"Wisdom begins in wonder" – Socrates
Month: July 2018
Electrical Ballasts
07/22/18
“How can we limit the amount of current entering an electrical load?”
Electrical appliances can be very sensitive to their supply conditions. One part of this is their supply current. If they receive too much, then they may burn out and stop working. To solve this, Electrical Ballasts have created to limit the amount of current entering a load. They may just be a simple resistor, capacitor, inductor, or a combination of these.
Ship Ballasts
07/21/18
“How can we provide stability to a vessel?”
One of the most important things that a vessel must watch out for is its stability. If the weight is not distributed correctly, then the entire ship can capsize! So how can we use our engineering mindset to solve this problem? Well, what if we were to add some additional weight to another part of the ship to increase its inertia and resilience. This extra weight is called a Ship Ballast and is an essential part of modern Seafair.
Urban Tree Cover
07/20/18
“How can we increase urban climate resilience with trees?”
With each passing day, more and more people are living in cities. However, dense urban conglomerations are prone to drastic climate change events, such as deadly heat waves worsened, exacerbated pollution, and flooding from rainfall. But one simple way to combat this is to plant more trees. This Urban Tree Cover lowers temperatures, absorbs pollution, and protects from rainfall flooding. This is just a simple illustration of how a little bit of scientific knowledge can help increase climate change resilience.
Fusegates
07/19/18
“How can we have an extra secure flood control system?”
With the ever-increasing proliferation of climate-change-induced natural disasters, humanity needs to focus on making it’s built infrastructure more resilient. And since floods are becoming more powerful on average with each passing day, our floodgate designs must become stronger in proportion. Fusegates are an illustration of this commitment. Fusegates are formed by placing an inlet well behind ballast in an angled bucket on top of a concrete sill. When water floods into the well, the exceptionally strong stability of the system will be able to counteract the pressure. If an overflow occurs, then the inlet well will be able to stabilize the flow of water. If an exceptionally strong flood occurs, then some of the water will be able to be leaked into the basement and through the inlet for further control.
Roller Gates
07/18/18
“How can we have floodgates with an angular mechanism?”
Floodgates come in many shapes in sizes. And sometimes, we may have a limited range of movement. That’s why engineers have devised Roller Gates, which can control flooding using circular motion.
Swanson’s Law
07/17/18
“Does solar power price drops have some form of pattern?”
Every day it seems that we hear about the price drop of solar power. However, does this price change somehow have a pattern? Well, a solar industrialist known as Richard Swanson was analyzing the data and found that PV module prices drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume. This phenomenon is known as Swanson’s law and is similar to Moore’s law in Computer Science.
Drum Gates
07/16/18
“How can we control water in a reservoir using valves?”
Water in reservoirs can be difficult to control. If there is too much rain, it can easily overflow. But how can we control this using our engineering mindsets? Well, what if we were to modify the height of the reservoir using a floating drum? And what if we were to place this floating drum in between two mounds, and use a valve to let water in to raise in and another one to lower it? This is the main idea behind Drum Gates and are applied to Floodgates all over the world.
Radial Floodgates
07/15/18
“How can we make gates that work using rotation?”
Floodgates need to be adapted to their local environments. And sometimes, this means we will have to design our gates to move in the most interesting of ways. Ones that use rotation are called Radial Floodgates. This design allows the bearings to be placed outside of water.
Quasistatic Processes
07/14/18
“Can a thermodynamic process be so slow that it’s almost static?”
Thermodynamic processes can happen over any period of time. Sometimes they happen so slowly that they almost seem to be static. These Quasistatic Processes are often used in analysis of Iso-Processes due to their stable nature.
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