Archive for October, 2007

Measuring Disasters

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

 

 
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When something bad happens, we like to know how bad it is. We’ll look at the numbers, today, on Engineering Works!
No disaster is good, but some are worse than others. For instance, most of us know that Hurricane Katrina started out as a category 5 hurricane, but was only a category 3 when it [...]

High Mileage

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

 

 
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Hybrid cars get good gas mileage, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’ll look, today on Engineering Works!
If high gas prices are squeezing your budget, consider the engineers that design NASA space vehicles. These guys worry about the cost of fuel, but what’s really important is how much that fuel weighs. They’re always looking [...]

Shrinking camera

Friday, October 26th, 2007

 

 
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Sometimes, they say, life imitates art. So does engineering — sort of. We’ll see how, today On Engineering Works!
If you’re a fan of campy science fiction movies, you might remember the 1966 flick, Fantastic Voyage. In the movie, a submarine with a crew of medical experts is shrunk and injected into the bloodstream of [...]

Precision agriculture

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

 

 
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Old McDonald’s farm was never like this. We’ll spy on how satellites and other new technology are helping farmers keep track of their cows and corn — today on Engineering Works!
McDonald never heard of the global positioning system – GPS. But if he was farming these days, he’d probably be using global positioning system [...]