Category Archives: Engineering

Backyard history: Southern California’s impact on astronomy

Silicon Valley has reshaped the earth, Hollywood has driven our perceptions of it, and not always for the better.  Less well known is the outsized role California has played in understanding our universe.   Mt. Wilson, Mt. Palomar, and their astronomers have had a Copernican impact on where we stand in the grand scheme of things.  The word ‘vision’ gets bandied about a lot these days but George Ellery Hale had it in spades.  Here’s how the two observatories that housed Hubble, Humason, Shapley,  Zwicky, Baade, Rubin, and Schmidt came to be.

The third video from Corning’s Museum of Glass shows that the path to science is not always smooth and that learning from mistakes is the norm.  The original 200 inch pyrex disk for the Palomar primary did not go according to plan and had to be recast.  The second attempt succeeded and even so, it took ten years of painstaking grinding and polishing at Caltech before it was ready for use.

Youtube Channel: Palomar Observatory

Youtube Channel: Irish Astronomy

Youtube Channel: Corning Museum of Glass

 

Nick on ‘brick: Another look at 2001

/tap /tap

Is this thing still on?

Apparently.

I’ve posted previously of CinemaTyler’s excellent but breathless exploration of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  ParallaxNick takes a more leisurely and historical look at the same film. It is less about the filmmaking process and more on its origins, development, context, and implications.  Nick’s videos about astronomy are well worth the watch.

Youtube Channel: ParallaxNick

Spectral response: The science and emotion of color

The web’s archive of older industrial films is a recurring delight.  Jam Handy, Coronet, and other firms crafted these with an attention to detail, calm explanation, and rigorous science that is harder(*) to find today when most equivalents are about sales rather than fundamentals.  Jeff Quitney has uploaded a wonderful 1954 cleaned-up film to his Vimeo page on color theory and practice by the Interchemical Corporation.  It begins with the importance of color to society – especially in packaging goods and people – and then gives a marvelous account of the optics involved.   I’ve worked in the field for years but I learned to see things (pun intended) differently thanks to it.

The second film from 2016 looks at color in packaging through its emotional impact and its influence on design and designers.  ‘Color In Sight’  resembles like Hustwit’s ‘Helvetica.’  A number of prominent designers talk about how they use and think about color in order to evoke a response, surface a memory, or reveal a part of the spectrum to the color-blind.   I have no idea what I’d say to a nail-polish maker but Suzi Weiss-Fischmann (8m18s in) comes off  as a fun seatmate on a long plane trip.  I had a similar feeling about  Helvetica’s Paula Scher.   Interestingly, it is produced by TeaLeaves, a Canadian company specializing in very high-end teas for hotels.  Judging by their Youtube page, they must spend a fortune on short films – many of which have little outward bearing on their products.  I’ve never understood the appeal of tea but the videos are well worth a look.

(*) But not impossible by any means.

Vimeo Channel: Jeff Quitney

 

Youtube Channel: TeaLeaves

 

Proposing a Toaster: Technology Connections on a Sunbeam classic

I’ve owned and/or used many toasters and toaster ovens.  All have been crap.  It doesn’t matter how much it costs, it all comes from some noname as cheap as possible factory, doesn’t work as advertised, and falls apart quickly after making marginal at best toast.   Paying for quality is no longer an option. Alec from Technology Connections profiles a 1948 Sunbeam classic that still works due to a brilliant, timeless design.   His channel and Techmoan both delve deeply into our electromechanical past finding, explaining, and often resurrecting devices we’ve forgotten.

Youtube Channel: Technology Connections

He even offers a video on his second channel that shows how to fix and update one of these from the second-hand market.  Tempting, tempting.

Youtube Channel: Technology Connections 2

An elegant weapon for a more civilized age: In praise of chalk

Modern ejumacation has gone multimedia and Powerpoint, often multimedia within Powerpoint.  Some like 3Blue1Brown are brilliant at it (the multimedia, not Powepoint), others less so.  Here’s a random assortment of lectures where good old chalk and boards prevail: E&M from IIT Madras, chemistry and cryptography from Ruhr Universität, Bochum, Fields Medalist Cédric Villani on something-or-the-other, and an early calm-for-him presentation by Jens Fehlau on the Leibniz integration rule made famous by Feynman.  Finally, a tribute to a popular chalk, recently discontinued.

Youtube Channel: nptelhrd

 

Youtube channel: ChemieRub

 

Youtube channel: Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar

Youtube channel: Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS)

Youtube channel: Flammable Maths

Youtube channel: Great Big Story

 

Low-key Relativity: skydivephil on gravitational waves, the Universe, and everything

The mere detection of gravitational waves two years ago was cause for celebration and, for those of us skeptical of LIGO, eating of crow.  Now gravitational wave detections regularly cue electromagnetic observatories on the ground and in space with tighter integration to come.

Youtuber skydivephil puts the camera on several researchers active in developing the next generation GW systems and the ever more ambitious cosmological probing that these observatories will enable.

Youtube channel: skydivephil

Skydivephil and the unnamed narrator are self-effacing providing few details about themselves, not even their names in the nonexistent credits.   They also have enviable access to many leading physicists and institutes, largely on the theoretical side.   The style is simple: Let the speaker speak.  It is a refreshing antidote to the modern space documentary which highlights the doom-and-gloom with an explosion and visual effect every fifteen seconds.   Whatever one may think about string theory, loop quantum gravity, or their alternatives, it is refreshing to hear about them from the purveyors.  Here’s the “Before the Big Bang” playlist with an assortment of views on modern cosmology (note that the episodes are in reverse chronological order.)

 

It was the Dukes: Balls for Test Cricket

Baseballs are one-and-done, discarded after even the merest nick or scrape.  Cricket balls  are used continuously and degrade progressively after countless bounces off the pitch and strokes of the bat.  Fast bowlers start off with the new ball giving way to medium pacers and finally the slow bowlers take over when the damage has been done and make the ball dance.  Crafting the classic red balls for  Test Matches is a fascinating blend of art and manufacture – Dilip Jajodia explains.

Youtube Channel: Dukes Cricket

Dicta Prius: Redondo Beach’s Hybrid History

Page 1 of TRW’s Hybrid Engine patent, submitted on 17 March 1969 and issued 2 March 1971 (Click to enlarge)

It has been fifty years since a group of engineers submitted what would become United States Patent 3566717. Entitled “Power train using multiple power sources,” Baruch Berman, George Gelb, Neil Richardson, and Tsih Wang of then-TRW in still Redondo Beach described the hybrid gas/electric vehicle. As a satisfied Prius owner since 2012 and likely repeat customer, I only recently learned that the core engine technology was invented a mile from my house and possibly yards from my office.

In those seven years of hybrid ownership, I’ve often wondered what actually goes on under the hood.  Niels Blaauw offers a charming overview of older implementations of the engine and drivetrain.  Next, Professor John Kelly of Weber State University dives deeply into the innards of the transaxle that’s in my generation of Prius.   His WeberAuto channel is a gearhead’s goldmine.

Youtube Channel: Niels Blaauw 

Youtube Channel: Weber Auto

 

Photo Chemistry: The silver behind the silver screen

We have megapixel cameras in our phones and gigapixel cameras on our telescopes.  Before digital took over photography (and the world,) we had film.  Light struck silver and made a mark and behind it all was some marvelous physical chemistry.  It is still awe-inspiring to think of how these processes came about when knowledge and instrumentation were not nearly as advanced as today.  Each step could have millions of alternatives and sorting them through brute force would take the age of the universe.  Yet somehow it all came together and spawned industries.  The American Chemical Society takes us through the science as it was in 1940.

Vimeo Channel: Jeff Quitney

Horizon Event: The big EHT reveal

The Event Horizon Telescope team announces its major discovery following two intense and quiet years of data analysis on top of a longer period of development.   A nice testament to aperture synthesis and international collaboration as the rest of the world spirals into madness.  Damn!!!

Youtube Channel: National Science Foundation

Context for the interested public:
Youtube Channel: Sixty Symbols