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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The world of writing about science/engineering/technology is too big for any of us to seriously worry about “competition” and one of the joys of my work is finding other blogs that are fun to read and stimulate discussion among their followers. It’s in this category I’d place Engineer Blogs, a site I recently came across and one that I would recommend to others to check out.

There is nothing fancy about EB, which is built on a standard WordPress template. Maybe I am just old school, but its simplicity is one of the things I enjoy about it: The posts are short and it’s easy to navigate around the site, find comments, categories, etc. Great noms de plumes, too, plus reverence for the duly honored slipstick.

I am uncertain about the history of EB. Its archives go back to January 2011 and the “About” statement says

This is a collection of some of the top engineering bloggers on the internet. Surprisingly, scientists seem to outnumber engineers, though we don’t think that will happen for long. Some posts link directly back to the author’s web page and some stay right here on EngineerBlogs.org. Either way, we promise you some of the best engineering-related content on the web.

A recent post, in which “Miss MSE” muses on the joy of materials science and engineering, gives a sense of the tone of EB

We don’t have the big name or numbers of electrical or mechanical engineering, or the glamour of aerospace, but materials engineering influences pretty much every other field of engineering. It’s kind of awesome like that.

Fundamentally, materials science is all about the relationships between structure, processing, properties, and performance. It also means that I tend to argue with How It’s Made when they attempt to explain why a certain process is used, or what a specific step does, especially when the topic is metallurgy. On the other hand, part of what makes the field so fascinating is that everything is made of something, and figuring out what would be necessary to make it is almost endlessly amusing.

What do you find most interesting or exciting about your engineering discipline?

Indeed, Miss MSE touches off a nice thread of responses.

Opinions and honesty seems to be freely offered. Some academics confess to canceling classes and some admit to being a little cynical about the MGI. Are there engineering celebrities (besides Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg)?, another post asks. And, time is spent pondering one of the very, very dark mysteries of the universe: Why don’t engineers write?

Grab a cup of coffee, check EB out and maybe add it to your bookmarks.

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The Game
Case Western Reserve University at Carnegie Mellon University
Nov. 12, 2:000 p.m., ET

These two look-alike schools will meet for the 41st time on Saturday. Since 1986, this game has been known as the Academic Bowl, to acknowledge that these institutions are among the nation’s top research and scholastic institutions, and that these scholar-athletes compete for football and GPA points.

The Carnegie Mellon Tartans lead the series 26-14 and have home field advantage, but have been having a hot-and-cold season with a 5-4 record. The Case Western Reserve Spartans have been dominating in their conference for the last five years and bring an 8-1 record to the last regular season game of the year.

My pick? Spartans > Tartans (credit to Ian Kidd for the economy of words!)

The home team
Carnegie Mellon University, Materials Science and Engineering

Materials engineering has been a big deal at Carnegie Mellon University almost from the moment 19th century industrialist and steel man Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Technical Schools in 1900. By 1912, the schools expanded and began granting degrees as the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1906, the Department of Metallurgical Engineering was established. Carnegie Tech merged with the Mellon Institute in 1967, and Carnegie Mellon University was born.

On its website, the university says, “We don’t operate like other universities. From the beginning, innovation has been a part of our DNA and we continue to push the envelope.”

The department celebrates the arrival of spring at its annual Deck Party. The deck was built by engineering undergrads taking a design and construction class. Credit: MSE; CMU

Embracing that vision, the Department of Metallurgical Engineering evolved into the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 1992. Research conducted in today’s department reflects its steel-based roots and its attention on the future. While research interests of the 22 faculty are broad, there are four areas of concentration: electronic materials, magnetic materials, microstructural science and iron and steelmaking research.

The undergrads in the department seem to be attracted to the breadth of engineering problems that are studied. Robert Tisherman, a senior and Barry Goldwater Scholarship winner, says he chose materials science “because it gives you the most basic understanding of how engineering really happens.”

The department is the undergraduate home to about 120 students (2nd, 3rd, 4th year), according to department head, Greg Rohrer. He says MSE undergrads comprise about 10 percent of all CMU engineering students, and that about half of the undergrads in the department are women.

The CMU cohort is an ambitious bunch, “Many of them are in a double major, with biomedical engineering being the most common,” said Rohrer in an email. Tisherman is one of those biomed double majors, but says his favorite class so far was “Materials for Future Energy Systems.” Must be that breadth thing.

Rohrer said that students are drawn to the department through freshman research experiences and the state-of-the art electron microscope facilities. Research was the hook for senior Emily Walker. “I chose materials science because it has more focus on research compared to the other branches of engineering. I was able to start doing research during the summer after my freshman year. Having hands-on experience so early in my academic career was a great experience for me.”

Through her work, Walker found that university research really does apply in the industrial world. She presented her four semesters of work on a project developing lead-free solders at a conference hosted by the Semiconductor Research Corporation. Of the experience, she says, “Interacting with so many companies that support electronics research allowed me to learn about the direction that the semiconductor industry might take in the future, which was really exciting.”

Rohrer noted that the department is in the middle of a $5 million renovation of the undergrad lab facilities, which is sure to continue to attract future students like Walker.

New traditions are good things for old departments, and three years ago the department started the its annual Deck Party, which coincides with the university’s Spring Carnival. Now entering its fourth year, the gathering is an opportunity for undergrads, grads, faculty and alums to celebrate spring, the close of an academic year and the camaraderie of the materials science fraternity.

The deck, by the way, was built for the department by CMU students as part of a design and construction class in the College of Engineering. Talk about using local talent!

Faculty studying ceramic materials include Rohrer, Paul Salvador and Jay Whitacre.

The visitors

Case Western Reserve University, Materials Science & Engineering

Case Western Reserve University also traces its roots back to an industrialist—Leonard Case—and is the product of a 1967 merger between Case Institute of Technology and the Western Reserve University. WRU is itself the outcome of the merger of several small, liberal arts colleges… but that is a different story.

The Undergraduate Materials Society at Case Western Reserve University. Credit: UMS; CWRU.

The department is on the smaller side with 12 faculty and about 30 undergrad students (2nd, 3rd and 4th year), but students see that as a bonus. Ian Kidd, a junior, says in an email, “This makes it very easy to get to know professors and get involved in research early on in your career.”

Junior Rachel Craft agrees, saying “By the end of your four years you’re really close with the other students. I feel like some of my best frients are in my department.”

And there is plenty of research going on at CWRU these days, much of it connected to energy technologies through the university’s Great Lakes Energy Center. Projects include materials for windmills, photovoltaic performance and durability, substitutes for rare earths and more. Department head, Jim McGuffin-Cawley says that all of these projects have undergraduates working in them.

McGuffin-Cawley credits several undergraduate courses with bringing materials science to the attention of undergraduates. Undergraduates take a series of seminar style courses instead of writing and general education sequences. The series, called the “Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship” or SAGES, faculty are able to develop courses around ideas. For example, in the SAGES course, “The Role of Materials in Society,” McGuffin-Cawley says students learn about “historical advances and how materials lead to changes. For example, float glass and the integrated circuit were both developed around 1959, and we follow those inventions through to the iPhone and Gorilla Glass.”

The “Materials in Sports” course, a popular elective in the department, also catches students. McGuffin-Cawley points out that “Often, advances in materials lead to discontinuities in sports records,” and he cited the pole vault record as an example. Mid-century advances in metallic and fiber-based pole design and materials led to much bigger leaps than bamboo poles allowed.

This course was what sparked Kidd’s interest in materials. “Materials properties and design directly impact sports equipment not only in terms of increasing performance but also by reducing injuries by moving more naturally with the human body and reducing vibration and forces transferred to the athlete,” he said.

A hands-on kind of guy, Kidd says, “I have had many interesting experiences involving materials, … but who can forget accidentally burning a hole in the quad with a thermite weld.” Indeed!

Craft also learned about materials through her outside interests. She says in an email, “I think the reason materials appealed to me so much was because of how it related to the art classes I enjoyed in high school, such as ceramics, stained glass and metalworking.” She has continued to develop her talents by taking art electives like ceramics, and jewelry and enameling, which she says, “have been especially interesting because now I really understand the materials science involved.”

MSE was the first department at CWRU to offer a co-op program, and McGuffin-Cawley said almost all undergrads participate in either co-op or have an internship. As seniors, students get a taste of the research experience (if they have not already) when they do their senior design project. All projects are done within a faculty research program, and usually are supervised by graduate students.

The Undergraduate Materials Society is an umbrella organization for students and includes membership in Material Advantage. The department relies on the group to help get the word out about materials through activities like open houses and demonstrations for high schoolers. The group also organizes a speaker series for freshmen that brings in materials engineers from local companies to talk about careers paths.

Faculty that focus on ceramic materials are Mark De Guire, Roger French, Arthur Heuer, Peter Lagerloff, David Matthiesen and McGuffin-Cawley.

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