Friday, March 15, 2024

Summer Teacher Camps for 2024

I know what you were wondering: where are all the summer material science teacher camps in 2024?

Well, wonder no more. Here is where they all are.

If you don't know what I'm talking about - first, I'm not sure how you found your way to this blog because I think this is just about the only way people find this blog...second, check out the videos about the camp that I've posted before.

If you're wanting to sign up for one of these camps, head on over to the ASM Education Foundation website and sign the heck up!

Monday, March 11, 2024

Enter the Crystalverse

 


In our material science class at Princeton - and in most of the matsci classes that originated from the ASM summer camps, I would imagine - we grow copper (II) sulfate crystals from solution.

It's a fairly easy lab to do, and the students have a high success rate.

For most students, that crystal growing experience is an end, but for others it's just a beginning, a taste of a much richer world of crystal growth.

For those students, crystalverse would be a great resource as it provides instructions for the diy crystal farmer whether they want to grow crystals of copper acetate, monoammonium phosphate, sucrose, alum, sodium chloride, potassium ferrioxalate, or even pyramidal crystals of sodium chloride.

In every case, the procedure is largely the same - make a solution, let the solution cool and evaporate to form seed crystals, continue to let the solution evaporate to grow the seed crystals larger. The great things about the crystalverse website is that it has loads of tips and faqs to help you troubleshoot your growing.

Monday, March 4, 2024

How to make salt

Today you get a whole bunch of videos about making salt (all different from previous salt making videos.)

It seems like such a simple thing - talk salt water from the ocean and boil it down - but there's a lot more to the science of making salt including removing the calcium and magnesium impurities, allowing the crystals to grow to the desired size, and sorting those different crystal sizes.

Who knew that the rate of crystal growth would affect the size of the crystals?

More after the jump...

Monday, February 26, 2024

Self-Healing Material

Self-healing materials could be pretty cool if we get them figured out.

I appreciate the brief dalliance into cold welding between metallic pieces in space - something I've posted about before.

And I appreciate Steve Mould, of course, who sadly keeps his humour (British, natch) mostly in check for this video.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Accelerated Arrogance: The FIU Pedestrian Bridge Collapse

I'm approximately a million hours away from being a structural engineer, but I think I could look at the cracks shown in the video at 6:49, 10:47, and 16:20 and say that maybe they shouldn't be going ahead with moving the bridge into place.

I never would have thought of the shifting forces during the movement of the bridge from its initial fabrication location, but the need to constantly restress the concrete with each move is fascinating. I would think that would require the concrete to be stressed and stressed and eventually over-stressed.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Fast-Tracked Failure: The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse

I've been watching videos from Brick Immortar of late and will have another one from the same channel next week, but I could pick probably any of these videos and post them here. They all seem to analyze famous engineering failures, quickly recap the incident, then summarize the causes of the failure.

This one is one I'd heard about and that I've seen discussed as a famous case of plans being adjusted without proper checking to see if that seemingly minor change would be problematic. This is, however, the first video on the incident that I've seen discuss that the original design would have been problematic over time as well.