-use, and re-engineer everyday materials into an out-of-the-box invention.”
The Air Force recently experienced a robot invasion — Lego robots, that is — as hosts of the FIRST LEGO League US Open Championship. This year’s competition in Dayton, Ohio, assembled 60 of the best teams of kids ages 9 to 14, who designed, built, and programmed their robots to tackle a real-world problem.
Shelters protect people from the sun and wind and help them stay warm. Army shelters must do more — they shield soldiers from chemical and biological agents and the fragments from enemy mortar.
Engineers at an Army research lab in Natick, Mass., design shelters with even better capability. Their portable homes are energy-efficient, thanks to LED lighting and solar panels; easy to assemble with the use of inflatable tubes called air beams; and are invisible at night!
For centuries — until about 30 years ago! — sailors tossed their trash overboard into the sea. Now Navy ships focus on protecting the environment as scientists at NAVSEA Carderock in Bethesda, Md., develop and evaluate ways to treat waste.
Every ship is like a small city, with 100 to 5,000 people aboard. They produce refuse ranging from garbage to water waste, sewage to shower water and eventually must dispose of it all. Dishwater, for example, could pollute the ocean if it’s dumped, so the scientists have created methods to treat it onboard so it can be safely discharged overboard. Plastics are another story — they can never go over the side. Instead, they are compressed into large disks and returned to shore, where they may be recycled.
