Archive for November, 2009

Grow your own … electricity

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

 
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Engineers in Germany are getting ready to turn the electric power industry inside out. We’ll see how, today on Engineering Works!
Everybody knows how we get electricity. Big generating plants powered by coal or nuclear energy or water. It sizzles along power lines to where we use it to light our houses and power [...]

Transistors rule

Monday, November 9th, 2009

 

 
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Image: Travelin’ Librarian
Transistors, the things that make your iPod and computer possible. We’ll look back in history. Today, on Engineering Works!
If you look around at all the things we have that use transistors, it seems like we always must have had them. We haven’t, of course. An engineer working at Bell Laboratories invented the transistor [...]

Move ‘em out

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

 

 
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Image: Dieter Drescher
We’ve all come across things that just don’t make sense, even though they work. Engineers do, too. We’ll look at one, today on Engineering Works!
If you’ve been to a big concert, or a ball game, with a big crowd of other people, you know what happens when it’s time to leave. No [...]