Ridiculous Engineering (Wothless Inventions)

     Hey interweb. As an engineer, one of my favorite things to do is peruse technology stores. I like to look at the newest innovations, concepts, and advancements in just about all facets of technology. I also keep up in the techno news with things like healthcare tech, computer technology, entertainment technology, automotive technology, and my favorite is green technology because it represents mankind doing something totally new and answering difficult questions. Mankind really has done many amazing things over the last century and I have an uncontrollable desire to know how it all works.

     The reason for this post however, is the less glorious side of engineering, the problems that were either poorly solved or things that are solutions to problems that do not exist. I came across something called the privacy scarf. Basically the purpose of this scarf is to go around your head and the piece of technology on which you have sensitive information, hiding the screen. What part of this seems like a good idea?! Basically if you are using this in public, you are putting on a sign that says "I have an expensive piece of technology with private information on it and I can no longer see my attacker, so please beat the bloody piss out of me and take my laptop and my identity. While you're at it, please treat me like your prison 'friend."' That's a long sign but an invention this ridiculous deserves it. There are screen protectors that limit peripheral viewing.....buy one!
 
     A few days after seeing this, I found a waterproof in-car GPS at a local store. The only practical reason for this to exist in my mind would be if you don't leave it in your car (like 99% of users) and you don't put it in the case (UNlike 99% of that 1%) and you accidentally drop it in a puddle. But the only realistic application that I could come up with was that they could discover your coordinates of where you drowned when your car went off the road.
    
     A product that just came out recently is the goatee shaver. This is a mouthpiece that you hold in your mouth and goes around your lips like a duck that got punched in the bill. This just screams sanitary. The female version of this is the lip stick guide which is a Hannibal Lecter mask for women preventing lip stick smears. As if women needed any other excuse or way to be absolutely terrifying in the morning.
 
     A relatively new one in the automotive world is water sensing windshield wipers. What do you think the chances are of something going wrong with these automatic windshield wipers when compared to something as complex as ..... a switch? But they are very necessary, I can't tell you the last time that I was driving a car and could not see the rain, or was frustrated that my arms were so short that I could not reach said switch. Just something else to drive up the cost of the car. This is simply an expensive trick for a man in the midst of a mid life crisis to show his friends when he sprays his car with the hose. Another one from the automotive world is the exhaust pipe that grills hamburgers. It supposedly has no contact with the exhaust gasses but I know that I still wouldn't eat it during the survival situation where I somehow got my car in a place that I couldn't walk out of or call AAA.

     To me, these are nothing more than things made by people trying to get rich off of the impulsiveness and ignorance of the masses. As an engineer, we are trained to try and think about all of the ways in which a consumer will potentially use our product and try to make sure that the product can withstand the greatest amount of foreseeable abuse. As a consumer, we need to be trained against the stupidity of some engineers and their ability to steal our money.

     What is the most useless thing that you have ever bought? I myself have unfortunately and shamefully bought a Snuggie.
    
      

Everyday Science #1 ("Zero G")

     Hey interweb. So for those of you who watched some of the last shuttle mission (and felt a part of your childhood be ripped out of your chest, stepped on, burned, and urinated on as the last shuttle touched down) you undoubtedly noticed that the astronauts seemed to float through the shuttle. I'm sure that you have known this since you were a kid with dreams of being an astronaut. It is especially awe inspiring when they pour out liquids, you see one astronaut one way and another one upside down, they show you what happens when "nature calls," or you see how they sleep. These effects are often referred to "zero G" or zero gravity. This gives the illusion that somehow when you are moving high and fast enough to break out of Earth's upper atmosphere that gravity simply turns off. This is not true in the least. You may have noticed when mission control was giving status updates they would say things like "Atlantis is now 700 miles down range moving at 14,000 miles per hour." And a lot of 17 year olds think to themselves about how their 1999 Honda Civic is faster than that now that it has a coffee can muffler. But really, 14,000 MILES PER HOUR. To put this in perspective, the speed of sound at sea level is only 768 miles per hour and the shuttle will continue on to over 17,000 miles per hour in low earth orbit. That is over 20 times the speed of sound! But back to how this relates to zero gravity.

     Think about throwing a ball. If you throw a ball it goes some distance before it hits the ground. If you throw it a little harder it goes a little farther. If you throw it faster still it goes even farther. Well if you were (insert favorite strong super hero) and threw that ball as fast as you could, it would continuously fall around the curvature of the earth making an "orbit" and come back and smack you in the head. That speed is between 17,000 and 18,000 miles per hour for low earth orbit. Now that you know how orbits work, you need one more piece of information to understand zero gravity.

     Think about what its like to be in your car going 60 mph. Inside your car it seems like you are sitting still but when you look at the things going by they look like they are going 60 mph (or 120 mph if its oncoming traffic). This is because RELATIVE to the car, you are traveling at the same speed and in the same direction so it seems like there is no force acting on you but gravity and you aren't moving. RELATIVE to the trees you are moving 60 mph so it seems like they are moving at 60 mph. This is the same concept as astronauts in "zero G." The astronauts are falling at the same speed and direction as the space shuttle in orbit so relative to the space shuttle they are not moving. Now the difference between the car and the shuttle is simply direction. Gravity "pushes" everything towards the center of mass causing the gravitational force. When you are in your car, gravity is pushing you or making you "fall" into your seat (down towards the center of the Earth). But if you and the car were lifted and dropped the car would also be falling and you would be falling at the same speed as the seat so there is no longer a force to hold you into it. This is why astronauts seem to float. Relative to the space craft, the astronauts are falling at the same speed as the shuttle in a continuous orbit so gravity is not "turned off" it is just having an equal effect on two relative objects falling at the same speed. In other words, the reason you are stuck against the ground and feel weight is because gravity has something to push you against, but if you are falling, gravity has nothing to push you against so you feel "weightless" or zero gravity and astronauts are simply continuously falling and not moving relative to their spacecraft making them appear to "float."

     Now maybe if we could get a few more people in the world to think about and appreciate these kind of things, then they wouldn't have so much time to think about how much they hate every other person's religion, color, or country. But what do I know?
     

A Little Bit on Where Humans Came From

     Hey interweb. Today I decided to build a little on some of the notions in the Meteorite DNA post and discuss a little bit about where we come from. I just wanted to share some more knowledge. I promise that this is not a post about aliens altering monkey DNA, or superman pods, or even religion. I also promise to bore you as little as possible with a bunch of physics ramblings (I love my physics classes in college) but there are a few things that I think everyone will find interesting. In the Meteorite DNA post, I shared some evidence that pre-organic compounds like amino acids which are long molecules that link together and form proteins are readily formed and transported through space on meteorites. But you may ask "where did the building blocks of these molecules come from?" Then again maybe you aren't a nerdo like me, but if you are, I have an answer for your question! Scientists believe that not too long after the big bang and after the initial expansion (the part that causes the most problems in the theory), the first atoms began to form. Look at your periodic table of the elements and you will see that hydrogen is the smallest and simplest atom. Hydrogen is also the most abundant element in the universe. So even for simplistic reasons without any math, modern physics, or magic thinking you can come to understand why hydrogen was formed first. Now when you have hydrogen in space, it will clump together due to the laws of gravity.


When enough hydrogen clumps together the gravity in the clump increases forcing the atoms closer and closer together and it starts to heat up (the gas laws). Now once it gets hot and dense enough with enough gravity, the atoms are actually forced to fuse together in a process known as nuclear fusion and they form helium (a "noble" and inert gas) and now you have a star (like our sun). Skip ahead a few billion years and the star starts to run out of hydrogen (star fuel) to fuse into helium. The outward pressure created by the energy released becomes less and a lot of hydrogen (star fuel) falls into the "reactor core" very quickly leading to a supernova explosion (if the star is large enough and this is also the source of black holes.) Our sun is not large enough to supernova just FYI. Now when all of this hydrogen falls into the core, there is a HUGE increase in pressure, gravity, and heat just before the star explodes. This is the time period in which heavier elements are created because the helium and hydrogen are forced to fuse even further because of all the extra "heat and pressure." The elements that I am talking about include carbon, iron, calcium, oxygen, potassium, magnesium, etc. Most of these should sound familiar because they are what make up our world and even OUR BODIES! This is the point that I was leading up to. How amazing is it that we imperfect humans are actually made up of stardust?   

DNA on Meteorites

NASA image of meteor in the atmosphere.

     Hello interweb. For the past several decades, there has been an increasing body of scientific evidence edging towards the idea that we could not possibly be alone in the universe. I'm not talking about the townies who claim abduction or visitation, but the real stuff. We discovered that there are hundreds of billions of stars in each of hundreds of billions of galaxies. We have searched for and discovered other planets. We have discovered life on Earth living in conditions thought unlivable just a decade ago. The Catholic Church randomly announced that extra terrestrial life would not conflict with belief in God. Now NASA has announced that the building blocks of DNA and other similar chemical compounds were present on 11 of 12 meteorites studied.

     NASA believes that there is almost 0% chance that the samples were contaminated here on Earth. This is further evidence that basic biologic chemical compounds are readily created in space, and with all that space how is it possible that life only happened here? To me, whether life is a unique event or the universe is a petri dish of life, it is equally saddening and amazing at the same time.  On the one hand if we are unique, we are truly alone and there is nothing else out there in the vast expanses of space, no one looking for us, no hot space babes, and no Star Wars. But we would truly be a unique, rare, and special occurrence.  But if life is common in the universe, how humbling and slightly depressing is it that we are not unique? Humans have spent all of history believing that we are special, that the Earth and its problems are the center of the universe. But throughout history we have been continually humbled to our knees. We learned that we are not the center of the solar system, that we are not the center of the galaxy, and that we are not the center of the universe.

     We are the 3rd planet from a star that is 3/4 of the way out on a spiral arm of a galaxy full of stars and a galaxy that is one of many in an ever expanding universe. Only the moon revolves around our little blue planet. If life is common in the universe, it would be the final proof that we just aren't that special or probably even that intelligent. But to me, the universe would be a much more special place as a whole if it is teaming with life that explores, learns, and discovers. Leave a comment below saying how life's uniqueness or commonplace would affect you. Would it disappoint you? Comfort you? Encourage you? Break your faith or belief in a higher power? Prove your faith?  

Image source: http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/education/SlideSets/ExpMetMys/Slides10-15.htm