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

This is no pie-in-the-sky urban farm design. Italian architect Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest, is actually being built, and will soon add a splash of green to the Milan skyline.

The design features two residential towers with staggered balconies that allow an array of trees and shrubbery to grow outside each abode.  Advantages of such a setup, beyond adding verdant beauty to a city, include shading inhabitants in the summer while permitting more sunlight in the winter, protection from noise pollution, and air purification.

The Bosco Verticale is now under construction in Milan, Italy

Called “the most exciting new tower in the world” by the Financial Times, Bosco Verticale will eventually grow the equivalent of over 100,000 square feet of woodland. FT also reports that the buildings are to be the first in a series of eco-friendly renovations planned for the city. Boeri has dubbed the project BioMilano, and his vision features more green housing, the restoration of abandoned farms on the city outskirts, urban gardens, and Metrobosco, a ring of trees to encircle Milan.

Images:
© Stephano Boeri

Drivers often encounter wildlife along the road. But what if instead of the usual birds, deer, and squirrels,  you could cruise alongside fish?

That vision is now a reality with the electric submarine EGO, which literally puts you face-to-face with underwater wildlife.

The EGO, designed by South Korean manufacturer Raonhaje, was unveiled at the Miami International Boat Show during President’s Day weekend, and it made a big splash.

The personal semi-submarine has an underwater cockpit with walls made of thick, acrylic glass. Above water, the central hull has two pontoons for buoyancy, leaving room to relax and sunbathe. There also is a high-resolution camera linked to an LCD monitor in the cockpit, so captains can enjoy the sunny view from below deck.

The EGO’s big draw is that anyone who can drive a car can operate the submarine. Instead of a typical boat-style throttle lever, there is a foot pedal located under the dashboard, just like a car. There’s also a steering wheel, and a simple forward/backward toggle switch.

Powered by an electric motor, the sub can run for eight hours at cruising speed (or four hours at 4 knots, the boat’s top speed), and it can run a total of six to nine hours on a single charge.

The EGO will be available to consumers in seven different colors, and goes on sale October 2011. A price has yet to be announced.

Images: Raonhaje

Think having a desk job would be boring? Think again.

A group of students and researchers at The Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University in Germany have designed a sleek desk/computer hybrid that could make your work days anything but dull.

The BendDesk, as it’s called, has a curved, ergonomic multi-touch interface that allows users to move and manipulate images and documents with ease, as well as play some pretty fun games.

It is sensitive to up to ten touch points, supports multiples users, and the horizontal surface can even be used as a traditional desk (for stacking books and papers).

Here’s a nifty demo video:

It may be a while before this idea hits the mass market, but when it does, the movie Office Space might become less culturally relevant.

Image: RWTH Aachen University

Fit and athletic amputees – like sprinter/long-jumper Aimee Mullins – have proved over and over that the loss of a limb is no reason to give up sports. Earlier this year, Colombian Nelson Cardona became the first amputee to climb Mt. Everest, Earth’s highest peak.

But prostheses for swimmers have remained clunky, at best.

That’s why Richard Stark, an industrial design student at Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design, was inspired to create Neptune, a specially-designed prosthesis that helps amputees swim.

An early sketch

The colorful but functional superflipper was built with competitive swimmers in mind, providing enough resistance for training and plenty of flexibility to maneuver in the water.

The limb rests in an adjustable cup-shaped holder, and the fin itself consists of a rigid center strip and two flexible flaps. The flaps can be adjusted to require different degrees of muscle power. The fin also rotates 90 degrees so it can accommodate side kicks for breaststroke and up-and-down motions for freestyle, backstroke and butterfly.

The final design

Throughout the design process, Stark consulted with competitive amputee swimmers to make sure that Neptune fit their needs. And judging from this video, it works swimmingly:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images courtesy Richard Stark

Level

NASA’s Spaced Out Sports Design Challenge

U.S. Students in grades 5-8 are invited to participate in Spaced Out Sports, a national design challenge that applies Newton’s Laws of Motion by designing a game for the International Space Station astronauts to play in space.

The goal is for students to learn the “science behind the game” on Earth and in microgravity. Students will submit game demonstrations via a playbook and video.

Awards:

1st Place – NASA schoolwide celebration

Top 3 Teams — games played and broadcast on the space station

All Contributing Schools — participation in a Digital Learning Network webcast with astronauts on the space station.

Application Deadline: Entries must be postmarked by Feb. 1, 2011.

Student and Educator Resources

Spaced Out Sports student and educator resources include posters, bookmarks, curriculum guides, a career video and Digital Learning Network Modules. All include NASA astronauts, engineers and celebrity sports figures engaging students in relevant space-sports connections by explaining and demonstrating the “science behind their work and/or game.” Featured are: NASA astronauts Leland Melvin and Nicole Stott; Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin; NASCAR’s Juan Pablo Montoya; basketball’s Temeka Johnson; football/Super Bowl champions New Orleans Saints; and hockey’s Ryan O’Reilly and the Colorado Avalanche.

Guide activities and DLN modules include talk shows that explain application of Newton’s Laws in sports and space, followed by Science and Sports Challenges, where students design/construct sporting equipment and games and predict the difference between a game played on Earth and in microgravity.

Spaced Out Sports is managed by NASA’s Stennis Space Center Education through the Teaching From Space Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston.

For more information and to register for the challenge, visit: http://education.ssc.nasa.gov/spacedoutsports.

Tufts University Center for Engineering Education

Parent and Child Workshop

On March 6, 2010, Parent and child teams will build and program their own LEGO inventions. There will be challenges for experiences and new users.
Cost: $75

Download registration form here. Contact Elissa Milto (elissa.milto@tufts.edu) with questions.

CEEO programs are designed to give students the chance to participate in individual and small-team design projects while fostering an understanding of the design process and related principles. Students  use LEGO bricks and accompanying icon-based software as they design, build, and program their robotic creations. Although the program is educational, we want the children to enjoy themselves and have fun. Instructors are a collection of CEEO staff with engineering, education, and child development backgrounds, and Tufts engineering students.

Tufts University Center for Engineering Education and Outreach,  474 Boston Ave., Curtis Hall – Basement, Medford, MA 02155

Contest opens 1:00 p.m. EST, Jan. 28, 2010

The United States Military Academy’s

2010 West Point Bridge Design Contest

The purpose of the 3rd annual West Point Bridge Design Contest is to provide middle school and high school students with a realistic, engaging introduction to engineering. The contest is provided as a service to education–and as a tribute to the Academy’s two hundred years of service to the United States of America.

GOALS:

The contest will provide students with an opportunity to:

• Learn about engineering through a realistic, hands-on problem-solving experience.

• Learn about the engineering design process–the application of math, science, and technology to create devices and systems that meet human needs.

• Learn about truss bridges and how they work.

• Learn how engineers use the computer as a problem-solving tool.

We also hope students will have some fun pitting their problem-solving skills against those of other virtual bridge designers around the globe.

RULES:

Who: U.S. students age 13 through grade 12 are eligible for prizes. Anyone else may enter our Open Competition. More about eligibility…

When: The 2010 contest doesn’t begin until January 28, 2010, but you can download the WPBD software and start practicing right now! More about this year’s contest schedule…

Prizes: Each member of the first-place team will earn a $5,000 scholarship. Each finalist will win a notebook computer. More about prizes…

Procedure:

• Download and install the West Point Bridge Designer 2010 software.

• Use the software to design and test a virtual bridge.

• Register your team.

• Log in and submit as many designs as you like.

Please see the West Point Bridge Design Contest Website for more information

The future may look greener for New York City: Belgian firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures has designed a winged vertical farm for Roosevelt Island in NYC, called the Dragonfly. This funky, wind and solar-powered structure would stand over 600 meters (close to 2,000 feet) and  house the equivalent of 28 agricultural fields. Read more here.

[Inhabitat]

Images via Vincent Callebut Architectures

Here’s a video that explains the concept of vertical farming:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Entries must be submitted using the Online Submission Form

In this essay contest of EngineerGirl!, National Academy of Engineering, students are challenged to think like an engineer to solve a survival problem. In their essays, they must describe how to use the contents of a backpack and the surrounding environment to create shelter, gather food and water, or summon rescue. Please see the full description here or on the website for the specific requirements of this contest.

Contest Description:

If you have to be stranded somewhere with someone, you might want to hope you are stranded with an engineer. Engineers think big and solve problems with whatever resources they have available so they would be great companions on a deserted island. Try this exercise to see if you can think like an engineer:

During a field trip to a national wildlife refuge (or national forest), you and a friend get separated from the rest of the group and realize that you are totally lost.

Your guide told you earlier that if you get lost: stay where you are, stay safe, and wait for someone to find you. It’s getting late, and the temperature is dropping. When you dump out the contents of your backpack you see the following:

• A cell phone (with no signal)
• Two large rubber bands
• A scarf/bandana
• An empty plastic bottle
• A spiral-bound notebook
• Two retractable pens
• Two pencils
• A pack of gum
• A comb
• A nail file
• A mirror

Items in the environment include:

• Trees, leaves, sticks & twigs
• Rocks
• A small stream
• Dirt
• Pine needles and pine cones

In your essay, describe how you would use the contents of your backpack along with clothing or accessories you are wearing and items in your environment (Use no more than 3 items that are not included in the backpack.) to address ONE of the following challenges:

1. Create a shelter
2. Gather food and water
3. Try to get the attention of a rescue party

Contest Guidelines

Who Can Enter?

The contest is open to individual girls and boys in each of three categories (Choose your category by grade level unless you are unsure of your grade):

• 3rd grade to 5th grade (Ages 8-11)
• 6th grade to 8th grade (Ages 12-14)
• 9th grade to 12th grade (Ages 15-18)

If you are a prior winner and have received a cash prize from EngineerGirl! in any of the above grade categories, you may not enter again in the same age group.

How Do I Enter?

Write an essay which addresses the requirements in the contest description. Essays should be written clearly. They may be shorter than, but should not exceed, the word limit listed below:

• 500 words for grades 3 – 5
• 750 words for grades 6 – 8
• 1000 words for grades 9 – 12

Submit your essay through the Online Submission Form on the EngineerGirl! website, and include all required information.

When Is the Deadline? Entries must be received by 6:00 p.m. (EST) on March 1, 2010.

What are the Awards? All winning entries will be published on the EngineerGirl! website. (Please review our publication agreement before you submit your essay.) In addition, all winners will receive the prizes listed below:

• First-place winners will be awarded $500.
• Second-place entries will be awarded $250.
• Third-place entries will be awarded $100.
• Honorable Mention entries will not receive a cash reward but will be published on the EngineerGirl! website.

Additional Rules

• Essays will be judged on the basis of creativity, feasibility, and usefulness of the design as well as the author’s ability to communicate ideas. You may wish to preview the scorecard for the selection criteria.
• All essays must be the original work of the author submitting the entry and must not have been published anywhere else.
• A contestant may enter only one essay.
• No contestant may win more than once in a single age category.
• All entries will be read by a panel of judges, whose selections will be final.
• Management, employees and families of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) are prohibited from winning any prizes offered by EngineerGirl.
• Entry in the contest grants the NAE non-exclusive rights to publish winning essays in full or in part on the EngineerGirl! website. (publication agreement)

Entries must be submitted using the Online Submission Form

Sponsorship: The 2010 EngineerGirl! Contest is made possible through the generous sponsorship of Northrop Grumman Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and Bechtel.

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