Engineering

Hello, I love the friendly atmosphere around a lock and please help with three questions: Why do locks have angled gates? Someone said that the water pressure helps to close them. Is this right? Why do you see water pouring through closed gates? Is that just a leak? I was at the beautiful Thames at Goring and wonder why the boats cannot just use the wider part of the River? You see I need some education. Best regards Alan

I'm doing a science project that involves moving water through a 2cm pipe with graphene aerogel capacitors in it, but I don't know how to get the water flowing through the pipe. Should I use a pump? The ones I search for online are $200 and not what I'm looking for. Is there a way to get the water to flow through or should I just use gravity?

I was wondering if anyone knew tipes of thrust unlike the usual version of shooting molecules. I have looked up the math and just to reach half the speed of light you have to use more energy than the world's yearly energy revenue.

What education is needed to design weapon systems from scratch? Let's say it's basic stuff - an assault rifle or a simple solid fuel rocket guided from a PC for example. Would a mechanical engineer manage to do that?

Iam currently doing my project on nanorefrigeration systems. For that I have to add the nanoparticle/nanofluid to the refrigerant, this solution can be called as nanorefrigerant. I have a doubt that is there any process for mixing nanofluid to the refrigerants or we can mix directly (i.e by simply pouring nanofluid into refrigerant).

If magnetism did not exist, electrical generation would be confined to only electrostatic-friction generation methods as in several centuries ago experiments. Or perhaps collecting lightning bolts. If magnetism did not exist, would that early method of electrical generation somehow make its way to a useable, marketable, widely distributed and vital to modern life developments ?

Good whatever time of day it is where you are! Is it physically and theoretically possible to create a full visual replica of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_hummingbird and make it into a spying autonomous flying robot which theoretically could fly from one house to another, record some video footage and fly back to host (base) to upload obtained data, recharge and then repeat the whole process. Rough and early example of such machine is already made: http://www.avinc.com/nano Is it physically and theoretically possible to make the aforementioned robot fully invisible in optical spectrum (which will made him a better spying machine) by using https://en.wikipedia.…

Is it possible to Nanocomposite titanium alloyal and spider silk. The idea came to me that spider silk is strong and flexible, so what if someone made a substance, that's a combination of these materials. Well it be stronger? Well it be some what flexible? How much would it cost? (Sorry if this might be in the wrong topic, or thread, or its called)

Does anybody know how engineering of the floor under the ice court on the second storey building? I know how to design a floor under the ice court on the first storey, but i don't know how to make it on the second storey . Thanks in advance

I was surprised to see U.S. NPT threads in pipes and fittings several years ago in Europe. Are they still the norm or the market became metricated ?

Hello. A roof mounted solar water heater can be used in several configurations, as -Preheating the electric/gas domestic water heater inlet -Providing direct warm water to use points -Work in parallel to electric/gas water heater -Fill an insulated reservoir with warm water for demand moments -With heat exchanger -Combinations of the above They have their good and their bad; unless a bunch of flow diverters/valves are implemented in the piping circuits. That brings complexity, cost and attention depending on season, time of day, temperature reached... Trouble with colder than utility supply in too cold weather/nights/early morning. What is in your opin…

Just a thought here. Say, humanity goes to colonize Titan, which is awesome, much cooler than Mars both literally and figuratively. So, given that Titan has a nice and dense atmosphere in order to explore it faster using planes makes sense. So a normal jet engine uses atmospheric oxygen as oxidizer and carries fuel with it. Atmosphere of Titan on the other hand has about 5% of methane (in the troposphere) and no oxygen so is there any roadblocks from engineering perspective in creating a jet engine that uses atmospheric fuel rather than oxidizer and carry oxidezer on board? It it possible to create an engine that would work on a 5% concentration of fuel in the air?

Hi i am doing a high school research project. Last year we worked on determining what affect certain lighting had on the migration of organisms. We determined which light sources were most damaging and which would be most easily filtered. This year we are trying to work on a solution, i am having trouble coming up with a budget... is their a way to coat glass to filter out certain wavelengths? I have done a lot of research with little success, and i always seem to end up with an article about electron guns to apply thin film layers to the material. Any suggestions as to what i can do for this? i am truly stuck... Thanks

hi um, i am currently in college. i need help in designing a gearbox for a quad bike. the engine is Single Cylinder, Air-Cooled, 250cc Bore*Stroke: 67.0mm*65.0mm Compression Ratio: 9.0:1 Max. Net Power & Rotating Speed: 11.5kw/7000 RPM Max.Torque & Rotating Speed: 16.0N.m/6000 RPM Ideal RPM: 1420 RPM. the output sprocket has 9 teeth and the final has 43. can someone help me with finding the perfect set of gear ratios for such an engine.? its 4th gear should be high enough that the quad can be proplled to a max speed of 60k/hr. thanks people.

Hello engineers! So my left earbud got crushed, but everything else was ok. So I got this cazy idea to hook up the wiring to a speaker from a radio. The speaker works, I have tested it, and the wires for it are plainly labeled negative and positive. That is all fine and dandy. My problem stems from two facts: can my phone use a speaker like that if I get it properly wired, and I also am having trouble with the wiring in the earbud. They are the earbuds that came with my iPhone 5 and have worked fine (until being crushed). I cut the earbud off and discovered that there is three wires, not two like I had been expecting. So I have no idea what is negative pos…

I have been given a 225 gallon aquarium and I would like to set it up in my (rental) house. I figure it will weigh about 300 pounds per square foot with a 10 square foot base. Anyone care to speculate on how much weight a floor in a house with a crawl space, not a concrete slab, might hold?

I had trouble titleing this topic and hope this is the right section. It might drift into many interesting side topics.Of itself it isnt profound. Surely not religion. A jet fighter's nozzel is large at first giving a larger slower moving column of air to move the slowly accelerating jet. The nozzle is at it's narrowest column and the gases at the higest velocity at high speeds.Why? This is similar to kayak racing. To accelerate rapidly for short sprints one uses a large paddle blade but it is too tiresome to maintain long.The velocity is directly proportional to the stroke rate. A smaller blade allows one to maintain the high stroke rate much longer. Once finished a…

I posted this in "Politics" but I want engineering geeks to help me out with this. In this age of advanced communications and cheep GPS in cars and cell phones, it seems stupid that airliner black boxes are so ineffective, as seen in the disappearance of flight 370. So make them smarter. There should be a redundant number of them on every airliner, scattered about the plane, and attached to the OUTSIDE of the plane. Nobody connected to the plane can turn them off. (There should also be something on the plane that cannot be disabled that CONSTANTLY transmits GPS location.) Why we don't have this is because often times stupidity is the norm until humans are FORCED to i…

One of the projects on my back burner array is making a gyroscope out of an old 6" ball bearing race. One of the things I need to figure out is how to mount the spindle in the frame. Given the mass of the thing, the mounting needs to be robust in order to resist the effects of precession. My first thought was to use a needle bearing: but that would require a seriously hardened spindle tip and equally wear-resistant fitting. And precession thrusts would probably do neither much good. Next I considered a simple ball-bearing: and that's the best I've been able to come up with. Shoulder bearings such as used in 'jewel' watches would require the f…

Can anyone help me with list of GOOD textbooks with which to learn Matlab and Java too? I'll be glad.

Hey, guys. Right, I have a dilemma regarding this matter. I need the piezoelectric actuator to vibrate at high frequency. What kind of power source should I be looking at? The application is for something compact. As far as my knowledge goes, DC will move it just once, but AC will give it a vibration. Is that the case? What other inputs can you give me? Thank you!

Hi guys, I am looking to calculate the moment of inertia (J) and viscous friction (B) for a prototype motor connected to a fan load. The motor is powered with a constant voltage 3 phase supply and a torque sensor is connected in-between the motor and fan (figure 1). The torque sensor can give transient data of both torque and speed. figure 1: I have not tested the fan, but research seems to indicate the fan torque-speed curve will follow a quadratic curve like the one shown below. figure 2: I am assuming the bearing friction should have a fairly constant value B, however, the air resistance will cause an effective B that is dependent on the speed. By a…

This topic preplexes me, and it's kind of out of my knowlage range, due to the fact that im a social hermit. Will we ever find out why and over time do they release info if it was planned, like 70 years from now? Sorry typo in the title * how and why the tt fell

I like programming in Pascal as hobby, and I'm interested in trying something new so micro chips caught my attention. Can You please explain me what they are capable of? Is micro chips programming an expensive hobby or a cheap one? Thank You

Hello! I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and I have a work with my classmate about mechanical engineering applied in rockets, so I wonder what are the best topics to talk about it: projecting the rocket aerodynamics? The rocket engine? History of rockets? We are first working in the abstract, so I need a general idea of this subject (an introduction). Ps: I'm not a lazy guy, I just want to know some opinions of users that know about this subject as an orientation. Thank you very much!