billaday/Flickr.com

Gas mileage, then and now

May 9th, 2012 by Gene

[display podcast]

How far can you get on a gallon of gas these days? We’ll figure it out. Gas mileage. Today, on Engineering Works!

We hear so much about how fuel-efficient this new car or that one is that it’s almost boring. Our vehicles are getting better and better at wringing the most mileage possible out of every gallon of gas.

But the truth is that the mileage cars got in the beginning, more than 100 years ago, wasn’t that bad. It’s what happened between then and now that’s the problem.

Henry Ford’s first car, the Model T, got 21-miles-per-gallon. By the mid-1930s, that had dropped to about 14 miles per gallon. Why? Bigger engines powering bigger cars. By 1973, when the Organization of Oil Producing Countries, or OPEC, stopped exporting oil to the United States following the Yom Kippur War with Israel, average gas mileage was around 12 miles per gallon.

By 1975, the Honda Civic was getting more than 40-miles per gallon, but – average – gas mileage was still only about 15 miles per gallon. About the same as in 1935.

Mileage has improved since then. A lot. Today, gas-electric hybrids like the Toyota Prius get more than 40 miles per gallon and all electric cars are getting the equivalent of more than 110-miles-per-gallon. The worst gas mileage? It’s probably the Bugatti Veyron. The Veyron gets about 10 miles per gallon. But you can go 268 miles an hour.

We’re done for this time. Our truck only gets about 20 miles per gallon, but it gets us home.

Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU-FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering. Visit us on the World Wide Web.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu

Start the discussion: Gas mileage is one of those things, we guess. More is better.

For more:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0307/From-Model-T-to-Prius-13-big-moments-in-fuel-economy-history

http://www.pewenvironment.org/uploadedFiles/PEG/Publications/Fact_Sheet/History%20of%20Fuel%20Economy%20Clean%20Energy%20Factsheet.pdf

http://www.fueleconomy.gov

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

NASA

Going up

May 2nd, 2012 by Gene

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Science fiction will become science fact if engineers in Japan have their way. A space elevator. Today, on Engineering Works!

If you read science fiction, you know that space elevators have been around for a long time. A space elevator is essentially an elevator that travels up and down a cable anchored on Earth and extending to a counterweight out in space. The Earth’s rotation keeps it out there. Think of a lead fishing sinker on the end of a piece of fishline. Whirl it in a circle and the weight of the sinker keeps the line taut.

A space elevator would work the same way, but scaled up to a size that could carry passengers and cargo up and down. The Japanese engineers plan to build an elevator that would run almost 60,000 miles out into space. That’s almost a third of the way to the moon.

There’s lots of technical problems to be solved before the space elevator starts carrying people into space. The biggest problem is probably the cable – designing one that’s strong enough to hold the counterweight. The Japanese engineers plan to use carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are tiny structures that have lots of interesting characteristics. The engineers are most interested in the fact that carbon nanotubes are very strong for their weight and bulk.

Don’t expect to ride the space elevator anytime soon. Plans are for it to start carrying passengers and cargo about 2050.

Going up! See you next time.

Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU-FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering. Visit us on the World Wide Web.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu

Start the discussion: Lots of people think space elevators are just foolishness: they’ll never work, they say. New technology is being developed all the time, and the new developments could overcome the obstacles. We hope it does work.

For more:

htttp://www.isec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14&Itemid=34

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/305343/20120227/space-elevator-plans-japan.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_nanotube

http://www.gizmag.com/obayashi-space-elevator/21587/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=fcc56a1570-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

abbyladybug/Flickr.com

Fueling with liquid sunshine

April 30th, 2012 by Gene

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

We’ve all heard about the unlimited power of the sun. Engineers are getting some of it in an unusual way. Sunshine and bugs. Today, on Engineering Works!

One of the problems with using electricity from the sun, or anywhere else, to power things like cars and trucks is that electricity is not very energy dense. This means that a pound of battery won’t take you as far as a pound of gasoline. The difference gets more important the farther you want to go.

Chemical engineers are working on a way to use electricity from the sun – photovoltaics – to power a biological reaction that uses genetically modified microbes, bacteria, to produce an energy-dense liquid fuel called butanol.

The microbe the researchers are using already is used in industrial processes to produce non-fossil-fuel-based plastics. By modifying the bacterium’s genetics, they get it to turn out butanol instead. It all happens when electricity from solar-powered photovoltaic cells starts a reaction that produces a substance the bacterium eats. Out comes the butanol and carbon-dioxide. The CO2 is recycled back into the reaction. It’s pretty slick.

There are still problems with the process: It quits after about 80 hours. But the researchers are confident they can tweak it so it runs longer. And, they say, their results point the way to using the bacterium to turn out other energy-dense liquid fuels.

Our energy is getting pretty thin, and we’re done. See you next time.

Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU-FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering. Visit us on the World Wide Web.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu

Start the discussion: This is cool stuff, so cool it seems almost too good to be true. What do you think?

For more:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?=microbe-uses-solar-electricity-to-build-liquid-fuel?WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20120403

Nick Young/Flickr.com

From the mine to the Bugatti

April 25th, 2012 by Gene

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

If you watch TV, you’ve seen ads for new cars. If you’ve seen those ads, you’ve heard all about horsepower. But what is horsepower, anyway? We’ll figure it out, today on Engineering Works!

Horsepower, the word and the idea, has been around since about 1700. And at its simplest, it means what it sounds like. Horsepower is a measure of power, of strength. It’s equivalent to the power walking around on a horse’s four feet. We could get really complicated about horsepower, but not today.

People first started thinking about horsepower when the first steam engines began to be used in British coal mines. The engines raised coal from the bottom of the mines to the surface. Before steam engines came along, the loads of coal were hauled by horses. Inventor and engineer James Watt used the idea of the amount of work a horse could do to describe his improved steam engines.

Watt and his colleagues calculated the amount of work a horse could do at 33,000 foot-pounds per minute. This means that a horse, or a one-horsepower engine, could move a 33,000-pound weight 1 foot in 1 minute. It’s not quite that simple in real life, but that’s where horsepower started.

Since then, horsepower has become one of the best-known measurements there is. Everything from locomotives and lawnmowers to cars, trucks and even electric fans are measured in horsepower.

We’re going to fire up the horsepower in our truck now and go home. See you next time.

Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu

Start the discussion: Lots of the terminology – and the ideas – we take for granted in our technological world has been around for a long time. Horsepower is only one of them. What other tech terms have their roots in history? Let us know.

For more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower

http://www.howstuffworks.com/horsepower.htm

tribune.com.pk

Preventing the unkindest cuts

April 11th, 2012 by Gene

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The army is looking for some new underwear. And, no, this isn’t the start of a bad joke. We’ll explain, today on Engineering Works!

It sounds goofy, but in the right place and time the right undershorts can be the difference between life and death or disability. Think about it. In Iraq and Afghanistan, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, planted along roadsides have become the weapon of choice for insurgents.

Soldiers spend a lot of time walking those roads. And when an IED goes off next to one of them, a lot of the fragments end up aimed at the soldier’s groin. In fact, this kind of injury accounts for more than one in every 10 admissions to military combat hospitals.

The idea behind protective underwear is pretty simple. Make undershorts of cloth woven with thread that won’t stretch or break. This keeps shrapnel, dirt and debris from reaching the skin and cutting into it. One way to do it is to make the underwear from silk. Silk is tough and won’t stretch. But there’s a problem. We have almost no silk in the United States. And buying military supplies from foreign companies is illegal.

American companies have developed fabrics woven from thread that is at least as tough as silk. And they’re testing underwear sewn from it. We’ll see how it works out.

Our underwear isn’t silk, but we don’t plan to be near any IEDs either. See you next time.

Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU-FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering. Visit us on the World Wide Web.

http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu

Start the discussion: Sometimes things that sound silly can end up being pretty important, especially when you’re talking about keeping people safe.

For more:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-army-tries-on-bombproof-briefs-01122012.html

http://secureplanet.com/armor/shrapnelshorts.html