This year’s Engineering Week is Feb. 19-25. The week celebrates the accomplishments of the nation’s engineers. Credit: National Engineers Week Foundation.

Eweek is a favorite activity of college engineering programs, providing a chance for departments to show off their gee-whiz stuff and for undergrads to glory in their declared professions. Many universities hold competitions and open houses during the week, and corporations and government labs get in on the fun, too.

The theme for this year’s Eweek is “7 billion people. 7 billion dreams. 7 billion chances for engineers to turn dreams into reality.” It is a call for engineers to rise to the challenges that a projected world population of 7 billion will present.

This Thursday is set aside to “Celebrate the G in Engineer,” a day when engineers are encouraged to introduce girls and young women to engineering careers. According to the eweek.org website, more than one million girls in grades K-12 have been introduced to engineering since the “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” program began in 2001.

Started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the weeklong event is now sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation, which shares a common roof with the NSPE in Alexandria, Va. The Wikipedia page for National Engineers Week says that Eweek is linked the annual celebration Presidents Day which coincides with George Washnigton’s birthday and recognition of GW’s surveying work, qualifying him as the nation’s first engineer.

The Foundation has several year-round outreach programs, too.

The New Faces of Engineering program is a way for engineers (up to 30 years old)  on the rise in their careers to be recognized by their engineering colleagues. The Future City is a competition program that targets middle school students and culminates with a final competition in Washington, D.C. during Eweek. Another program is the DiscoverE Classroom Visits, for which the Foundation has provided educational materials to an army of 45,000 engineers who have spread the good news about engineering to more than five million students.

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Credit: Ainissa Ramirez, Yale; YouTube.

Science “popularizer” and Yale associate professor Ainissa Ramirez alerted us that she has added two new videos to her Material Marvels collection of short introductory videos to various materials topics.

Her latest videos are on “Thermoelectrics” (above) and  ”Nanomaterials” (below).

If you are an engineer or science professional, you already know most of what Ramirez covers in three or four minutes, but they strike me as great for primary, secondary and even some college classes. In particular, she always manages to come up with simple life-sized demonstrations and analogs to smoothly explain her concepts (which is often a challenge when a lot of us try to break down what materials science folks do for our family, friends and community institutions).

Credit: Ainissa Ramirez, Yale; YouTube.

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Computer simulations show that metal oxides in water go through many short-lived shapes and structures (see story below). Credit: William Casey, UC Davis.

Check ‘em out:

Scorpions inspire scientists in making tougher surfaces for machinery

Researchers studied the bumps and grooves on the scorpions’ backs, scanning the creatures with a 3D laser device and developing a computer program that modeled the flow of sand-laden air over the scorpions. The team used the model in computer simulations to develop actual patterned surfaces to test which patterns perform best. At the same time, the erosion tests were conducted in the simple erosion wind tunnel for groove surface bionic samples at various impact conditions. Their results showed that a series of small grooves at a 30-degree angle to the flowing gas or liquid give steel surfaces the best protection from erosion.

US inactivity regarding strategic materials criticized at Washington hearing

At a hearing Jan. 26 before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Jeff Green testified that the US has lost critical supply chain capabilities and significant technological capital to China and that the lack of a deliberately thought-out U.S. policy for strategic and critical materials has resulted in economic and national security vulnerabilities. The hearing on “China’s Global Quest for Resources and Implications for the United States” examined Chinese efforts to acquire and manage various natural resources. Green president of the J.A. Green & Co., assists industrial clients in government relations, business development and strategic planning matters and is the former staff director to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness.

Imaging ‘invisible’ dopant atoms in semiconductor nanocrystals

In semiconductor nanocrystals, the physical effects of deliberately included impurities, called dopants, may depend on the dopant position with the crystal. To date, there has not been an effective technique to determine the location of individual dopant atoms in nanocrystals. IRG-4 researchers demonstrated that a combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy can be used to reveal the position of such “invisible” dopants.he physical effects of deliberately included impurities, called dopants, may depend on the dopant position with the crystal. To date, there has not been an effective technique to determine the location of individual dopant atoms in nanocrystals. IRG-4 researchers demonstrated that a combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy can be used to reveal the position of such “invisible” dopants.

Nano research could impact flexible electronic devices

A discovery by a research team at North Dakota State University, Fargo, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, shows that the flexibility and durability of carbon nanotube films and coatings are intimately linked to their electronic properties. The research could one day impact flexible electronic devices such as solar cells and wearable sensors.

Metal oxide simulations could help green technology

University of California, Davis, researchers have proposed a radical new way of thinking about the chemical reactions between water and metal oxides, the most common minerals on Earth. Using computer simulations and comparing the resulting animations with lab experiments they found that the behavior of an atom on the surface of the cluster can be affected by an atom some distance away. Instead of moving through a sequence of transitional forms, as had been assumed, metal oxides interacting with water fall into a variety of “metastable states” - short-lived intermediates, the researchers found.

Team develops cheaper way of separating nanotubes

Researchers in London have developed a cheaper way of producing high-quality carbon nanotubes in larger quantities than existing methods. A team from the London Center for Nanotechnology has licensed the process, which separates nanotubes into usable quantities without damaging them, to German-based industrial gases company the Linde Group. LCN’s solution was to charge the nanotubes with electrons so that they naturally repel each other, by reacting them with an alkali metal such as sodium in a solution of ammonia. This solution of separated nanotubes can then be used for manufacturing things such as composites, or the nanotubes can be precipitated out of the solution.

Collaborative learning in networks

“We found that collective exploration improved average success over independent exploration because good solutions could diffuse through the network. In contrast to prior work, however, we found that efficient networks outperformed inefficient networks, even in a problem space with qualitative properties thought to favor inefficient networks. We explain this result in terms of individual-level explore-exploit decisions, which we find were influenced by the network structure as well as by strategic considerations and the relative payoff between maxima. We conclude by discussing implications for real-world problem solving and possible extensions.”

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The Squeeze Theorem explained by Sal Kahn, the creator of the online learning resource, Kahn Academy. Credit: Kahn Academy.

Here’s a gem of a website that I wish I had known about a long time ago.

It’s the Khan Academy, which is a library of 2700 videos on a wide range of topics spanning mathematics, physics, economics, art history, government, banking, test prep and more.

Its mission is simple, and it’s free! From the website,

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We’re a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

The brainchild of Sal Kahn, Khan Acacemy videos are about 10 minutes long and are optimized for computer viewing. Most of the videos are done by Kahn himself, but he pulls in experts to handle lessons beyond his reach, like art history. The website is fresh, personal, easy to navigate and useful. For example, it leaves a dot next to each video to mark the ones that have been viewed, either partially or completely.

Khan’s background is in math, computer science and investment management and that comes through with the mix of videos skewed heavily to mathematics: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus and statistics. Based on a quick glance through the offerings, it looks like about two-thirds are math-oriented. There are also quite a few videos that explain banking and finance, topics that usually are given only a cursory treatment in high school.

Also, there are a lot of videos on test prep for AP math exams, California Standards Test, SAT, GMAT and more.

Khan does not follow a set curriculum. Instead, as he says on the website, “I teach the way I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him.”

I watched the video “Squeeze Theorem” in the calculus section, mostly because I don’t remember learning about anything with such a memorable name. Khan introduces the theorem with a non-mathematical example, then follows up with the math, so the understanding of the concept preceeds the formalization of the principle. The “aha moment” comes when he loops around and connects the math to the non-math example.

Because the videos are so granular, they are also a terrific resource for professionals needing to brush the rust off of things learned in school.

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The Graduate Program on Materials Science & Engineering of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil is organizing an exciting opportunity for graduate students working toward MS or PhD degrees in MSE —the 1st São Carlos Advanced School on Materials Science & Engineering. It will be held at UFSCar, São Carlos, Brazil, from March 25 to 31, 2012.

The five day program is organized according to materials families: ceramics, metals, vitreous materials, polymers and composite materials. According to the announcement, “Its main goal is to provide MS and PhD students an overview and update of the main scientific and technological advances in this field, as well as future prospects,” and it will “cover important topics relating the processing, properties and applications in ceramics, glasses, metals, polymers and composites.”

The organizers have recruited leading researchers to give lectures at the school. In the ceramic domain, speakers are Himanshu Jain, Edgar Dutra Zanotto, William Lee, Paolo Colombo and Victor Pandolfelli. Metallurgists will recognize the names of Terence Langdon, Lindsay Greer, Gary Purdy and Walter Filho. Likewise, the polymer and composite speakers are leaders in their fields.

The school will accept 100 students, evenly divided between Brazilian and non-Brazilian students. Students who live outside São Carlos will receive financial support for their travel, accommodations and meals.

The deadline for applications is Dec. 23, 2011.

Visit the website for full details.

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