Archive for September, 2009

Stop, look and … listen

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

 
Photo: Francois Lariviere/iStock

 
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Photo: Darrel Ronald/Flickr.com
Here’s a question you probably never thought to ask: what should your car sound like? We’ll listen for an answer, today on Engineering Works!
We’ve all listened to cars, all our lives and we’ve always heard them. The clatter of an old VW bug. The rumble of a high-performance muscle car. But [...]

Pouring the pyramids

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

 
Photo: Bruno Girin/Flickr.com

 
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Everybody knows the Egyptians used huge stone blocks to build their pyramids. Some engineers aren’t so sure. We’ll listen to the argument. Today, on Engineering Works!
Everybody learned in school that ancient Egyptian engineers used thousands of huge limestone blocks to build the pyramids. What we didn’t learn was how the Egyptians got those [...]

Plastics primer

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

 
Photo: geoftheref/Flickr.com

 
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If you look around, there’s plastic everywhere. We’ll look, too. Today, on Engineering Works.
You see a lot of plastic because it works. It’s lighter and cheaper than metal and it’s more durable than cardboard. A lot of it can even be recycled.
In fact, engineers have designed some plastics especially to be recycled or to [...]

The numbers of power

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

 
Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr.com

 
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We’re going to listen to some big words. Engineers know what they are. Today, on Engineering Works!
Engineers use numbers all the time. Sometimes these numbers are really big. Consider power engineers. Power engineers design and build the systems that make and deliver the electricity that lights our homes. They routinely talk in terms [...]

Leveraging engineering

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

 
Image: Wikipedia

 
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Most of the time when we think about engineers, we think about the nifty things they’re designing and building, now. But a lot of what they do now started a long time ago. We’ll take a look back, today on Engineering Works!
The engineers we know design and build new fuel-efficient cars, ultra-fast computers, tall [...]