A few months ago, I decided to try out a little gadget that a friend had told me about called the Pulse Pen by livescribe.  Spending $150 on a pen was a little difficult to swallow, but I soon found myself wondering how I lived without it.

The pen works using micro-dot paper, a voice recorder, and a small camera at the tip of the pen.  It records up to 200hrs of writing and audio for the conversations you are taking notes on.  You can then share the video online with anyone and they can print pdf copies of the notes.

The pen is perfect for catching tidbits of information from customers and being able to have a record of exactly what was said by who in the correct context.  This has been helpful to establish customer testimonials, review how something was phrased just perfectly, and to educate people who could not attend a meeting on exactly what happened.

Once the notes are uploaded to the website, you can actually click anywhere and start listening to the conversation as it played out while the notes were being taken.  It’s really difficult to do this pen justice without being able to demo it live.

If you are an engineer, imagine being able to draw out your design with voice-over, then share it with colleagues/suppliers!  If you are a student, imagine being able to record all of your class notes and share them with others!  Anyone who has ever wondered, “What did she say before that was so insightful,” needs one of these.  It will change the way you attend meetings and will make you better at your job or school.

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These holes full of rubble would sure slow me down on the expressway, even if they are a little bit aggressive as a speed deterent.  If you hit one of these at more than a a few miles per hour, you would risk breaking an axle, or at least blowing out a few tires.

Fortunately, these pot-holes are simply 2D images, printed by engineers in Eastern Canada, and placed in areas where speeding is a problem.  Not a long term solution, but probably a good way to convince people that the highway authority is at least quick to repair damage on the roads.

This is a great implementation of simple design.

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OpenThesis.org is a free-to-use, centralized database of academic theses where anyone can upload their completed and approved thesis.  Their system typically includes details like bibliographical information, author, school, title, abstract, and date of publication, but doesn’t always have the full text available.

This is a great system that allows engineers and designers doing bleeding edge research to find the mode definitive and up to date research on a topic.  Although users will typically still have to contact the school to get the full text, these are often available on the publishing university’s library website, or can be obtained by contacting the department involved in the research.  (Example: search theses at my alma mater, Vanderbilt University.)

OpenThesis.org describes their system as this:

“OpenThesis.org is a searchable thesis & dissertation database, which helps increase the availability and utility of these important documents.

Historically, theses and dissertations have not been freely accessible through a powerful, centralized database. Rather, they have been available at individual College and University web sites (if at all), often via the respective school’s ETD (Electronic Thesis and Dissertation) program. While these ETD programs are very important (indeed, they provide the bulk of the data used to create OpenThesis.org), the lack of a free, centralized database means that a global search of theses and dissertations has often not been possible.

OpenThesis addresses that issue, and by creating a centralized search, encourages the reading and use of these important documents. The benefits to the schools and authors are numerous, including greater recognition in the research community, collaboration and employment opportunities, and intellectual property licensing opportunities.”

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I took a trip to Houston recently for a friend’s wedding.  While there, he gave me a pretty extensive tour of NASA’s facilities.  We saw three things that really surprised me.

The first was a complete and original Saturn V rocket that was never launched.  It was housed in it’s own location where any visitor could get almost close enough to climb inside.  The immensity of this vehicle was shocking.  Seeing the various stages pulled apart, however, induced the most interesting realization.  Except for a tiny crew capsule, a little bit of wiring, pumps, and some fuel lines, the entire vehicle is just fuel tanks.

The next stop was at a full size mockup of the Space Shuttle Orbiter.  I could not believe how big the orbiter was and was shocked to see two partial full-size mockups under one roof.  The orbiter, without wings, was roughly the size of a small house, and these units are simply one piece of US astronaut training.  In total, the various orbiters have been launched into space over 130 times.  That’s like sending an entire neighborhood into orbit.

A little further down the way in the same facility, NASA houses a full size mockup of every habitable module of the International Space Station, also used for training.  This was equally impressive in scope.  The station is so large that the Space Shuttle Orbiter regularly docks there.  Additionally, it always has a Soyuz capsule as an emergency escape vehicle and can have up to two more spacecraft docked at any given time.

So I started wondering how big it really is.  The mockup at NASA didn’t have main support structures of the station and lacked any of the solar arrays.  The station is 73 meters long (240ft), 108.5 meters wide (356ft), 20 meters tall (66ft), and weighs 344,378 kg (759,224 lb).  Scale drawings nearby made it look big, and the numbers were big, but I couldn’t really visualize it.  When I realized the station was roughly the size of an NFL football field, I decided I had to make the image below.

(View Hi-Res here on Flickr)

The International Space Station is not going to be mistaken for a small moon, but seeing it hovering over a professional stadium (Lambeau Field) is still pretty damn impressive.

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courtesy: David Yanko of Virtual Saskatchewan

This blog is about “finding better ways to pour coffee.”  At the risk of sounding like a bureaucratically-generated cliche, it’s a little like a more focused “think outside the box,” which I hate.  Allow me to explain what I mean, starting with a quick story.

A few years ago, I walked into my office break room.  It was early morning and the first pot of coffee was brewing.  The coffee pot was about one-third full, so we had a few more minutes before it was finished.  My eyes were still glazed over as my brain had not been woken up by the usual caffeine jolt that it requires.  It was then that I noticed a co-worker holding his mug underneath the coffee maker spout, directly receiving the brewed coffee.  Not a big deal, I thought, he’s just bypassing the temporary holding pot and putting the freshly brewed coffee one step closer to his stomach.  Lots of people do this.  But then, in an effort to get that caffeine nectar even more quickly, he took the one-third full coffee pot and began pouring it into his mug.

At this point, he’s filling his mug from two sources simultaneously.  This took a bit of dexterity, as it is a bit difficult to position the pot at the appropriate pouring angle while still keeping the receiving mug underneath the still-brewing spout.  My co-worker had mastered the technique, and he was sipping our cheap, crappy office coffee in no time.  I chuckled/marvelled at the maneuver, and had to ask when he got so impatient that he needed his coffee so quickly.  He laughed, and told me that a former employee at the company had shown him the trick long ago.  Whenever he got to the pot before the coffee was done brewing, he applied his learned skill and reaped the oh-so-important benefit of getting caffeine as early as humanly possible.

At the time, I thought nothing of it.  Other than replicating the technique myself, it didn’t cross my mind until recently during an interview.  While interviewing prospective candidates, I often ask simple questions just to get the ball rolling, i.e. – What have you done at your current job that you are most proud of?  For engineers, what have you implemented that has been universally adopted by the company?  Suddenly, the coffee pouring jumped into my head.  It occurred to me:  I need innovative coffee pourers.  Not only do I need innovative coffee pourers, but I need someone who most efficiently pours the coffee.

The point here, and I think this applies not only to engineers but to all professions, high-skill jobs demand complex problem solving.  Finding the most creative problem solvers is paramount to leveraging the most competitive advantage in the marketplace.  Back in college at the quarterly job fairs, a very successful software company was a frequent visitor.  They were looking for the best and brightest programmers, but you would never have guessed it from their 1-on-1 evaluations.  They handed each prospective candidate a packet that closely resembled an IQ test.  There wasn’t one question about C++ syntax, or any questions on algorithms, or even your quintessential programming problems (write a function to evaluate factorials using recursion).  Each question was a brain teaser, riddle, or trick question (three men are on one side of the river, and they all need to get across).  The goal was to find the candidates that came up with the best, most innovative solutions.  Year after year, this company pulled the brightest kids out of my school.

Now, I would never advocate that you simply hand a candidate some riddles and choose based on the responses alone.  The example is well-suited for fresh hires right out of college where the employer can evaluate GPAs, professor recommendations, graduate research, publications, etc.  And, I’m certain the follow-up interviews would be purely technical.  What I am saying is that hiring managers should place a lot of emphasis on how candidates attack and ultimately solve technical problems.  You may just find someone that pours coffee better than everyone else.

What kinds of unusual solutions have you run into in your day-to-day work?  I’m really interested in hearing the fun, mundane office-life innovations that people have discovered.  I’d love to hear more “coffee pot” stories!

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Industrial Interface co-founder, Chris Powell, presented to the local San Diego SAMPE chapter. In his presentation he discussed a variety of things that Engineers don’t normally encounter.

Chris worked as a Supplier to Electronic, Medical, Aerospace, and Automotive Industries for many years.  Chris offered the SAMPE attendees a unique opportunity to see the world from the perspective of a Supplier.  Topics discussed were Online Resources for the different stages in product development.  He highlighted the benefits and problems with all of them and how Industrial Interface can be used to complement every one of them.  The presentation is embedded below.

This presentation occurred on Thursday February 25th, 2010 at The Butcher Shop in San Diego.  We love presenting to local engineering societies.  Contact Chris if you are interested.

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3. An engineering toolbar full of useful design resources.

Working with others is easy for some, difficult for others.  Engineers, in particular, often have a difficult time communicating clearly.  For many firms, the end goal (a finished product) isn’t finished until many, many engineers get their hands on the design.  Naturally, in the corporate world, this mandates that teams of technical gurus are created under the glorious umbrella of hierarchical chain of command.

Aside:  The standard corporate structure is assessed and subsequently destroyed by Paul Graham here.

How these groups of engineers interact with one another has a direct impact on the success of the design.  Schedules are either hit or missed.  Product features are achieved or abandoned.  New design techniques are developed or left by the wayside.  Companies that smoothly navigate the group to group design flow are the most successful in driving products to market quickly and efficiently.

So, what can engineers and managers do to avoid the usual pitfalls and ensure an efficient, clean design process?

1. Play Nice!
This seems so simple, but it can be difficult for some under pressure and stress.  In my experience, most people are friendly and polite within their own teams.  It’s the communication with other teams that becomes strained.  Most often – and this is a theme throughout this blog – the nasty attitudes occur when teams blame one another for mistakes and schedule slips.

The solution is as simple as the problem:  Be honest and direct with a nice attitude when working with other teams.  It goes a long way, particularly when upper management is deciding which teams should be around for the next project.  A history of working well together is good for everyone involved.

2. Honesty is the Best Policy
Front-line managers will rarely accept blame on their teams when designs go awry.  Protecting the team’s best interest is part of the job description for managers.  But, as updates filter up and down the chain of command, rumors swirl, and engineers doing the lion’s share of the technical work naturally get nervous.  The defensive tactics of front-line managers, coupled with inefficient (borderline faulty) communication between managers and executives, indirectly leads to angst between the engineering groups.  Needless to say, this is toxic.

The lifeblood of the company depends squarely on products getting out the door.  When groups don’t trust each other, work suffers.  The solution to this depends on two groups:  the front-line managers and the upper management to which they report.

It is imperative that honesty – even the bad news – is demanded up the chain of command.  For VP’s who know their stuff, this isn’t as big an issue.  Their “BS” meters go nuts when managers are less than truthful.  Nevertheless, the company will never iteratively improve it’s design flow if the problems are not clearly reported.  Promoting from within and maintaining a low-level of management turnover really helps here.

3. What Time is it Over There?
There are definitely advantages to having multiple engineering sites.  Most importantly, you tap different talent bases around the world.  Other advantages include reducing cost in less expensive regions, new business relationships to foster, and getting access to the world’s top research universities.  For these reasons, it is inevitable that large firms will distribute their technical expertise all over the world.  Further, modern networking techniques can make 3000 miles seem like a few feet.

However, there is no substitute for working in the same office with others.  There is nothing easier than walking over to someone’s cube and drawing on a whiteboard to solve complex issues.  Email and conference calls are decidedly less effective.  Time differences can cause massive headaches communicating between sites as well.  For these reasons, it is much better to keep entire design cycles in the same building.  Teams learn what is needed from each other to get things done.  Most importantly, though, is the sense of camaraderie that the engineers share in the same building.  Everyone feels like they’re in the same boat, fighting the same fight.  This will absolutely reduce schedule slips and design mistakes.

4. Handoff that Pigskin!
Allow me to digress with a brief football analogy.  Let’s consider a very simple football play:  the quarterback hands the ball to the running back for a rush up the middle.  For this play to occur without a hitch, the quarterback must successfully hand the ball to the running back without dropping the ball, and without the running back breaking stride.  From the earliest of pee-wee football leagues, it is taught that the quarterback is responsible for securely placing the ball where it needs to go.  In other words, the person handing off the responsibility to the next must make sure everything is perfect, where it needs to be.

That’s not to say the person receiving the ball does not have responsibilities.  Football strategics have preached a “design flow” for these plays.  The running back must have his shoulders even with his knees, his inside arm at his shoulder level parallel to the ground, and his outside arm below this at his mid-section – this forms a perfect pocket for which the handoff can occur.  If the running back does not have this pocket well-defined, the handoff will be a failure.  If the quarterback doesn’t put the ball where it needs to be, the handoff will be a failure.  And remember, this is just the start of the play.  The running back has to worry about 300-lb defenders ready to tackle him to the ground the second he receives that football.  If the handoff is unsuccessful, the play is dead before it even got started.

It should be semi-clear how this applies to engineering groups, even for those readers not familiar with football minutiae.  Handoff points are the most important aspect of any interaction between design groups.  First of all, it must be very well-defined what is required from the team that is doing the “handing off”.  Whether it is a design spec, constraints, drawings for manufacturing, marketing requirements for future design, parts and services that must be acquired, shipping addresses, etc etc.  It is up to company management to clearly define WHAT is required, WHO requires it, and WHEN it must be delivered.

Companies that have what I call “gray area” handoffs suffer.  Schedules will slip, and the folks at the end of the design flow (when product must be available to market) will suffer greatly.  This is equivalent to a running back having his arms in the perfect location, ready to accept the ball, except the quarterback has tripped and the ball drops to the ground.  If the handoff fails, the design cycle fails.

What are your tips for working with other groups?  What worked best?  What didn’t work at all?  Managers, really looking for your feedback here.

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Play more online physics games at PhysicsGames.net.

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Industrial Interface was mentioned recently in a great article in Manufacturing Business Technology magazine titled “Product Innovation: Keeping good ideas on the fast track.”

“Companies like IndustrialInterface.com take the collaborative approach a step further, offering online platforms that provide product engineers with a whole new universe of potential resources and partners.” ~Manufacturing Business Technologies Magazine

The article discusses various software and web based platforms that help companies and engineers keep their projects on track and manage the details of their projects with increased efficiency.  The common theme between them all is taking action early in the design process and collaborating with outside resources and personnel that are already available all over the manufacturing industry.

To design an environmentally friendly product or cut costs down the line it’s imperative that engineers and project managers put in the necessary effort and planning right from the beginning.  The article lists a number of good resources, all worth checking out, including IndustrialInterface.com.

The article was printed in the most recent issue of Manufacturing Business Technology.

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Arrange objects on the screen to stack colored objects inside their outlined spaces. Great spacial orientation game. Game embedded below.

More versions of this same game and other physics based games available at Online Physics Games.

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This is a guest post by the moderator of the Electrical Engineering Blog.  It’s a great blog going into the technical details of many interesting and useful facets of electrical engineering and design.

Electrical engineering BLOG was launched in April 2009 by a group of enthusiasts in the field of electrical installation and energy management (mainly based on IEC standards).

With these passionate people, we have created an environment for collaboration and exchange, and we wish to use this Blog to share our current experience as well as our questions about the future – to elicit reactions from others and to discover new concrete ideas, as well as technical and practical tips.

This blog is not a space to promote products and services.

We believe that we can attract and involve both designers and consultants; suppliers, customers, independent experts, and institutions.

Today there are 11 categories of articles, including 6 in energy efficiency (a major topic for everybody) but also 5 categories on more traditional issues such as electrical distribution and design software. We also feature a Web Tips category, brought to the site by a young web pro.

Our blog is open to trade links with other blogs, forums, and sites provided they are of high quality and relevant. It is an English speaking Blog, but so far we have many exchanges with Asia and Europe; all countries are more than welcome.

You can subscribe to the newsletter that is sent out every month. Go to top of the home page and click on “subscribe”.  To post an article, visit our website at http://engineering.electrical-equipment.org/electrical-engineering-conditions or email me at engineering@electrical-equipment.org. Commenting on a posting is simple and can be done without any prior validation.

François B.
Moderator

What other great engineering blogs do you read?

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This week’s Economist nicely presents the current status of global nuclear power development.

The Generation IV International Forum (GIF, a consortium of 10+ countries) has drawn up plans for six new reactor designs.  From these six, they will whittle down to the design that becomes the standard for the fourth generation of nuclear power plants.  These six designs range from merely updated designs to entirely new types of fuels and coolants.

Image courtesy The Economist.

The more daring of these designs eschew the current “use once, store forever” mode of thinking and recycle the fuel using a mixed oxide (MOx) recycling system.  In a standard (> 80% of generating plants currently in use) cycle, over 96% of the original uranium remains in the “waste”.  In the MOx system, that fuel gets recycled by the plant to generate more energy.  The major downside is the final uranium is highly refined, nearly weapons-grade — however, that has not stopped France from successfully using these reactors and storing the very dangerous leftovers safely.

Other than discussions about using a MOx fueling system (which seems moot given current political climates), the innovation has focused on the cooling systems in the new designs.  “four … [of the] designs take a completely different approach to the nuclear-fuel cycle. Three of them are ‘fast neutron’ reactors, which do not include a moderator to slow down free neutrons during the fission process.”  The fourth radical design is the molten salt reactor (MSR), which melts the uranium fuel into a molten salt mix which acts both as a coolant and as a fuel in the nuclear process.

Generation IV Reactors (from the GIF Website)

• Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (GFR)
  features a fast-neutron-spectrum, helium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle;
• Very-High-Temperature Reactor (VHTR)
  a graphite-moderated, helium-cooled reactor with a once-through uranium fuel cycle;
• Supercritical-Water-Cooled Reactor (SCWR)
  a high-temperature, high-pressure water-cooled reactor that operates above the thermodynamic critical point of water;
• Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR)
  features a fast-spectrum, sodium-cooled reactor and closed fuel cycle for efficient management of actinides and conversion of fertile uranium;
• Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor (LFR)
  features a fast-spectrum lead of lead/bismuth eutectic liquid-metal-cooled reactor and a closed fuel cycle for efficient conversion of fertile uranium and management of actinides;
• Molten Salt Reactor (MSR)
  produces fission power in a circulating molten salt fuel mixture with an epithermal-spectrum reactor and a full actinide recycle fuel cycle.

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Amazing video (embedded below) of James May from Top Gear taking a ride to the edge of space (70K feet) in a U2 Spyplane.  The flight suit looks like that of an astronaut and plane looks like a menacing bird.  It’s 100 foot wingspan is balanced by inline wheels when landing.  The entire system is from the 1950’s.  At one point James realizes that he and his pilot are the highest people in the world except for a few astronauts on the International Space Station.  Quite stunning.  I can’t wait until we can take trips to edge of our atmosphere.  It’s not far off my fellow engineers and space enthusiasts.

Also check out this amazing video where Toshiba sent a chair to the upper atmosphere for a commercial.

How much would you pay for a trip like this?

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Scientific American has created a ridiculously interesting infographic on sustainable energy sources.  The article outlines a plan to get the world off of fossil fuels in 20 years.  That’s 100% clean, sustainable energy by 2030.  Although not feasible for a number of economic and political reasons, it is still damn interesting to see how the authors (Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi) plan this out.  Give it a good read, there are a few surprises in there, particularly re: wind vs. solar.

Here is a wind turbine diagram (courtesy: www.techienation.com) and some other wind turbine pictures to get your green juices flowing:

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Let’s face it — engineers see a lot of numbers in their everyday jobs.  While generally comfortable with math and numbers, I doubt many of us take the time to actually visualize what those numbers actually mean.

The speed of light is a great example.  Every engineer knows that it’s 299,792,486 m/s^2.  In more common (for us Americans) terms, it’s about 186,000 miles per second.  But how fast is that, exactly?

Well, the moon is a good example.  While really close to Earth in astronomical units, it would be a pretty long walk to reach there, if such a journey were possible.  But humans have been to the moon and around the far side.  It’s as far as we’ve ever managed to travel in one journey.  So how far is it, in relation to the speed of light?

Enter Wikipedia.  This handy illustration below shows you the amount of time it takes for a light signal to travel that distance.  Remember, it’s the furthest from Earth we’ve ever gotten.  The delay illustrated here was something that NASA engineers had to come to terms with during the original Apollo tests.  And for future missions, with ground control issuing many control and command parameters, NASA has to synchronize clocks between the two systems and account for the signal propagation lag.

This animation shows a beam of light traveling from the Earth to the Moon; a trip that takes approximately 1.26 seconds. It took the Apollo astronauts 3 days to get there, traveling at about 100,000 miles per hour (remember light travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND). Still pretty impressive for a species that has a maximum recorded running speed of only 23 miles per hour (Usain Bolt).

Source: Wikipedia

Next time you are working with numbers that humans don’t typically encounter in their own frame of reference, take the time to appreciate how truly astronomical those numbers can be.

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