Today, we look for ordinary engineering. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
We're constantly tempted to
explain engineering by talking about the Brooklyn
Bridge or the Saturn rocket. Well, there are plenty
of great works to talk about, but that can't reveal
the fine structure of day-by-day engineering. The
latest Mechanical Engineering magazine
offers a far more helpful picture.
So let's turn pages: First, we've heard all the
hype about the IT machine -- the two-wheeled
vehicle that makes one appear to be riding about on
a hand-pushed lawn mower. An article describes the
computer chips that do the seemingly impossible job
of keeping the rider in balance. The sensors that
inform those chips, it turns out, work a lot like
your inner ear.
Two articles deal with hydrogen-powered
automobiles. The tone's much different from that in
the popular press. The articles assume we're
already interested in clean hydrogen fuel. The
issue here is how to store hydrogen in the
car. One article shows how we might release
hydrogen from sodium borohydride into the engine.
The other describes a small
five-thousand-pound-per-square-inch hydrogen
storage tank. Engineers have developed this
wonderfully robust vessel from
carbon-fiber-composite shells.
Read on: New design software combines stress
analysis with design layout. It's been used to
develop the specialized jaws of a grasping tool on
a logging crane. A large die bends sheet metal to
any shape we preset. We can program a new machine
tool to turn out different parts at the push of a
button.
I turn to the last article and find a sight that
greets me every night on the way home from the
University. It's the new Reliant Stadium,
being erected next door to the famed
Astrodome. The Astrodome was once called
The Eighth Wonder of the World; now the
new stadium dwarfs it.
Reliant Stadium, with its huge moveable roof, poses
a hornets' nest of design problems, and each has to
be addressed. One question is, "What will lightning
do as it passes through the rollers that carry the
roof?" Special tests show that even a
twenty-thousand-amp lightning bolt will do no
damage.
And so engineers work piece by piece. Citizens and
politicians argue about hydrogen fuels, but the
debate is hollow without means for handling
hydrogen. Combat surrounds our new football
stadium. But it is being built, and no one
wants its moving roof to seize up the first time
lightning hits it. While we debate the need for
harvesting wood against the need for protecting
forests, engineers develop means for picking up
every log that's been cut.
A great gulf might seem to separate the arena of
rhetoric from this world of problem-solving. But
not so: these articles, filled with low-key,
ongoing enthusiasm, take us to the place where
every great work and difficult decision really does
come to rest.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Mechanical Engineering. Vol.124, No. 2,
February, 2002. (See all the articles.)
