2011 was another busy year for engineers all over the world. From inventing a device that turns air into water to exploring the oceans in a tiny submarine, scientists and engineers are exploring uncharted territory.

Like last year, we at eGFI have chronicled the most awe-inspiring innovations and stories, so in case you missed one, we present:

The Most Popular, Interesting, Weird, or Just Plain Cool eGFI Blog Posts of 2011

	Turning Air into Water
	Jetman: Flying Soon to a Landmark Near You
	Vertical Forest Coming Soon to Milan
	And Now: Flavor-Shifting Ice Cream
	Solar Decathalon 2011 Powers Up
	The World’s Sweetest Printer
	Water Bottles to Illuminate a Million Homes
	Airbus Presents a Futuristic Vision of Air Travel
	Students Create an App to Diagnose Malaria
	Berkeley Engineers Help Student Walk
	Underwater Scooters are the New SCUBA
	Virgin Oceanic Goes Many Leagues Under the Sea
	Cynthia Breazeal Wants You to Make Friends with Robots
	New Shirt Measures Athletes’ Performances
	Watson vs. The World

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What do the blockbuster movie Avatar, high-performance sports gear, the Angry Birds phone app, and pollution-eating bacteria have in common? They are among a host of fascinating innovations developed by engineers and featured in the newest edition of the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Engineering, Go For It magazine.

The publication is now available in our online store. You can find a free preview of the magazine here.

The kid-friendly magazine is part of ASEE’s campaign to inspire more K-12 students, particularly young women and underrepresented minorities, to pursue engineering careers. Illustrating how engineers make a difference in the world, the new edition includes:

• Stories featuring robots that imitate animals, Hollywood special effects, clean energy innovations, and technological advances giving athletes a winning edge.
• Engaging profiles on an array of engineering careers and disciplines.
• Fresh, cutting-edge examples of engineering innovations that are transforming fields from aerospace and medical care to architecture and materials science.
• Interviews with eight students currently participating in the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship sponsored by the Department of Defense and administered by ASEE

In addition to producing a print magazine, eGFI blogs weekly for students and teachers, and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Researchers at Britain’s University of Exeter have developed a 3-D printer that Willy Wonka would die for. Instead of using metals or plastics as its “ink,” Exeter’s uses chocolate.

Sometimes called additive manufacturing, 3-D printing technologies work off a three-dimensional CAD design of a product, then construct the item by laying down one very thin layer of material at a time. But this is the first time researchers have used chocolate as a medium.

It’s not proved easy: Chocolate doesn’t flow properly unless it is heated and cooled to precise temperatures. The team, led by Liang Hao, a materials scientist in Exeter’s College of Engineering, developed new temperature and heating control systems to make the prototype printer work. Hao envisions the day when consumers can download CAD software, create a design (or modify an existing one), send it to a shop, and pick up their self-designed sweet treat 10 minutes later. Not surprisingly, several chocolate retailers are already expressing interest in the invention. Although chocolate is hard to work with, it is much tastier than plastic.

Image:

David Martin/University of Exeter

In Manila, the capital of the Philippines, lack of electricity keeps millions of the city’s poorer inhabitants in the dark. Metal rooftops on the city’s slum houses also block natural daylight, but students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a cheap and elegant solution to the problem: plastic water bottles.

By filling a plastic bottle with water and bleach (to prevent algae from growing), students and residents can fashion a solar lamp that fills even the gloomiest shelters with light. It works thanks to phenomenon you may have learned in physics class – refraction. When sunlight passes through the bottle and hits the water, its rays bend and disperse in many different directions.

Installation is as simple as cutting a small circular hole in the metal roof, placing the bottle in the opening, and sealing the edges to stop rainwater leakage. After the lamps are fitted, they provide light equivalent to a 60 watt light bulb and can last up to 5 years without needing to be replaced.

Volunteers have already installed over 10,000 of these lamps all over Manila through the Isang Litrong Liwanag (“A Liter of Light”) project.

Led by Filipino MIT alum Illac Diaz, A Liter of Light is an organized initiative to bring light to over one million homes by 2012. Their Solar Bottle Bulb is “based on the principles of Appropriate Technology – a concept that provides simple and easily replicable technologies that address basic needs in developing communities.”

Watch this news report on the bulb installations:

For more information on the Appropriate Technology movement and the inventions it has spawned, check out this blog. Also, be sure to read our profile of MIT mechanical engineering professor Amy Smith, founder of the school’s D-Lab, which offers “different courses at the intersection of technology innovation and international development.”

Images:

A Liter of Light

Would you like your silly putty to be able to stick to the fridge, eat magnets, and creepily ooze without your assistance? If so, you should definitely check out this DIY activity from Instructables.

Silly putty was invented by accident when James Wright, a Scottish engineer working for General Electric, mixed silicone oil with boric acid in an attempt to make artificial rubber. By 1949 the bouncing putty was packaged and sold as a toy, and was met with instant popularity.

Today silly putty is characterized as a non-Newtonian viscoelastic polymer (or a dilatant fluid), which means it can be stretched, reshaped, and, with enough force, torn or shattered. Most crucially, however, it bounces.

So, how do you magnetize the stuff? The secret ingredient is ferric iron oxide, a black powder typically sold in art stores to be used as pigment. Once mixed with silly putty (instructions here – don’t forget to use gloves and a safety mask!), your new substance will take on a darker color as well as special magnetic properties.

Here’s a video illustrating some of the crazy things your new, supercharged goo will be able to do:

Follow these links for more info on the amazing ways engineers can manipulate stuff:

Explore chemical engineering

Explore materials engineering

Images:

killbox/Flickr
ShellyS/Flickr

Chemical Engineer

Even though I came to the conclusion on my own, my parents knew since I was a little girl that I would pursue engineering. My dad, an electrical and mechanical engineer, used to make me recite algebra equations while in line at amusement parks and my mom used to call me “her little engineer.”

Now I am a 3rd year chemical engineering student at the University of Virginia, and I am double minoring in Engineering Business and Science & Technology Policy.

This summer I am working as a marketing intern for Lilly Pulitzer. Engineering is all about solving problems, being creative, and collaborating with others, and those skills can be applied to clothing development as well as pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology. Because of my background in engineering, I am always looking at situations in a different perspective, and instead of asking “why doesn’t this work?” I often ask “how can we make this work better?”  Interning at Lilly has given me the opportunity to explore the crossroads between fashion and engineering, and that is truly a dream come true for me!

People in the United States consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, and many often face the dilemma of either scalding one’s mouth with coffee that is too hot or waiting… and waiting… for it to cool to proper temperature.

In order to keep coffee at a perfect 140 degrees Fahrenheit, two 20-something mechanical engineers who were childhood friends have designed bean-shaped steel shells called Coffee Joulies that cool down coffee and keep it at a warm, drinkable temperature for up to five hours.

A special proprietary substance called a Phase Change Material, or PCM, is sealed inside the polished shells. Like ice, the PCM inside the Coffee Joulie changes from a solid to a liquid and absorbs any excess heat, cooling down the temperature of the coffee. As the liquid cools, however, the PCM starts to solidify again and releases the absorbed heat back into the liquid to keep the drink at a near-perfect, warm temperature.

About the size of an egg, Coffee Joulies are coated with durable stainless steel. To determine how many Coffee Joulies are needed, it is recommended that one Coffee Joulie be used for every five ounces of volume (so a double espresso would need one, while a mug would need two and a tall coffee would need three.)

The creators launched their idea on the grassroots-fundraising web site Kickstarter.com with the goal of raising $9,500. The product was so successful, however, that they made over $300,000 and are now rushing into production to meet demand for the 10,000 sets ordered by investors from Kickstarter.

Coffee Joulies should be available to the public later this summer.

Images: Joulies.com

The invention is an artificial leaf, and it is powered by an advanced solar cell that mimics photosynthesis (the process green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.)

The device is the size of a playing card and is made from silicon, electronics and catalysts – all inexpensive materials that are widely available and highly stable. These substances also help to accelerate chemical reactions that otherwise would not occur.

When placed in a gallon of water in sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a household in a developing country for an entire day. Each home would thus become its own power station.

The power comes from splitting water into components, hydrogen and water. The two different gases would be stored in a fuel cell located either on the roof or beside the house, and it would use the two materials to produce electricity.

Right now the artificial leaf is ten times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a natural leaf, and scientists believe they can boost its efficiency in the future.

This innovative research was presented at the 241^st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Check out this video about a similar sunlight-harnessing technology that is being developed at the California Institute of Technology:

Image: Marcy Reiford / flickr

Harvard scientists have created a unique device that can shoot beams of electricity and instantly extinguish flames.

Because soot particles within flames can easily become charged, flames can lose stability when the local electrical fields are altered. The device works by hooking up a 600-watt amplifier to a wand-like probe, which delivers the electrical beams.

For the past 200 years it has been known that electricity can affect the shape of flames – influencing them to bend, twist, turn, flicker, or die out. Despite this long-standing knowledge, barely any research has been done on the phenomenon.

If adopted on a large scale, the device could minimize the amount of water sprayed into burning buildings and reduce the risk of water damage. A lower-powered amplifier could be worn by firefighters as a backpack, or mounted on ceilings like current sprinkler systems.

The only restriction for the technology is that it is best suited for fires that occur in confined spaces, as opposed to forest fires that engulf large wide-open areas. However, the scientists believe that the technology could boost the efficiency of devices that involve controlled combustion, such as engines, power plants, and cutting and welding torches.

The device was presented at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Image: U.S. Navy