The average washing machine uses between 40 and 45 gallonsof water per load of clothes. In addition, a large amount of energy is needed to heat the water. When you include the cost of laundry detergent on top of all that, you realize that washing clothes can be a pricey affair.
However, researchers at the British company Xeros Ltd have developed a new washing-machine technology that cleans clothes using a mere cup of water and just a drop of detergent.
Seven engineering students designed a water drill that might improve the lives of millions.
Lack of sanitary drinking water is a serious and well-known problem that continues to plague many third-world nations. In Tanzania alone, over 800,000 people do not have access to clean water.
A group of seven engineering students from Brigham Young University hope to alleviate this problem by giving Tanzanians an efficient and inexpensive way to obtain drinking water. For their senior capstone project, they have designed a human-powered drill that can dig a freshwater well much faster than many more expensive devices.
Is your lunch fresh enough to eat? Now the plastic wrap can tell you
Consumers often throw away perfectly edible food because they think it has “gone bad.” As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that food scraps constitute 12 percent of municipal landfills, making food the single largest component of the country’s waste stream.
To help prevent consumers from prematurely throwing away food, researchers are developing a plastic wrap that will change colors when the food is no longer safe to eat.
Qatar, a small Middle Eastern country that has been designated host of the 2022 World Cup, is not known for its mild summers. In fact, temperatures in July regularly average over 115 degrees F (50 degrees C), which presents a serious challenge to the event’s organizers.
But not to fear – engineers from Qatar University’s Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering have a clever solution. Over the next ten years they plan to develop an artificial cloud that will hover over the soccer stadium and provide crucial shade to players and audience members.
Ask most engineers what drew them to the discipline, and crunching equations in the classroom probably doesn’t top any list. Studying explosions, building things, saving the planet—that’s more like it. A growing number of programs now give undergraduates a crack at cutting-edge research—often on socially relevant projects. Want to save lives when tsunamis strike? How about landing a robot on Mars or designing bomb-proof embassies? Check out our continuing series of posts on the country’s coolest engineering classes, which demonstrate that the fundamentals can still be fun.
After Japan’s devastating tsunami, did you wonder about building safer shelters? Students at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering in Corvallis not only get to design such structures; they can test them against the forces of nature in the Tsunami Wave Basin, the world’s largest, most sophisticated facility for studying earthquake-generated monster swells.
