Engineering

the current mode of thinking suggests that the only use for turbines in automobiles is to power electric engines, but I have an idea I would like to see come to fruition. a true electric/gas turbine engine. turbine engines are horribly inefficient at low rpm, and electric engines are limited to relativly small run times with current battery technology. but why not combine both of these engine to run in tandem depending on how the car is driven? an electric motor could drive a car up to an effiecient running speed and then transfer power over to a turbine engine to run rather efficeintly. this idea would primarily be useful in semi trucks, trains, and ocean liners, bu…

alright so hydrogen cars seem like a good idea until you think about how explosive hydrogen is, what happens when there's an accident? and if the car did explode in a place like NYC or in a traffic jam, what woud happen to the other cars in the area? could you have a giant chain reaction?

Simple question: Shouldn't it be possible to use similar geometries that are used to make "stealth" aircraft nearly invisible to radar to make "stealth submarines" nearly invisible to sonar? The same principles should apply, right? Is this done? If not, why? My only guess is that the decrease in hydrodynamical performance would just be too great to justify it.

how does a cars speedometer work? my brother suggested some kind of friction based device, where the faster one piece is turning the more the piece touching it gets raised. i was very disappointed to find that howstuffworks didnt have an entry for this one : (

How was cryogenics found? Any answers please... Thanks..

Do you guys think that chemical engineers will be as important as they are today 20 years from now? Why or why not

Hi everybody, my question is; has anyone heard of thermal depolymerization and if you have, do you think it is a viable alternative method for producing fuel? Personally I think it is definitely that should be looked into and developed, and to be frank better than having to produce a hydrogen economy. I do know that one disadvantage of thermal depolymerization was that it costs too much[about 60 dollars last time I checked] to produce a barrel of oil[the equivalent of crude basically], as opposed to buying a barrel of oil at the market price.

Vertical Sync problem I have used an old (1980’s) computer to generate titles for video recorded on to my VCR. This works fine, however I have tried to connect this antique computer to a DVD recorder and the computer-generated picture slowly rolls upwards. I believe that this is a “negative” (vertical) sync problem, and an additional circuit is required to correct this rolling picture. Does anyone know where I can obtain, (in order of preference):- 1. a ready-built adapter to cure this vertical sync problem. 2. a kit of parts to home build an adapter. 3. a diagram of how to build such a device. Please post links to any site which you think may help…

When the batteries in a TV remote start to go bad, hitting it seems to help. why?

Im looking for a way to connect my mobile phone mp3 player to my car stereo. I wanted to know, in terms of audio quality, which is the better option: 1. Using the mobile phone's bluetooth to play audio to a bluetooth enabled stereo. 2. Using a FM transmitter to transmit audio a short distance from the output of the phone to the car stereo. 3. Use a tape cassette adaptor to insert into the car stereo and to connect it to the speaker jack on the phone. I have heard the quality on standard FM stereo transmitters and its pretty good, but you can still hear that the audio output is not as good as the track. Does anyone know if bluetooth or a tape cassett…

I am doing a project for my calculus class in which we give a presentation about a career that utilizes calculus. I chose Electrical Engineering. Can anyone provide some examples of how EE uses calculus? I know a lot of formulas are used, but I'm sure some of these must have been derived using calculus. Aren't Maxwell's Equations used in EE? A few examples or just general cases that I can research further would be helpful. Than you!

Can somebody tell me how a wind powered generator integrates with a regular power network ( or a household if used for domestic supplement )---- and with each other if many are used together .Would not both the power output and frquency vary widely with wind speed etc ?

Can someone answer a question which I have pondered over for some time. My wife covers the bathroom radiator with her towel. Does this increase or decrease the cost of heating the house? The hall thermostat is set to 20 deg C. My thoughts are that if one radiator is insulated in this way, the boiler has to work harder by heating the other radiators to maintain a house temperature of 20 degrees. On the other hand, because heat is not radiated away from the radiator in the bathroom because of the towel covering it, the hot water in the system stays hot longer than it would have done had the radiator not been insulated in this way, so the boiler doesn't have to work so …

Hi. Would it be possible to desalinate water using the weight ot the ocean as power? If there was a stucture deep in the ocean covered with a semi-permiable membrane, and a pipe and pump to take the fresh water to the surface, and reduce the presure inside the structure. The weight of the water providing the power. I think they use around 800 p.s.i pressure in some comercialy available desalination units. Thats about the pressure is at a depth of around 562 meters. Any ideas. cheers

I need to build / acquire (cheaply) a galvanometer or oscillioscope (preferrably oscillioscope) with a high sample rate with a USB connection. Any suggestions? More in depth description: I am doing an experiment that involves measuring the induced backspin in spherical projectiles. I have not (yet) calculated the velocity that the projectiles are travelling, but suffice to say the launcher packed enough punch in the low-power testing phase to put ~3" long dowel rods through half inch laminated high-density particle board. I plan to measure backspin by embedding spherical plastic projectiles with NIB magnets. These will be pre-aligned before firing so as to rot…

Ok, I've got yet another electronics question. At lab, we've just gotten these neat tiny pressure sensors that can be applied to anything (in our case, perches for the animals, to measure locomotion forces). Apparently, the company can build perches with *dozens* of these things, but use only a few input channels for the computer, because it samples from each sensor in an array sequentially over the same channel, and their software decoding this sequence so you can get each of the inputs individually (just at a reduced sampling rate). Since number of channels is a limitation in my work, I'm keen on seeing if this technology can be applied to my own work, which bring…

Why don’t car manufactures use Sterling heat engine to increase the efficiency of there cars. Most of the energy of a car engine is wasted though heat . They could use a Sterling engine to compliment the normal engine by using the heat from the exhaust to power the heat engine. Which then intern could power thinks like aircon which could increase the mpg by up to 5-25%. Just an idea.

Hey I'm wanting to make some solar panels for home use and I need to know what stuff I will need to do this mainly out of junk simple reason I have little to no funds but I am in the middle of the texas permian basin (The 'Armpit') so there is a lot of supplies just out in the field that I can salvage "har har" although I do know some will need to be bought, the reason I need this info is I'm bulding some work shops in my backyard and will need to power 75 volt motors and a kiln for ceramics. If there any blueprints that would really help, lol.

I was hearing about these new microscopic bubbles that when sandwiched between two metal plates and stimulated with IR they release their electrons producing an electric current. This maybe the power source for appliances in the future. They say that these will require only the sun as a power source and when sophisticated enough they will be able to beam an IR beam to another appliance in the shade. This sounds very suspect so I was wondering if this is possible. Where would these nano bubbles replenish thier electrons? I will look for a link to some credible actual information.

Is this real-time whiteboard animation real or fake ?:-

I have planned an electronic data logger for my car based around PIC16F84(A) (cheap & have found a circuit diagram for a PIC programmer i can build for it). Here it is; Just wondering if any of you had any idea; i) On programming the chip (using a C compiler) to make it to do what i want it to do (as described below). ii) How to wire up a pic chip once it has been programmed. The Flow chart is attatched; 4 Sensors (thermistors etc) give an analogue voltage to an individual input on the PIC. The PIC (i hope) has ADC capacities and converts this voltage into an 8 bit binary value. The 5th sensor is a (de bounced) reed switch, which gives a …

How well do helicopters with two sets of blades rotating in opposite directions work? I know they are supposed to be ideal, but don't the mechanics reduce the effeciency?

this has clear diagrams and sample images: http://www.dsp.ece.rice.edu/cscamera/ the camera uses a DMD (digital micromirror device) as explained here http://www.aip.org/pnu/2006/split/797-2.html?source=rsspnu here is wiki about DMD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_micromirror_device here is a rough paraphrase: conventional digital cameras do a fourier transform numerically to compress a million numbers down to 10,000 (image is then stored as 10,000) but first they have to store the million numbers. this new concept of camera does the fourier transform data compression FIRST before storing anything, in a kind of analog way using a DMD so it never…

Despite this idea being stolen from an on-looker, I decided if someone can do it faster than I can, then good riddens. Recently I've been pondering something on and off for the past few months: What if someone could make a magnetic drawing board like the ones for children? I notice these things work off magnetic concepts with iron fillings, but the hexagonal shapes that contain the iron fillings disable a person from making an extra fine and detailed picture. However, toys such as Pixter allow someone an electronic drawing area. Now these things are for kids, but I see uses for cranking out tons of homework problems, and a person wouldn't need paper to write out l…

bit of an interesting and probably feasible idea. Done a fair bit of design feasibility analysis on this over the last decade. Not much chance I could commercialise the technology in the forseeable future so happy to discuss in the public view and interest. IMO these could be safer, more reliable and possibly as fast as jet Airliners.