Posted on September 2nd, 2010 by jxh
As upsets continue to shock viewers of the US Open, engineers at Prince Sports are watching their patented O-Technology hit winners up and down the court.
The concept seems simple – tiny round, oval, or trapezoidal holes placed strategically along the frame of a tennis racket.
But this subtle design feature has many benefits. Not only does it make the racket lighter, but it also reduces drag and enlarges the area on the strings referred to as the sweet spot.
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Filed under: e-News, Mechanical | 2 Comments »
Tags: Mechanical, Sports
Posted on August 31st, 2010 by jxh
If you need examples of cool things engineers can do in college, consider this: mechanical engineering students from Ohio State University work together building alternative-fuel race cars as part of the Buckeye Bullet team.
Not cool enough? Well, the team just broke the electric car land speed world record with their most recent vehicle, the Buckeye Bullet 2.5.
Racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah last week, the Bullet 2.5 reached a peak speed of 320 miles per hour and logged a two-way average speed of 307.66 miles per hour.
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Filed under: e-News, Electrical, Mechanical, Transportation | Comments Off on Undergrads Build World’s Fastest Electric Car
Tags: Cars, Energy, Green Technology, Green Transportation, Mechanical, Transportation
Posted on August 31st, 2010 by jxh
Has life got you climbing up the walls? Well, soon you may be able to do it for real – and as well as a gecko.
Geckos are able to stick to walls thanks to a technique called dry adhesion. Each toe of a gecko’s foot contains hundreds of flap-like ridges, and each ridge has millions of hairs.
The tiny hairs are 10 times thinner than a human’s and each one divides into even smaller strands called spatulae. These split ends interact with the molecules of the climbing surface using the van der Waals force, and stick to it when pulled in one direction. If pulled in a different direction, however, the adhesive comes right off.
Now, Stanford University mechanical engineers have created a robot that will replicate a gecko’s sticky foot in order to climb walls.
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Filed under: e-News, Mechanical | Comments Off on Stickybot to the Rescue
Tags: Biomimicry, Mechanical, Robotics
Posted on August 24th, 2010 by axb
Engineering students Victor Correa Schneider, Trevor Owen, Julia Tsai,
Dan Ferguson, and Benjamin Thompson of UC San Diego
Duuuude, how’s this for a Ph.D. project: Benjamin Thompson, a structural engineering student at UC San Diego, is on a quest to formulate the science of surfboards. He enlisted the help of four undergraduates in the mechanical engineering department to help him out, and together they hit the beach to find out more.
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Filed under: Computer, e-News, Mechanical, Ocean | Comments Off on Surf’s Up!
Tags: Computer, Mechanical, Ocean
Posted on August 16th, 2010 by axb
Robo-arm-turned-Ferrari-simulator, shown without the
steering wheel and projection screen
Sometimes engineering projects look like they’re just too much fun to even be considered work. Such is the case with this Ferrari F2007 driving simulator that hovers 7 feet off the ground and looks like a stolen set piece from one of the Matrix movies.
A German research team from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics programmed a giant robotic arm to simulate the car’s motion while the driver navigates a projected course, IEEE Spectrum (the news magazine and website of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) reports. Watch a video after the jump.
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Filed under: e-News, Electrical, Mechanical | 3 Comments »
Tags: Electrical, Mechanical, Robotics
