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Google Earth has opened up a whole new world of time-wasting. As engineers, most of us were content to spend a couple of minutes trying in vain to find our house before heading out for a pie, some dedicated fellows have been scouring the world for oddities. Mark Steer wantonly reaped the fruits of their labour.
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Tuesday 13 November, 2007 06:03 PM |
Do you tap the top of a soda can before opening it? Do you know anyone else who does? Do you even know what the theory is behind why it is supposed to stop the can from frothing when opened? Do you know where the theory came from? Did you know it may even do more harm than good?
If you would like to know the answers to these questions then look no farther. What I would really like to see however is someone engineer a way to indicate to the user (opener, whatever you want to call them) what the potential is for the can to explode upon opening.
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Monday 12 November, 2007 08:01 PM |
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Three years ago, I joined the board of a company whose management, I soon recognized, was incompetent . I said so, but I was a new board member and the management had a lot of old friends and allies on the board. I was listened to respectfully but nothing much happened. |
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Monday 12 November, 2007 12:05 PM |
As engineers I doubt you never really needed an excuse to drink more beer. Well now you have one regardless. Beer is better for you than both milk and water.
Beer has fewer calories and less sodium than milk as well as a few other benefits. And beer also is now thought to be better than water after a bit of strenuous exercise, having a slightly better hydration effect and the carbohydrate is also good for replacing lost calories.
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Sunday 11 November, 2007 06:03 PM |
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Inventors and engineers have been registering bright ideas with the world's
patent office for over 150 years.
how has technology changed the world?
while the flush toilet, aspirin, the computer, the pill,
the photo-copier and the mobile phone have proved invaluable,
the same cannot be said of every innovation.
but, huuu... what makes a good invention? |
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Tuesday 6 November, 2007 02:08 PM |
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Did you know that casino dice are generally hand made? Or that they are perfectly cubical to within one five-thousandth of an inch. That's some pretty impressive engineering. It seems that dice have been in use for quite some time, and show no signs of being replaced any time soon. Find out some more interesting facts about this simple implement. |
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Monday 29 October, 2007 08:09 PM |
Engineers can find many uses for non newtonian liquid. Essentially it is a liquid which changes it's viscosity depending on whether it is being agitated or not. What on earth does that mean? Well it means you can have some fun with it (there are probably some actual uses for non newtonian liquid too but I'll leave that up to you to come up with).
And it turns out that for the sake of playing about with some of this liquid yourself it is very easy to make.
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Monday 29 October, 2007 01:06 AM |
Well you remember back in school when you learnt about the pythagoras theorem and it was pretty cool (well maybe you didn't but if you're an engineer you probably did). You learnt about the areas of triangles and all was good, then along came funky software and you probably haven't used it since.
Turns out this nifty little formula may be a little more useful than you expected. Run your eyes over this a few times and see how you can take advantage of this formula in investigating the relationships of many other items.
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Friday 26 October, 2007 07:10 PM |
I saved the image and cut the 2 squares out and put them side by side and they are in fact the same yet no matter how much I look at the picture I just can't see the two as being the same shade.
This is really quite cool and I wish I could come up with an engineering application for it.
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Wednesday 24 October, 2007 09:02 PM |
As strange as it may sound, in a group of 23 people, the odds are greater than even that someone else in that atleast 2 of them have the same birthday. Doesn't quite sound right to me but there you go.
How does this relate to engineering? It doesn't really except to illustrate that probabilities aren't always what you might expect.
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Sunday 21 October, 2007 10:56 PM |
Engineers aren't always noted for being the most eloquent. And really who cares, I like my speech to be like my products, efficient, clean and simple. Unfortunately sometimes that doesn't work out the best for me but I deal with it.
So what's the challenge you ask? Well if you can read this poem without mistake then apparently you are doing better than 90% of people who have tried. Don't know quite what that proves but a challenge is always good.
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Sunday 21 October, 2007 03:04 AM |
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I bet you never knew that Rowan Atkinson was actually well on his way to becoming an electrical engineer before his change of course into humor that eventually led to successes with Black Adder and Mr Bean. He completed his degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Newcastle University, and went on to do an MSc in Engineering Science at Oxford. Interestingly he also dislikes the limlight and is said to have Electrical engineer down as his occupation on his passport. |
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Sunday 21 October, 2007 12:57 AM |
Even wanted to know how a fly can walk on ceilings? Well now you can.
I suppose it's not terribly useful in itself but may serve as inspiration for something else you're working on.
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Wednesday 17 October, 2007 09:03 PM |
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Stuck on a problem? Maybe you just need to change your thought patterns and see things in a different light. Quite literally! Apparently light is not only a wave but also a particle , possibly, whose behaviour can alter depending on how you chose to look at it. Seems to me like that's exactly how us engineers tend to go about solving problems. (hehe and just like the topic of the article, that last sentence could be interpreted in several ways depending on how you wish to view it ;) |
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Tuesday 16 October, 2007 01:07 AM |
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There's no denying that the Germans and the Chinese are well known for quite different characteristics in their products. (I won't go into details here, I'll assume you understand those differences). Well here's a humourous comparison of their cultures , which may go a long way to understanding the differences in their products. |
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Friday 12 October, 2007 09:01 PM |
A co-worker who takes credit for someone else's work or rattles off obnoxious jokes is engaging in one of the top 10 most offensive workplace no-no's , according to survey results released this week. |
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Monday 8 October, 2007 01:16 PM |
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very important information - please take it on board - the power of words
IT IS important to be multi-lingual . For example, you might want to speak lawyer: "No, you did hear correctly. That is my fee."
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Monday 1 October, 2007 02:23 AM |
This sounds to me like the way an engineer would tackle language.
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official
language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. |
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Sunday 30 September, 2007 10:03 AM |
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Read more...
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Sometimes you've just got to tell it the way it is check out this interesting collection |
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Sunday 16 September, 2007 02:05 PM |
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Well we had you know if you're an old engineer a few days ago. So I thought I'd follow it up with a plain old, you know you're an engineer . It's scary how many of these actually seem true even though it's supposed to be humour. Add any others you can think of as comments below. |
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Friday 7 September, 2007 06:50 AM |
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