eGFI - Dream Up the Future Sign-up for The Newsletter  For Teachers Online Store Contact us Search
Read the Magazine
What's New?
Explore eGFI
Engineer your Path About eGFI
Autodesk - Change Your World
Overview E-tube Trailblazers Student Blog
  • Tag Cloud

  • What’s New

  • Pages

  • RSS RSS

  • RSS Comments

  • Archives

  • Meta

Human-Powered Car Would Make Fred Flintstone Jealous

You’ve no doubt heard of electric hybrid cars, but a human-powered hybrid? Not only is it real and most likely coveted by the Flintstone family, but you may be able to own one as soon as next year.

With four passengers cranking the handles, the HumanCar can run on kinetic energy alone, and with fewer participants it relies partially on electricity.

How much more fun (and social!) would highway driving be if everyone used a car like this? Can we get a Yabba-Dabba-Doo?!

Video after the jump.

Read More

New Charging Station for Electric Cars

Switching to electric cars has a lot of advantages: it would reduce city pollution, decrease our dependence on oil, and save us money from rising gas prices.

And now there is Blink, an electric charging station that will hopefully pave the way of an electric vehicle revolution.

Read More

Spinning a Web of Secrets

When you see a spider, your first inclination may be to step on it, or scream and run away.

But engineers would do the opposite, as they are trying to unlock one of nature’s greatest mysteries: a spider’s ability to produce silk.

Read More

Oil-Eating Microbes Clean Up BP Spill

The oil-eating microorganism Alcanivorax borkumensis

Nearly two weeks after BP capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the millions of gallons that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico are disappearing, and oil is no longer washing up on the beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast.

This reversal, which may seem surprising, can actually be explained by a number of different factors, including the presence of microbes that break down oil in order to grow and reproduce.

Read More

Algae Farmer

Cynthia Warner used to be head of global refining for BP, which made her one of Big Oil’s highest-ranking woman executives.

Now she is president of Sapphire Energy, an energy company that produces oil made from algae.

Read More