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

In a world increasingly affected by climate change, unexpected droughts are a harsh reality for many farmers whose livelihoods depend on regular rainfall. That’s why Edward Linacre, an industrial design graduate student from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, decided to invent a device that can literally harvest water from thin air.

Airdrop, as it’s called, recently won the prestigious James Dyson Award, which grants Linacre over $14,000 to develop the product. It was selected from among 500 entries from 18 different countries for its simple design and revolutionary approach to irrigation.

The sleek, minimal design of Airdrop is in part inspired by the extraordinary water-gathering abilities of the Namib Desert Beetle, which survives in very arid climates by collecting moisture from the air with its wings. Linacre’s device uses a solar-powered turbine to collect the air and deliver it to an underground system of copper pipes, where it is cooled to the point of condensation. The resulting water is then stored in a sub-surface tank and delivered directly to the roots of crops in measured quantities.

Watch Linacre explain his ingenious invention in this video:

Airdrop is purposely designed to be an inexpensive, low-tech solution to drought that farmers can easily install and maintain. Linacre has tested his design extensively in his mother’s backyard, where he says it was able to provide up to 1 liter of water for her garden each day.

Top photo by Arsineh Houspian

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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.

Amanda Crosby, right, and Belinda Dods of New Zealand celebrate placing the final screw on the deck of their house

What does it take to build a solar village, where homes not only are designed to create more energy than they use but are comfortable and cool to look at, too? Some 19 student teams from U.S. and international colleges found out this past weekend as they began installing their entries to the 2011 Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. The answer: lots of hands-on work involving hammers, wrenches, plumbing, and construction cranes.

The flurry of activity capped the students’ two-year effort to prepare for the competition (we covered the 2009 one here), which this year takes place from September 23 to October 2.

The judges won’t have an easy time picking the winner from this ‘hood full of ingenious–and distinct–homes springing up near the Washington Monument.  Middlebury College’s traditional-looking “self-reliant” farmhouse, for instance stands in stark contrast to Team Belgium’s futuristic E-Cube. In keeping with its Chesapeake Bay preservation theme, the University of Maryland’s WaterShed features a V-shaped green roof and constructed wetland to help filter “gray water” from the shower. By contrast, City College of New York students designed a modular Solar Roofpod that could turn unused space atop skyscrapers into an energy-efficient penthouse.

Here are some photo highlights from the build – for more information and student interviews, check out our story here. Stay up-to-date on Solar Decathlon happenings on the DOE blog.

SCI-Arc/Caltech students work to finish the interior of their house

Team New York’s house appears ready for public tours

Ohio State students work on sanding their handrail

University of Maryland student Isabel Enerson focuses her attention towards landscaping as the team prepares their house

A student from Canada’s team works on the solar panels at the team house

Photos: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

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

Every once in a while, an engineer comes along whose work combines different disciplines in a way that is both fascinating and inspiring. Natalie Jeremijenko is one such engineer. A modern-day Renaissance woman, Jeremijenko challenges traditional approaches to problem solving with such initiatives as zip-lines to speed kids to school or The Environmental Health Clinic, where “im-patients” come in with environmental health concerns and leave with creative prescriptions to help solve these issues:

Making no distinction between science and art, she develops unconventional, even playful projects for museums and educational applications alike.

Jeremijenko’s career path so far has been anything but boring. After completing academic work in a variety of fields, organizing a rock festival, and speaking at the 2010 TED conference, she now serves as an associate professor of visual art at New York University. She has completed graduate and Ph.D.-level work in an astonishing variety of fields, including history, neuroscience, mechanical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering, and is uniquely skilled at blurring the lines between these disciplines through interactive, experimental art.

In this TED talk she highlights a few of her recent projects:

Her work is described as experimental design, hence xDesign, as it explores opportunities presented by new technologies for social and political change. For example, in 2005 Jeremijenko introduced a pack of environmentally-sensitive, “feral” robotic dogs to various student groups in the NYC area. These toy dogs had been reprogrammed to detect chemical pollutants and then “set loose” in local parks to patrol. Upon sensing contamination, they bark, roll over, and play dead. Other projects of hers include installations of cloned trees in pairs in various urban micro-climates, a statistical index linking the Dow Jones to the suicide rate at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and interactive interfaces for zoos.

No matter what media and methods are employed, it’s clear that Jeremijenko’s unique marriage of art and engineering is one that will continue to surprise, delight, provoke, and educate a multitude of minds.

Planning a road trip this summer? Whether en route to a beach, lake, or national park, there are plenty of engineering landmarks to admire along the way — including the interstate highway system along which most travelers must pass. Here are some designated engineering destinations worth braking for:

Hoover Dam: More than a million visitors a year tour this National Landmark (pictured at the top) that towers 725 above the Colorado River 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, NV. Read ASEE’s Prism magazine columnist Henry Petroski on the dam’s 75th anniversary.

Lookouts on Chicago’s Willis Tower Sky Deck and Grand Canyon skywalk.

Erie Canal, Albany to Buffalo, N.Y. Completed in 1825, the canal opened a commercial route from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes. An historic civil-engineering landmark.

Mississippi River levees: The great Mississippi flood of 1927 spurred efforts to improve the river’s channel and navigation, protect its banks, prevent future floods and promote commerce – the most complex domestic engineering problem yet tackled by the U.S. government. The resulting $12 billion worth of levees, basin improvements, channel stabilization and floodways held until Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Calif. The elegant span across San Francisco Bay (pictured above) turned 75 this Memorial Day weekend. It opened to pedestrians on May 27, 1937 and for traffic the following day; the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed it a $35 million steel harp. At 4,200 feet, the bridge was the longest span in the world until the New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. Seven overseas bridges have surpassed both U.S. spans.

Brooklyn Bridge, New York, N.Y. Completed in 1883, the iconic East River span was once the longest suspension bridge and is just one of the city’s many iconic structures — along with the Holland Tunnel, Statue of Liberty, and subway system — designated historic civil-engineering landmarks by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Mount Washington Cog Railway, near Bretton Woods, N.H. America’s first cog railway, the coal-powered train has been ferrying tourists and researchers to the summit of Mt. Washington, the northeast’s highest peak at 6,288 feet, from the Marshfield base station for over a century. No. 18 on the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ historic mechanical-engineering landmarks.

Washington Monument, Washington, D.C. At 555 feet – 5.125 inches, this popular destination in the nation’s capital is the world’s tallest stone structure.

Penobscot Narrows Bridge & Observatory, Maine. The 2,120-foot span outside Bangor is the first of its kind in the United States and has a Washington Monument-style obelisk with sweeping views of the mountainous countryside.

Shippingport Atomic Power Plant, Shippingport, Pa. The country’s first nuclear plant went online in 1957 (pictured above a year before its opening) and is one of more than 200 historic mechanical-engineering landmarks designated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, between Cornish, N.H., and Windsor, Vt. Finished in 1866, this 204-foot span across the Connecticut River was the longest covered bridge in the country until Ohio’s Smolen-Gulf bridge opened in 2008.

Court Avenue, Bellefontaine, Ohio: A stretch near the courthouse built in 1891 is considered the first street paved with concrete in America.

Cascade Tunnel, Everett, Wash. A series of two tunnels, the second one, built in 1929 and still in operation, connects Chelan County in the east with King County in the west. At 7.8 miles, it’s America’s longest railroad tunnel.

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel: Opened to acclaim in 1964, this 20-mile, four-lane wonder crosses over and under open waters where the Chesapeake meets the Atlantic off Virginia and Maryland. Its series of high bridges, low trestles, two mile-long tunnels, and man-made islands was dubbed an “outstanding civil engineering achievement” by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Rollercoasters! Anywhere, any time. Read about New Jersey’s Kingda Ka ride for info on one of the world’s tallest coasters.

Images:

U.S. Department of the Interior
Anirudh Koul/Flickr
U.S. Department of the Interior/Wikipedia

Despite how annoying dandelions may be for homeowners who take pride in their lawns, the weed’s roots have shown potential in making a new, green source of rubber.

Ford and Ohio State researchers are using the milky-white goo that seeps from dandelion roots to make a type of rubber that could be used in the plastics of cup holders, floor mats, and interior trim of cars.

The dandelions (a specific Russian kind called Taraxacum kok-saghyz, or TKS) are carefully harvested to ensure that the roots remain intact. The roots are ground to extract the milky-white latex and then vulcanized (a chemical process to link the latex polymers more strongly), adding durability and creating a rubber substance from the milky-white liquid.

Meanwhile, researchers  at Eastern BioPlastics have discovered that a substance in chicken feathers may be able to replace oil in the production of plastic products.

Keratin, a tough protein fiber found in fingernails, hair, and horns, can be removed from the feathers of chickens and replace petroleum in some cases, resulting in biodegradable flower pots and office furniture.

Each year, poultry producers are left with 3 billion pounds of leftover chicken feathers (which end up either in landfills or converted to – believe it or not – animal feed), and this could be a sustainable way to cut down on the 18.7 million barrels of oil that the United States consumes each day.

In addition, Brazilian researchers are looking to make a more eco-friendly plastic out of bananas and pineapples, and Toyota hopes to one day build a bioplastic car body out of seaweed.

Images:

tibchris/Flickr
Just chaos/Flickr

We have previously reported on many green initiatives related to building and roadway materials: smog-eating cement, concrete that can heal itself when it detects cracks, and pavement with solar-storing technology.

Now, civil engineers at Purdue University are working to design a cost-effective mixture for road construction and bridge support.

The lightweight mixture is composed of shredded tires and sand, and it is useful for supporting the area of roads and bridges that bears a majority of the weight or pressure, especially those areas built over soft, weak soil deposits. The mix can also be used as backfill behind retaining walls and to strengthen slopes prone to landslides.

According to a 2007 EPA report, 7.5 million tons of rubber end up as waste every year, most of it from vehicle tires. And only around 35 percent of tires are recycled. The Indiana Department of Transportation has used the new mixture on nine different projects and so far 1.1 million tires have been put to use, resulting in a material cost saving of $1.2 million.

On top of that, because the mix is more easily compacted than other materials, it uses less energy. And that’s a money-saver too.

Image: vagawi / flickr