Free Republic

John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. “John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his...

Crucial science topics will no longer be taught to a large swath of Indian students, according to new government guidance. Most young learners in India will no longer be exposed to key science topics in school textbooks — unless they voluntarily major in science in higher classes. On June 1, India cut a slew of foundational topics from tenth grade textbooks, including the periodic table of elements, Darwin's theory of evolution, the Pythagorean theorem, sources of energy, sustainable management of natural resources and contribution of agriculture to the national economy, among others. A small section explaining Michael Faraday’s contributions to...

Russia has been capturing some of the US and NATO-provided weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and sending them to Iran, where the US believes Tehran will try to reverse-engineer the systems, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Over the last year, US, NATO and other Western officials have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have at times been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, the sources told CNN. In many of those cases, Russia has then flown the...

80 years ago today, the greatest electrical engineer ever passed away. Feel free to share any nerd comments, or arguments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Our lives are inevitably bound by and shaped by the structures around us. We live in them, calling them homes; we go through them, calling them tunnels; we move on them or thanks to them, calling them roads, or bridges. Salginatobelbrücke designed by Robert Maillart, 1930The bridge has a particularly interesting function: it connects two places in a more complex way than a road does. The bridge helps to elevate the passenger, allowing them to move above a body of water, a valley, or a three-dimensional urban labyrinth of roads and crossings. But apart from being a beacon of utility,...

HOUSTON - The Harris County Toll Road Authority now has an expensive plan to fix design flaws in its billion-dollar replacement of the Ship Channel Bridge. The original structure was finished in 1982. But, with just two lanes in each direction and no shoulder for emergencies, construction on a replacement was started in 2018. HCTRA’s Executive Director Roberto Trevino was hired after flaws were discovered in the design, and he says the danger could have been catastrophic. "It could have collapsed," he says. Trevino says the county wanted the new bridge to be sleek and iconic, resembling the Fred Hartman...

Bill reveals the operation and engineering design underlying the famous drinking bird toy. In this video he explores the role played by the water the bird "drinks," shows what is under the bird's hat and demonstrates that it can operate using heat from a light bulb or by "drinking" whiskey. Video Here.

This video explores the famous Roman roads, and investigates why - after 2,000 years of wear and tear - they seem to be in better shape than most expressways in modern America. Chapters:0:00 Introduction0:59 The Roman road network2:23 Building the roads3:25 Traffic on the roads4:48 StartMail (paid ad)5:53 Cuts, bridges, and tunnels7:58 Longevity of the roads9:16 Comparing ancient and modern roads10:39 ConclusionWere Roman Roads more Durable than Modern Highways? | February 4, 2022 | toldinstone

BERLIN (AP) — Officials in Germany are investigating why a huge wind turbine collapsed just hours before it was due to be officially inaugurated. The turbine, whose rotor blades reach a height of 239 meters (784 feet), toppled over late Wednesday in a forest near the western town of Haltern. German news agency dpa reported Thursday that police were not currently suspecting sabotage.

Sometimes, when deciding on a career path, it can be difficult to know how your chosen industry will fare in the future. Are wages likely to increase? Will jobs be hard to come by? Much can feel unknown. To put your mind at ease, NewEngineer is here to help, crystal ball in hand. In the field of engineering it's clear that the current trend is towards information technology and automation, and this is set to remain the case for the foreseeable future – entering these sectors is as safe a bet as you could hope for. While traditional fields such...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge may have a viable solution to the single-use plastic dilemma: spider silk. Or, more accurately, a plant-based synthetic polymer that mimics the composition of spider silk, but doesn't actually come from the eight-legged arthropods. The researchers modeled their polymer after spider silk due to its durability and strength—if you could scale up a spiderweb to human size, it would be capable of trapping an airplane. In fact, spider silk is five times stronger than steel, and half as strong as Kevlar; it's considered one of the strongest naturally occurring materials on Earth. Incredibly, the...

Steve Hrvoich stood in the year-old valley beneath girders for the new northbound bridge on Interstate 79 on Thursday as gigantic dump trucks known as triple 7s whizzed by, hauling up to 100 tons of dirt each from the east side of the highway to the west. Crews for Walsh Construction II were a few days away from completing what Mr. Hrvoich, the construction engineering manager for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, called “the big eastern spread.” The crews moved 2 million cubic yards of earth from the eastern side of the valley, clearing space to install thousands of feet of drain...

On Jan. 27, 1986, Allan McDonald stood on the cusp of history. McDonald directed the booster rocket project at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol. He was responsible for the two massive rockets, filled with explosive fuel, that lifted space shuttles skyward. He was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Challenger "to approve or disapprove a launch if something came up," he told me in 2016, 30 years after Challenger exploded. His job was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set...

America's STEM classrooms are devolving — wasting valuable class time with toys, barely applicable coding games, and victim-mentality nonsense.If you ask any administrator about the future of education, he’ll likely mention the blending of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics: STEM. Indeed, it’s so attractive to schools, billions of dollars are spent every year by corporations, startups, and the U.S. federal government in an 1850s-style “gold rush” of gadgetry and glittering lights. To stand out from the competition and get into classrooms, curriculum developers, policymakers, and advocacy groups have begun to scam the education market by forsaking common-sense STEM principles in...

FEATURE — Anyone wanting a dose of authentic European architecture and ambiance does not have to hop on a plane and “cross the pond” but drive just over four hours south of St. George to what one writer called “The largest antique ever sold.” That large antique is the London Bridge, which is now located in Lake Havasu City in northwestern Arizona. It’s not the original London Bridge, nor is it one that inspired the nursery rhyme or song. Even so, it is an impressive sight in the United States. A series of bridges have spanned the River Thames in...

The surface transportation construction industry has long had to rely on Washington for its prosperity. We spend most years holding our breath and hoping we will receive more Federal funding to fix our crumbling roads, bridges and highway systems. Currently in the United States, 7 percent of bridges are structurally deficient, and 19 percent of major highway pavements have deteriorated. Yet, our existing financing structure has few tools to address the looming reconstruction challenges facing existing infrastructure. In 2020, Congress passed a one-year extension of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. While the one-year extension of the FAST Act...

Epic, hugely successful first high-altitude test of Starship. The belly flop maneuver test of Starship's aerodynamics was especially impressive. So very much to build on here for the Starship program.

One huge advantage of drones is that these little robots can go places where people can’t, including areas that might be too dangerous, such as unstable structures after a natural disaster or a region with unexploded devices. Researchers are interested in developing devices that can navigate these situations by sniffing out chemicals in the air to locate disaster survivors, gas leaks, explosives and more. But most sensors created by people are not sensitive or fast enough to be able to find and process specific smells while flying through the patchy odor plumes these sources create. Now a team led by...

Beijing has succeeded in copying and stealing their way forward, but they have hit a snag. The Chinese military is building up a meaningful force of J-20 stealth fighters, Y-20 strategic airlifters and other high-tech military aircraft while also developing a new stealth fighter, fighter-bomber and heavy bomber. But for all of these advancements, Chinese industry still is struggling to manufacture arguably the most important subsystems for these new planes. Their engines. Aviation website Alert 5 spotted a stock-exchange filing by the Hebei subsidiary of China’s Central Iron & Steel Research Institute. The filing including production projections for military engines...

This boy fused two deuterium atoms together in a reactor he built in his family home! This is what happens when kids are given the means and opportunities to follow their dreams: 12-year-old Jackson Oswalt achieved nuclear fusion using the reactor he had built in his house in Memphis, Tennessee, officially making him the world's youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion, per Guinness World Records! Now, at 15 years old, he has become one of this year's Guinness World Records 2021 edition stars.