The term engineering is derived from the
Latiningenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise". (Full article...)
Engineers, as practitioners of
engineering, are
professionals who
invent,
design, analyze, build and test
machines,
complex systems,
structures,
gadgets and
materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost. The word engineer (
Latiningeniator, the origin of the Ir. in the title of engineer in countries like Belgium and The Netherlands) is derived from the Latin words ingeniare ("to contrive, devise") and ingenium ("cleverness"). The foundational qualifications of a licensed professional engineer typically include a four-year
bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a
master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations. (Full article...)
Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby
Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce
hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called
Six Companies, Inc., which began construction on the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned over the dam to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. (Full article...)
... that hinges on arch bridges were introduced in 1858 and remain popular in modern civil engineering?
... that Parasitic Engineering was named as a reference to a
MITS co-founder calling third-party hardware vendors "parasite companies"?
... that a 16-year-old high-school student reverse-engineered
iMessage to let Android users text iPhone users with blue chat bubbles using the Beeper Mini app?
... that Hai-Quan Mao was elected an
AIMBE fellow for engineering
nanomaterials for regenerative medicine and drug delivery?
A micrometer, sometimes known as a micrometer screw gauge, is a device incorporating a calibrated
screw widely used for precise measurement of components in
mechanical engineering and
machining as well as most mechanical trades, along with other
metrological instruments such as
dial,
vernier, and
digital calipers. Micrometers are usually, but not always, in the form of
calipers (opposing ends joined by a frame), which is why micrometer caliper is another common name. The spindle is a very accurately machined screw and the object to be measured is placed between the spindle and the anvil. The spindle is moved by turning the ratchet knob or thimble until the object to be measured is lightly touched by both the spindle and the anvil.
Micrometers are also used in telescopes or microscopes to measure the apparent diameter of celestial bodies or microscopic objects. The micrometer used with a telescope was invented about 1638 by
William Gascoigne, an English astronomer.
Colloquially the word micrometer is often shortened to mike or mic.
The tubes were constructed using the
shield method and are each 6,550 feet (2,000 m) long and 15.5 feet (4.7 m) wide. The interiors are lined with cast-iron "rings" formed with concrete. The tubes descend 91 to 95 feet (28 to 29 m) below the
mean high water level of the East River, with a maximum gradient of 3.1 percent. During the tunnel's construction, a house at
58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn was converted into a ventilation building and emergency exit. (Full article...)
Image 2
The Churchill Machine Tool Company Limited began as the manufacturing subsidiary of the
machine tool importers Charles Churchill & Company Limited founded in the early 1900s by US-born Charles Churchill (1837–1916). Created out of the
personal bankruptcy of Charles Churchill, the company developed to become one of the largest British importers of machine tools from the United States and a major manufacturer of such tools, initially under
licence and later of its own development.
The original business importing American machine tools into Britain began with Charles Churchill as sole proprietor and later as a partnership with two others. It became a limited company in 1889. In 1906 a separate company, The Churchill Machine Tool Co Ltd, was established with the purpose of adapting tools imported by Charles Churchill & Co. The former expanded, producing American tools under licence and then manufactured tools of its own design, in particular precision
surface grinders and similar engineering machinery. In 1918 The Churchill Machine Tool Co relocated its factories onto a single site at
Broadheath, near
Altrincham. (Full article...)
Image 3
Overhead View of Tehachapi Energy Storage Project, Tehachapi, CA
The Tehachapi Energy Storage Project (TSP) is a 8
MW/32
MWhlithium-ion battery-based
grid energy storage system at the Monolith Substation of
Southern California Edison (SCE) in
Tehachapi, California, sufficient to power between 1,600 and 2,400 homes for four hours. At the time of commissioning in 2014, it was the largest lithium-ion battery system operating in
North America and one of the largest in the world. TSP is considered to be a modern-day energy storage pioneer with significant accomplishments that have proven the viability of utility-scale energy storage using lithium-ion technology. While originally envisioned as a
research and development project, TSP operated as a
distribution-level resource for SCE and for calendar year 2020, SCE reported that TSP operated in the
wholesale energy market with revenue exceeding operating and maintenance costs. In 2021, SCE began the decommissioning of TSP, which was followed by formal decommissioning by state regulators in 2022. The physical dismantlement of TSP is expected to be completed by the end of 2022. (Full article...)
Image 4
The radius of maximum wind (RMW) is the distance between the center of a
cyclone and its band of strongest
winds. It is a parameter in atmospheric dynamics and
tropical cyclone forecasting. The highest
rainfall rates occur near the RMW of
tropical cyclones. The extent of a cyclone's
storm surge and its maximum potential intensity can be determined using the RMW. As
maximum sustained winds increase, the RMW decreases. Recently, RMW has been used in descriptions of
tornadoes. When designing
buildings to prevent against failure from atmospheric pressure change, RMW can be used in the calculations. (Full article...)
Image 5
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical
megastructure that encompasses a
star and captures a large percentage of its
solar power output. The concept is a
thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a
spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting
planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a
civilization to harvest far more energy.
The first modern imagining of such a structure was by
Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist
Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of
Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches could be an indicator of
extraterrestrial life. (Full article...)
Image 6
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's
genes using
technology. It is a set of
technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel
organisms.
New
DNA is obtained by either isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using
recombinant DNA methods or by
artificially synthesising the DNA. A
construct is usually created and used to insert this DNA into the host organism. The first recombinant DNA molecule was made by
Paul Berg in 1972 by combining DNA from the monkey virus
SV40 with the
lambda virus. (Full article...)
The Castaing machine is a device used to add lettering and decoration to the edge of a coin. Such lettering was necessitated by counterfeiting and edge clipping, which was a common problem resulting from the uneven and irregular
hammered coinage. When
Aubin Olivier introduced
milled coinage to France, he also developed a method of marking the edges with lettering which would make it possible to detect if metal had been shaved from the edge. This method involved using a collar, into which the metal flowed from the pressure of the press. This technique was slower and more costly than later methods. France abandoned milled coinage in favour of hammering in 1585.
England experimented briefly with milled coinage, but it wasn't until
Peter Blondeau brought his method of minting coins there in the mid-seventeenth century that such coinage began in earnest in that country. Blondeau also invented a different method of marking the edge, which was, according to him, faster and less costly than the method pioneered by Olivier. Though Blondeau's exact method was secretive, numismatists have asserted that it likely resembled the later device invented by
Jean Castaing. Castaing's machine marked the edges by means of two steel rulers, which, when a coinage blank was forced between them, imprinted legends or designs on its edge. Castaing's device found favour in France, and it was eventually adopted in other nations, including Britain and the United States, but it was eventually phased out by mechanised minting techniques. (Full article...)
Image 9
In
mathematical analysis, the Dirac delta function (or δ distribution), also known as the unit impulse, is a
generalized function on the
real numbers, whose value is zero everywhere except at zero, and whose
integral over the entire real line is equal to one. Since there is no function having this property, to model the delta "function" rigorously involves the use of
limits or, as is common in mathematics,
measure theory and the theory of
distributions.
The delta function was introduced by physicist
Paul Dirac, and has since been applied routinely in physics and engineering to model point masses and instantaneous impulses. It is called the delta function because it is a continuous analogue of the
Kronecker delta function, which is usually defined on a discrete domain and takes values 0 and 1. The mathematical rigor of the delta function was disputed until
Laurent Schwartz developed the theory of distributions, where it is defined as a linear form acting on functions. (Full article...)
A voltage doubler is an electronic circuit which charges capacitors from the input voltage and switches these charges in such a way that, in the ideal case, exactly twice the voltage is produced at the output as at its input.
The simplest of these circuits is a form of
rectifier which take an AC voltage as input and outputs a doubled DC voltage. The switching elements are simple diodes and they are driven to switch state merely by the alternating voltage of the input. DC-to-DC voltage doublers cannot switch in this way and require a driving circuit to control the switching. They frequently also require a switching element that can be controlled directly, such as a
transistor, rather than relying on the voltage across the switch as in the simple AC-to-DC case. (Full article...)
Bell was an energetic and skilful entrepreneur as well as an innovative
metallurgist. He was involved in multiple partnerships with his brothers to make iron and
alkali chemicals, and with other pioneers including
Robert Stirling Newall to make steel cables. He pioneered the large-scale manufacture of aluminium at his Washington works, conducting experiments in its production, and in the production of other chemicals such as the newly discovered element
thallium. He was a director of major companies including the
North Eastern Railway and the
Forth Bridge company, then the largest bridge project in the world. (Full article...)
Beryl May DentMIEE (10 May 1900 – 9 August 1977) was an English
mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in
Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established
Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the
University of Bristol with
First Class Honours in
applied mathematics. She was awarded the
Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student at
Newnham College, Cambridge.
She returned to
Bristol in 1925, after being appointed a researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1927,
John Lennard-Jones was appointed Professor of
Theoretical physics, a chair being created for him, with Dent becoming his research assistant in theoretical physics. Lennard‑Jones pioneered the theory of interatomic and intermolecular forces at Bristol and she became one of his first collaborators. They published six papers together from 1926 to 1928, dealing with the forces between atoms and ions, that were to become the foundation of her master's thesis. Later work has shown that the results they obtained had direct application to
atomic force microscopy by predicting that non-contact imaging is possible only at small tip-sample separations. (Full article...)
Image 4A drawing for a
steam locomotive. Engineering is applied to
design, with emphasis on function and the utilization of mathematics and science. (from Engineering)
Image 8The application of the steam engine allowed coke to be substituted for charcoal in iron making, lowering the cost of iron, which provided engineers with a new material for building bridges. This bridge was made of
cast iron, which was soon displaced by less brittle
wrought iron as a structural material. (from Engineering)
Image 19Design of a
turbine requires collaboration of engineers from many fields, as the system involves mechanical, electro-magnetic and chemical processes. The
blades,
rotor and stator as well as the
steam cycle all need to be carefully designed and optimized. (from Engineering)
Image 20Engineers, scientists and technicians at work on target positioner inside
National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber (from Engineering)
Image 29Archimedes is regarded as one of the leading scientists in
classical antiquity whose ideas have underpinned much of the practice of engineering. (from Engineer)
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