True Progress

Recent news has highlighted the opening of the first commercial hydrogen fueling station in California. For people who lease hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (the most common user) or some kind of hydrogen combusion engine, they now have one public place in the state of California where they can refuel their vehicles. A few others already exist in New England and Washington, D.C. Is this the start of a new age in the technology of fuel consumption and the beginning of the end of fossil fuels? And, where does this hydrogen come from anyways? Let’s explore some of those questions in this article. Read the rest of this entry »

For background, I am describing some of my experiences from the US Peace Corps in Guinea, West Africa. More information on this series is available in the introduction.

Although, I was one of only two Americans in a small rural school with one class per grade teaching in a foreign language, my experiences in the beginning were not at all unlike any first time teacher I have spoken with since. A little performance anxiety was common in the first few months, but that gradually gave way to the normal challenges that teaching high school students brings, and a few that were not so normal (at least not to Americans). Read the rest of this entry »

Good Science?  Bad Science?  What do these mean?  How do we know the difference?  We throw these terms around especially in political and policy arguments as if we all understand what they mean.  Exceptions.  Uncertainty.  Facts.  Theory.  Bias.  These ideas seem to determine whether or not we think any particular scientific idea is good or bad.  Do we have the right idea, or is Science really about something else. Read the rest of this entry »

After completion of our training in Senegal, we traveled to Guinea to see our host country for the first time. As the rains had been late in Senegal, our time there was mostly marked by sand and heat and more of the same. The brilliant green lushness of coastal Guinea having already seen months of rain, was a beautiful sight in spite of the humidity. A couple quick weeks of training, and we would finally be on our ways as volunteers at our posts. A healthy dose of nervous excitement permeated this period. Read the rest of this entry »

Often as a reliability engineer, or anyone responsible for researching the reliability of an item, or calculating it, you will find oversimplified published data giving you the impression that reliability is an unchanging physical property like mass or volume, something intrinsic to the materials included in it. This is actually the common sense approach; we know an old thing is less reliable than a new copy of the same thing. But, this common sense gets argued out of us when we are faced with reconciling tables of MTBF (mean time between failures) values, nines (i.e. 0.99999, a measure of reliability), failure rates and other things. Let’s get back to the common sense approach, but with math. Read the rest of this entry »

Drilling for Oil is not the only Potential Energy Producing Activity Offshore

While “green” or renewable energy technologies are often seen as the rival against traditional fossil fuel technologies in some kind of epic battle, they can actually sometimes enhance and support each other. Recent news from wind power companies suggests that they may be able to move their turbines offshore to deep water out of sight of land and away from wind-blocking obstructions by employing technology developed for deep water oil and gas exploration and production operations. Read the rest of this entry »

On Fridays over the next several weeks, I am describing experiences from my service in the U.S. Peace Corps.

An overnight flight from New York’s JFK airport on Air Afrique put us in Dakar, Senegal the next day. In June, when the rains had still not come, Senegal was a very dry and very hot and very sandy place. Peace Corps staff met us just off the plane and we glided through immigration. In the baggage claim area we awaited our lives packed in the two allowed bags to catch up with us and sweated still in a bit of a daze from the long flight and little sleep. We boarded a bus waiting for us that took us to the training center in Thies, a city about an hour’s drive from Dakar. Read the rest of this entry »

Modern Compressible Flow with Historical Perspective by John D. Anderson provides an excellent resource for studies in advanced fluid mechanics. In a field where many texts provide useful content in an entirely unmemorable fashion, this text is an exception. Theory, History, Applications, and other interesting information and stories make this book a beneficial addition to any engineer’s library. Read the rest of this entry »

So, you’ve got a design that you want to prove is better than the existing design from your own or another company. What’s the most efficient, fastest way to get to that answer with a very small sample size? Whle there may be several options you have, including accelerated testing, they each can have their benefits and drawbacks. Here, I will advocate for zero-failure testing as a realistic and useful option, especially since it is something we often do anyways, but without the mathematical justification. Read the rest of this entry »

If we consider development to be the general increase in well being of a population, then we have to recognize that there are times when the increase in one type of measure (real income) is countered by the negative action of another type of measure (disease rates). In these cases, government often steps in to regulate the problem. However, there are times when government regulation is necessary and other times when it is ill-advised. How can we tell the difference? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, this article on CNN.com revisits the idea of collecting solar power in space and beaming it down to Earth. With such a large world demand for energy expected in the next 20 to 50 years, and declining costs for access to space, could this be the time for this science fiction technology to become a reality? As our costs continue to increase, geographically sourced resources are seen as unstable, unpalatable, or insufficient, this idea may finally have come of age. Read the rest of this entry »