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Engineering Facts

How We Use Crystals To Tell Time

Quartz clock operation is based on the piezoelectric property of quartz crystals. If you apply an electric field to the crystal, it changes its shape, and if you squeeze it or bend it, it generates an ... Continue reading

Quartz crystal mechanisms, common since the 1930s and 1940s, can keep a watch accurate to within a couple of seconds a month, or one part in a million.

Man Versus Machine

Computers and automation are designed to help people. It sounds so simple. If you've ever tried to use a machine that looks easy but turns out to be complicated and confusing, however, you know that ... Continue reading

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

So, what, exactly, is the watch on your wrist, Big Ben in London, or the national atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, actually measuring? The first definition of a second was 1/86,400 of the average ... Continue reading

The second, once defined as 1/86,400 of the average solar day, now is determined to be 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation, the frequency it takes to convert a cesium atom from one low energy state to another.

The Night Orville Wright Had Too Many Cups Of Coffee

Whenever Wilbur and Orville Wright's colleague, George Spratt, visited their Kitty Hawk glider test camp, lively discussions and arguments on flight persisted until late in the evening. On this ... Continue reading

The Wright Brothers were the first to fly a controllable, self-propelled, heavier than air machine on December 17, 1903.

More Engineering Facts


Automation:

  1. Man Versus Machine

Breakthroughs:

  1. X-Ray Astronomy vs. Medical X-Rays
  2. A New Twist on Fiber Optics
  3. Bicycle Chain for Fleas
  4. Cool Fuel Cells
  5. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?
  6. Drip, Drip Water Clocks
  7. Fiber Optics
  8. GPS (Global Positioning System)
  9. Hollywood To The Rescue
  10. How Can A Bullet-proof Vest Stop A Bullet?
  11. How We Use Crystals To Tell Time
  12. Hybrid Cars: The Magic Braking
  13. Infrared Headphones
  14. Liquid Crystal Communication
  15. NASA Hits a Hole-In-One
  16. New York to London in Less Than Two Hours
  17. Non-Flammable Fuel?
  18. Pass the Basalt
  19. Red Dot Replacing Cross Hairs
  20. Searing Heat, Little Package
  21. Seeing In The Dark
  22. Smoke Detectors
  23. Space Lasers Keep Earth's Air Clean

Computer Technology:

  1. Moore's Law

Flight:

  1. A Quick Guide To Gliders
  2. Barn Yard Aeronauts
  3. Big Boom
  4. Guide to Propulsion
  5. High Altitude
  6. Nothing Backwards About It
  7. Taming Twin Tornadoes
  8. The Motion of An Aircraft
  9. The Night Orville Wright Had Too Many Cups Of Coffee

Fluids:

  1. A Shear Mystery

Inventions:

  1. Airbags
  2. Inkjet Printers
  3. The Truth About Atomic And Hydrogen Bombs

Materials:

  1. A Man-made 'Take' on Nature's Style
  2. Alloys
  3. Don't Blow A Gasket!
  4. For Want Of An O-Ring
  5. How Many Cows Does It Take To String A Tennis Racquet?
  6. Making Cars Out of Soup
  7. Solid Smoke
  8. The Right Stuff for Super Spaceships
  9. What Are Composite Materials?

Processes:

  1. Bioinformatics
  2. Dress Sizes The Scientific Way
  3. It's A Bird, It's A Plane -- No, It's A Clam!
  4. X-Ray Images & False Color

Robotics:

  1. Snakebots Coming Your Way
  2. Teeny Tiny Technology

Simple Machines:

  1. Ants Are Wimpy
  2. Sundials, Ancient Clocks

Structures:

  1. Hydropower Basics
  2. Leaning Wonder of Engineering