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Engineering

Fall 2010

Cultivating new energy

With just a whiff of irony, let’s sing a song of praise for gasoline.

A single gallon contains more than 30,000 calories. You wouldn’t want to drink it, but in straight-up energy terms, that’s enough to power a human for about two weeks.

cultivating energy

Gasoline is convenient, portable, and for the most part, cheap. For the purposes of this story, I used it to log more than 1,000 miles around Washington State and make appointments, easily, and always on … » More …

Video: Fast boat model by WSU professor Konstantin Matveev

A video of a model Power Augmented Ram Vehicle (PARV), a fast boat designed and built by Konstantin Matveev, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and mechanical engineering students Zach Malhiot ’07, Ryan Soderlund ’08, and Alex Ockfen ’07 B.S., ’08 M.S.

The fast boat is intended for transporting cargo and people on land, water, and especially snow.

Winter 2009

Design presentations from the “Powering the Palouse” symposium

Bob Scarfo, an associate professor with Washington State University’s Interdisciplinary Design Institute, and his landscape architecture students explore the benefits of re-introducing passenger rail between Spokane and the Pullman/Moscow area in response to shifting global trends, particularly associated with energy, water and climate change.

Presentations shown during the poster session of the symposium are accessed through links on the map below. (Click on a station to reveal a document [PDF].)

 

Additional presentations: Spokane Multimodal, RR crossings (PDFs)

 

Read … » More …

Winter 2009

Fast boat

It may look like a child’s model, but the four-foot boat skimming the surface of the Snake River is a prototype of a new kind of watercraft—a boat that can run up on shore to be unloaded, scoot over marshy ground without tearing up the sensitive vegetation, and zoom over snow on its way to remote outposts.

Designed and built by Konstantin Matveev, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and mechanical engineering students Zach Malhiot ’07, Ryan Soderlund ’08, and Alex Ockfen ’07 B.S., ’08 M.S., the vehicle can go much faster than conventional cargo boats carrying the … » More …

Winter 2003

Blackouts: How often do we want them?

Living in a subdivision where the power lines are strung on poles in our back alleys, we have had more than our usual share of power outages this summer. This has been blamed on the rapid expansion of the neighborhood squirrel population because of the loud pop of the short-circuit that preceded every incident. On August 14, my wife wondered aloud how big the squirrel must have been to have popped everything from Detroit to New York City.

The blame game for the massive outage is just starting. We’ll hear about the operators who didn’t open circuit breakers in time, the engineers who didn’t design … » More …

Fall 2006

Building a better treadle pump—one step at a time

The first thing Jeff Evans, a recent graduate in entrepreneurship, did when he started his senior project was to locate Malawi on a map.

He and engineering students Travis Meyer, Kyle Kraemer, and Dan Good have since learned a lot about this African country, third poorest in the world, and developed a treadle pump they hope will make a positive difference for people there. They traveled to Malawi in March to test their product. Working with Peter Wyeth, associate scientist in International Programs, Trent Bunderson, associate director of International Programs, and faculty advisors Denny Davis and Jerman Rose, the team was part of a unique … » More …

Summer 2003

Leveling the playing field

In softball, success or failure happens when the ball meets the bat. The faster a batted ball travels, the greater the likelihood of a batter’s success. Softball bat manufacturers are using technology to create bats that hit the ball harder than ever-but not everyone is pleased with the results.

Recent advances in softball bat performance raised concerns with the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) that softball bats generating high batted ball speeds were giving individuals an unfair advantage in competition and creating safety problems, says Lloyd Smith, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University.

Since 2000, the ASA, … » More …