I'm Not Blogging Much

Here is why. Among other things.

I'm Deep Into

Poles, Zeros. Tolerancing components and the pitfalls of using "suggested designs". A good engineer ALWAYS runs the numbers.

Politics has for the time being lost my interest.

Project Update 16 August 2011

After putting hundreds of hours in on the project (still a secret - for now) I figured out a much better way to do things. So I'm in the middle of a redesign. Maybe another week or two. Provided I don't get any more bright ideas. ;-)

Catching The Wave

Sounds pretty amazing to me. According to Carnot the efficiency of an ideal engine is 1 - Tc/Th. Where Tc is the exhaust temperature and Th is the burning temperature (this is somewhat simplified). The temperatures are absolute (i.e. Kelvin scale in the metric system). The Wave Engine according to some designs operates at a peak temperature of 1070°K with an exhaust at 300°K (room temperature roughly). So what is the ideal efficiency for such an engine? 1 - (300/1070) multiplied by 100 to get percent. And the answer is almost 72%. So a practical realization giving 60% efficiency is not unreasonable. That is about 83% of ideal. Not bad. In fact very good.

Some geeks (not as geeky as me) have a few words to say.

Mueller envisions his wave disc motor powering a generator, making it an ultra-light ultra-efficient hybrid electric vehicle. That’s a lot of ultras, but Mueller says he has the numbers to back it up. The wave disc apparently uses 60% of its fuel for propulsion, compared to 15% of fuel used for propulsion in conventional engines. And because the wave disc powered cars would be much lighter — perhaps 20% lighter — the fuel efficiency is even greater.

This all might seem very pie-in-the-sky, and that’s quite understandable. However, Mueller’s team has received $2.5 million in federal dollars from the Advanced Research Projects Administration – Energy (ARPA-E), which will be put towards creating a 25kw engine perhaps as early as next year. According to Mueller, that’s enough power to run an SUV.

I’m hoping Mueller’s checked his math on this, because I am very excited to have a car running on something as efficient as it is elegant.

Well I checked the math and it doesn't look out of the question. Some folks from Warsaw, Poland and Zurich, Switzerland [pdf] have checked the math with computerized flow simulations and think it looks pretty good. The concept goes back to at least 1906. So it is not a new idea. What is new is this particular realization. And of course we have computers for simulation and automated milling machines to make prototypes and small production volumes. Things not available in 1906.

Of course the engine is just the beginning. Once that is proved you have to design the whole hybrid drive train. And then you have to wrap an automobile around it. I don't expect to see them on the market as a production vehicle for about ten years. Unless some really big money (or the Japanese) get behind it.

Some more places to visit to get a handle on the technology:

Daily Tech

Green Cars

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Social Skills Of An Engineer

The first mate was berating me for my lack of social skills so I thought a post of some relevant educational material was in order.

Why "Everyone" In India Is An Engineer.

Did you ever wonder why India produces so many engineers? Well there is an answer. It is the culture. But not in a way you would imagine.

India is perhaps the only country in the world where parents decide the career of their children a few moments after birth.

This has famously been captured in the classic Bollywood movie 3 Idiots where the character of Farhan Qureshi played by R.Madhavan says "I was born at 5:15 am and at 5:16 am my father said: My son will be an engineer ".

The film which stars Aamir Khan (one of the most intellgent and biggest bollywood superstars) is an excellent depiction of what engineering education is like in India and how parents force their kids to pursue careers that are only meant to create a good standing in society for themselves (instead of pursuing what they love) . The movie was such an outrageous success that it is one of the highest grossing bollywood films of all time and is a treat to watch over and over again.

No wonder, because India produces 600,000 engineers from colleges across the country every year (read here for more) and in many families it is trait that has been passed on for generations. It is not uncommon to see three to four generations of one family ranging from immediate brothers, cousins, uncles and distant relatives all having an engineering background.

In my engineering career I have met more than a few engineers who were not in love with their work. They were piss poor engineers. I preferred to shunt them off into more important work like sorting resistors by color code. Work which could be double checked with an ohm meter. Just to keep them from mass producing a disaster by design.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Overheard On The 'Net - 4

At Hot Air.

How have we come to the point where far too many see law school as a qualifying factor?
HakerA on October 4, 2010 at 12:14 PM

It has always amazed me that so many people think of lawyers as “smart.”

I worked for many years with engineers — brillant people who sometimes don’t speak with perfect eloquence. But now I spend more time with lawyers — who are all able to communicate beautifully, but usually can’t think their way out of a wet paper bag.

As politicians often say (in private):“There are only two things that matter in the world: perception and reality. And reality doesn’t matter.”

logis on October 4, 2010 at 12:41 PM

I really like that. Don't get me wrong. Lawyers are some of my best friends. But on this one I'm siding with the engineers.

My Political Source

I like to get my politics from engineers. Engineers are schooled in:

"What can possibly go wrong? In truth just about everything."

While the general electorate dreams of:

"Laws? We just pass them and the words (and government guns) will give us what we are dreaming of."

You can't bust that kind of thinking with reason. It is pure faith.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Mass Displacement And Acceleration

In the interests of science I like to run videos of science experiments from time to time. This one explores buoyancy, displacement, acceleration, energy transfer and probably a few other engineering if not scientific principles. Pay close attention. In fact to master all the concepts you probably ought to watch it several times.

You can find more like this at Hawtness which is NSFW. You might want to search for Hawtness Mad Beer Skills for another good one.

And for the ladies among us. Did you know that engineer/airplane designer Howard Hughes designed that female torture instrument known as the under wire bra? The details come from a site called Bikini Science. Which reminds me. I need to go back and carefully re-study the July 4th Bikini Edition for engineering details. You never know what you might learn.

I ♥ Engineering.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Dating An Engineer

I also liked this one.

H/T Diogenes via e-mail

Faith In Numbers

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Who Ya Gonna Call?

From the comments in a New York Times piece on why so many engineers in the Muslim world are terrorists:

In every field
and every endeavor
there are those who are just
as crazy as ever.
But even the crazy
see one thing clear:
If you want something done,
call an engineer.

Robert Marino

H/T #2 Son via e-mail

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Scientist Quits

“Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps.” Hendrik Tennekes

Science is in a sorry state these days. It is so bad that a Dutch scientist has resigned from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Henk Tennekes is well known to the visitors of our website. A few days ago, he told me that he submitted a letter of resignation to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on Saturday, January 23. He wrote to me “I don’t want to remain a member of an organization that, like AMS and NAS, screws up science that badly.” The Dutch newspaper NRC-Handelsblad apparently got hold of a copy of the resignation letter and ran a News Flash on Saturday, January 30. In the letter to the Academy, Henk complains that he submitted the manuscript of his essay on Hermetic Jargon (which I am happy to reproduce here below, with his permission) to the Academy President at that time, Frits van Oostrom. The President, however, did not bother to respond. The NRC news flash, translated by Henk himself at my request, reads:

You can read the rest by following the link.

What bothers me is the attitude (not a new one) that we know it all. And what is unknown will just be a few minor corrections and additions to current theory.

American and British history is riddled with examples of valid research and inventions which have been suppressed and derogated by the conventional science community. This has been of great cost to society and to individual scientists. Rather than furthering the pursuit of new scientific frontiers, the structure of British and American scientific institutions leads to conformity and furthers consensus-seeking. Scientists are generally like other people when it comes to the biases and self-justifications that cause them to make bad decisions and evade the truth. Some topics in science are 'taboo' subjects.

The author of the paper goes on to describe how it works. He does sometimes fall in with the cranks (well who knows - maybe some day they won't be cranks) but he makes a lot of good points along the way.

Here is one I especially like.

Other innovators who were described by Milton (Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment 1996) as victims of the insults of the skeptical scientific power elite, were such men as John Logie Baird, inventor of television. Baird had been described by the British Royal Society as "a swindler" (p. 19). Likewise, Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays was decried as an "elaborate hoax" (p.22) by Lord Kelvin, the most influential scientist of Europe in 1895. Scientists of Roentgen's day produced film fogging X-rays on a substantial scale but were unwilling to consider the wide ranging implications of Roentgen's work for 10 years after his discovery (Milton, 1996).

Another example of such victimization, presented by Dean Radin (1996) in his book The Conscious Universe, involved the theory of German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener. This theory which Wegener developed in 1915, contended that the earth's continents had once been a single mass of land which later drifted apart. Although Wegener carefully cataloged geological evidence, his American and British colleagues ridiculed both him and his idea (Radin, 1996). Although Wegener died an intellectual outcast in 1930, every schoolchild is currently taught his theory which is known as continental drift.

I'm not actually comfortable with Radin's book. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. I don't think we actually have any scientific truth in the field. However, people do report things which, if valid, are weakly explained. Or explained away. I'm personally of the opinion that it is an emergent behavior of the way our brains work. I believe it is related to the fact that not all the signals the brain sends out rise to the level of consciousness (I have a feeling).

In any case I think this list is instructive.

Hans Alfven (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)

Astronomers thought that gravity alone is important in solar systems, in galaxies, etc. Alfven's idea that plasma physics is of equal or greater importance to gravity was derided for decades.

John L. Baird (television camera)

When the first television system was demonstrated to the Royal Society (British scientists,) they scoffed and ridiculed it.

Robert Bakker (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)

Everyone knows that dinosaurs are like Gila monsters or big tortoises: large, slow, and intolerant of the cold. And they're all colored olive drab too! :)

Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)

Not ridiculed, but their boss W. Shockley nixed their idea, and when they started investigating it, he made them stop. They assembled their point-contact experiment on a wheeled cart and continued. They could shove it into a closet whenever the boss came by.

J Harlen Bretz

Endured decades of scorn as the laughingstock of the geology world. His crime was to insist that enormous amounts of evidence showed that the "scabland" desert landscape of Eastern Washington state had endured an ancient catastrophy: a flood of staggering proportions. This was outright heresy, since the geology community of the time had dogmatic belief in a "uniformitarian" position, where all changes must take place incrementally over vast time scales. Bretz was vindicated by the 1950s. Quote: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

One of the fields I'm currently exploring, fusion power, makes extensive use of ideas such as Alfven Waves in an effort to make tokamak devices (such as ITER) work.

Here is another good site on Geniuses derided. I speaks to something I am personally familiar with.

Some ridiculed ideas which had no supporters:

* Ball lightning - lacking a theory, it was long dismissed as retinal afterimages
* Catastrophism - ridicule of rapid Earth changes, asteroid mass extinctions
* Child abuse - before 1950, doctors were mystified by "spontaneous" childhood bruising
* Cooperation or altruism between animals - versus Evolution's required competition
* Instantaneous meteor noises - evidence rejected because sound should be delayed by distance
* Mind-body connection - psychoneuroimmunology, doctors ridiculed psychological basis for disease
* Perceptrons - later vindicated as Neural Networks

I once had a personal experience with ball lightning which I describe here.

I once had a personal experience with ball lightning. About 3/4 of a m across glowing green. Moving slowly. Scared the hell out of me.

It happened inside a geodesic dome that had a long wire antenna connected. (Ham radio stuff).

I watched it while slowly backing away. It dissipated in about 10 seconds more or less.

Let me add that it seems to have been triggered by a near by lightning strike. More discussion of ball lightning.

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift

So true. The problem is in separating the cranks from the geniuses. I did a post on some "cranks" that seem to be coming up with some interesting results. The people "in the know" said it was all foolishness.

I did a post not too long back on the origins of inertia that I called Maching Einstein. And there is a very long thread at NASA Spaceflight on the subject. You would think that a fundamental concept like inertia might warrant a closer look. Maybe a few millions a year for experiments. But you would be wrong.

I remember what an uphill fight I had to get people interested in Polywell fusion. I got comments like, "They blew up their experiment? Proof positive of incompetence". Or "If this is such a good idea why was funding cut?" Or "There is a paper out there (Todd Rider) that proves it can't work." And much more along those lines. Now is it a sure thing? No. But the odds are good enough and the rewards so large that it is worth a few million (which the US Navy put up in August of 2007) to find some answers. There is way too much in science that the scientific establishment does not want answers too - you know - the science is settled.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Rockets

Rocket science is easy. Rocket engineering is... not.


H/T taniwha at Talk Polywell who coined the phrase.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

China Dominates

Students from China and Russia came out on top in a NSA contest for computer programmers.

Programmers from China and Russia have dominated an international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components.

Whether the outcome of this competition is another sign that math and science education in the U.S. needs improvement may spur debate. But the fact remains: Of 70 finalists, 20 were from China, 10 from Russia and two from the U.S.

TopCoder Inc., which runs software competitions as part of its software development service, operates TopCoder Open, an annual contest.

About 4,200 people participated in the U.S. National Security Agency-supported challenge. The NSA has been sponsoring the program for a number of years because of its interest in hiring people with advanced skills.

Participants in the contest, which was open to anyone -- from student to professional -- and finished with 120 competitors from around the world, went through a process of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas.

China's showing in the finals was also helped by the sheer volume of its numbers, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers were finalists. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128, among others.

Of the total number of contestants, 93% were male, and 84% were aged between 18 and 24.

This lack of talent from the USA may be caused by one of two things. Either we are not developing enough computer scientists and engineers or the one's we have are already employed and producing. In either case it points to the fact that we are not investing enough in the #1 resource of the 21st Century. Brains. Or it could mean that our best resources are going into where the real money is. Marketing and sales.

I have been doing my part. I have one son in marketing (graduated with honors in Russian literature from U. Chicago) and another son and a daughter studying engineering.

H/T The Risks Digest

The Nightmare

This Design News article describes very well every design engineer's worst fear. Did I screw something up that got a lot of people killed?

Engineering design decisions are viewed by the unknowing as precise, no-compromise conclusions. If that were so all of us would feel better about our design choices. But in the real world, decisions are always made under the watchful eye of the accountants. So compromises are made and we live with the consequences. Except when people die. Then the binary nature of designing complex devices hits home: good decision, good result. Bad decision, bad result. Maybe really bad.

The designers at Airbus must be going through a lot of soul searching right now as they sift through the incredible three-minute burst of telemetry data that originated from Flight 447 on May 31. If you placed yourself in their shoes, you know you'd be hoping against hope that whatever happened was not the result of a bad decision you made. "228 people are dead. The airplane came apart. What if I screwed up?"

Every time an aircraft goes down my first question is: "was it one I worked on?" The second question if the first answer is affirmative is, "Did a system I worked on fail?" So far I have never gotten an affirmative response to the second question. Thank the Maker and my attention to detail. But there is always a chance something I didn't anticipate or overlooked or mistested will go wrong.

And that very low level background fear will be with me my whole life. Which is a very good thing because it still informs every engineering decision I make.

What Engineers Do

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

I especially liked Part 5 where one engineer describes what it is like to commit other people's lives to one of your designs. I had that feeling a lot working in aerospace on jet aircraft. I still get that feeling when a plane goes down. Was it one I worked on? Was the failure because of something I did?

“Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps.” - Hendrik Tennekes

So where is this generation's Apollo Program? How about fusion powered rockets? A trip to Mars in 3 or 4 weeks? There is a way that has a chance to do it: Polywell Fusion. Because no mater how much work is done on tokamaks (ITER etc.) they are never going to be light enough to get us into space.

Why hasn't Polywell Fusion been funded by the Obama administration?
Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

H/T Billy Catringer at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Science Toys - 2

In the second of my series on scientific toys I want to look at one of the foundations of modern civilization. The electric motor. Here is a nice Electric Motor Kitthat sells for a very reasonable $10.75. Here is another science kit that includes an electric motor and other experiments, ScienceWiz Inventions Experiment Kit and Book 13 Experiments,for $19.99.

The history of the electric motor is a long one and starts with the discovery of electromagnetism by Michael Faraday. He built his first motor in 1821. You can read more about Michael Faraday by getting the book: Michael Faraday and the Discovery of Electromagnetism.That brings us to a very interesting point. The invention of the first electric car.
Now obviously the car was a toy. But the idea is there. And it was invented in 1828 just seven years after Faraday's discovery of electromagnetism. I'd say that was pretty astounding progress for the time. You can learn about the history of electric cars at Electric and Hybrid Cars: A Historyand also at The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History.Now suppose you want to build your own electric vehicle? There is a how to book that will help: Build Your Own Electric Vehicle

And then there is Thomas Davenport, The Brandon Blacksmith: Inventor Of The Electric Motorwho was the first to use the electric motor commercially. He used it to power a printing press. Due to the high cost of batteries (tell me about it) his invention was a commercial failure.

The great American inventor Edison who was the first to electrify a few city blocks is probably the most interesting inventor in America given what he accomplished with the materials and understanding available in his time. Here are a few books on Edison, his life and his times. I'd like to start with Working at Inventing: Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experiencebecause I actually visited Edison's Menlo Park lab in the summer of 1954 when I was a kid of 10. It was a fascinating experience. The lab was untouched for a number of years and was quite dusty. If you live on the East Coast be sure to visit.

Here are some more biographies of Edison you might like.
Edison: Inventing the Century
Thomas Edison and Modern America: An Introduction with Documents
Edison and the Business of Innovation
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World

Which brings us to Nikola Tesla who once worked for Edison. In the 1940 movie Edison the Manwith Spencer Tracy as Edison, Tesla was called Michael Simon probably to avoid distracting from the focus on Edison. Well it certainly distracts me.

Here is a Tesla book I read a while back and really enjoyed. It covers some of Tesla's inventions in his own words. It gives a feel for how much Tesla understood about electrical theory and how much he was ignorant of. Any second year student in electrical theory would be familiar with this material, but when Tesla wrote it up it was state of the art. We have come a long way. The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla (The Lost Science Series).

In any case, Tesla invented the three phase AC motor which made long distance (over a few miles) electrical power transmission feasible. Here are some Tesla biographies:
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius (Lerner Biographies)
My Inventions - The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius (Citadel Press Book)
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla
Tesla: Man Out of Time

Enough of history. How about some practical books on electric motors. Here is a good book that goes deep into the subject: Electric Motors and Control Techniques for $16.47 which is a very nice price for a deep look into the subject. A number of reviewers suggest that this is not a good book for a beginner. A better book for beginners might be Audel - Electric Motors.Audel's handbooks are oriented to practical use and installation of technology so this might be a good place to start for the technology beginner.

Here is one designed to assist in the training of electricians. It covers every thing from fundamental concepts including electrical distribution to installation and maintenance. Transformers and Motors

This is another deep book that covers stepper motors which are very easy to control with computers. Electric Motors and their Controls: An Introduction

Some more motor books for engineers.
Practical Electric Motor Handbook
Electric Motor Handbook

OK. I think that is more than enough to get your junior scientists and engineers educated. From the simplest beginning to advanced engineering. Of course it only scratches the surface. But what a scratch.

And here is a link to Science Toys -1 which covers volcanoes and geology.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Draining Brains

Information Processing is looking at why American are not going into science and engineering. For one thing it is hard. He quotes from the New York Times.

NYTimes: At M.I.T., a 2007 survey showed that 28.7 percent of undergraduates were headed for work in finance, 13.7 in management consulting and just 7.5 percent in aerospace and defense. The top 10 employers included McKinsey, Google, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bain, JPMorgan and Oracle — but not a single military contractor or government office.

The closer your are to the money supply (sales, finance) the more money you make. Engineers do make financial decisions - under the guidance of the sales and finance guys - so their compensation is above average. Just not as good as the finance and sales guys. However, there are other problems. Engineers need vast experience to be any good and that takes time - decades.

Another was pointed out to me by the Dean of Engineering at NIU. Engineers need the soul of an artist because engineering is making what you want from what you can get. Just like art only with more constraints and the math is harder.

The contact with the money flows also explains why engineers make more than scientists. Even though the math for science is generally harder.

Where does that leave us? Only those with the capability plus intense desire become scientists or for that matter engineers. Which is as it should be. I wouldn't want aircraft designed by those who were only in it for the money.

Northern Illinois University - DeKalb

I have spent the day at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb student/parent orientation. I was there for my #3 son who is enrolling in their electronic/electrical engineering program. From what I can tell it is a very good program. Their aim is not only training engineers but also placing them in industry. They have an excellent co-op program. I spent some time talking with the dean of the program and I was impressed. Their philosophy is that you are not a real engineer unless you can do real engineering. Book larnin' is not enough. Their program is wide ranging from circuit design to manufacturing engineering and program management.

If you are looking for a school that will help your son or daughter get real world skills I'd have to say that it seems like a very fine school. I'll probably have more to say about it as I get some experience (through my son) with the program.