Engineering is the discipline, skill, and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.
Questions tagged [engineering]
32 questions
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Instant, painless amputation via high-pressure steam
Several years ago, a friend of mine who had a long career as a commercial/industrial plumber related an anecdote about a colleague who was working at a power plant. He was in the vicinity of a high-pressure steam pipe, presumably part of the same…
user3490
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Can pressurized air directed on the skin cause an embolism?
At my workplace we are warned against using compressed air to blow dust of working clothes etc, except when a special nozzle is affixed to the to the hose, reducing the pressure of the released air.
One danger that was mentioned at a workshop I was…
eirikdaude
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Are engineers more religious than average faculty?
Recent Slashdot article:
In a forthcoming book, Engineers of Jihad, published by Princeton University Press, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog provide a new theory explaining why engineers seem unusually prone to become involved in terrorist…
nic
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Is yellow safer than white for center line road markings?
The Random Fact Generator website told me:
By 1955, forty-nine of the U.S. states agreed that state highways should have a white stripe down the middle between cars going in different directions. The lone holdout was Oregon, who believed that a…
bandybabboon
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Would covering 10% of hydro-power reservoirs with solar panels generate as much power as fossil-fuel plants worldwide?
This article in the journal Nature, claims that:
Covering 10% of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with ‘floatovoltaics’ would install as much electrical capacity as is currently available for fossil-fuel power plants. ... nearly 4,000 GW
Now,…
einpoklum
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Does a turbo-charged engine require a "cooling down" period?
Some people are saying that after having driven a car with a turbo-charged engine, you need to let the engine run for several seconds (or even minutes) before switching off the engine. But nobody is able to explain why, which makes me wonder if it's…
BaGi
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Is the Great Wall of China visible from space?
Is the Great Wall of China visible from space?
This is quoted every now and then in film and television (e.g. The Truman Show), purportedly placing it among a rare class of single object that are both man-made and visible from space.
ANNOUNCER:…
DuckMaestro
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Do you need to break in new engine on a car/bike for first 1,000 km by driving slowly and otherwise following manual's advice?
Normally car manuals say to let the car break in gently, not accelerating or breaking fast for first 1,000 km or driving below 80km/h. Is that really necessary in today's world? Is there any proof anywhere that this makes the engine run better in…
Dmitri
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Will the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah be the 'longest bridge' in the world?
In any metric, this doesn't seem to qualify as the longest bridge in the world. I could be miscalculating, but a number of articles are using the title 'longest'. The articles below are highlights popping up today.
It states it is going to be the…
Mikey
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Have refrigerators become less reliable over time?
An often recited quip, both in my home and in popular culture, is "They don't make them like they used to." Most recently, the quote was brought up when our refrigerator stopped dispensing filtered water.
Is there data to back up the claim that…
Mark Miller
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Is there anything inexplicable about how the WTC Twin Towers collapsed?
Possible Duplicate:
On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?
Having just watched the movie Zeitgeist, I'm a bit unsettled because I don't know how to refute the idea that the Twin Towers collapsed in a way that's inconsistent…
FumbleFingers
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Can the Hyperloop infrastructure implode due to a single crack?
In the article Hyperloop: the doubts persist, it is claimed that the hyperloop could implode due to a crack in the tunnel wall. The argument is supported by the claim that air would rush in at the speed of sound.
The atmospheric pressure on the…
a.t.
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Do electric cars emit half the CO2 as diesel from a life-cycle perspective?
From The Guardian:
"On average, electric vehicles will emit half the CO2 emissions of a diesel car by 2030, including the manufacturing emissions,” said Yoann Le Petit, a spokesman for the T&E think tank, which commissioned the study.
-"Electric…
Kristoffer Nolgren
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Does "liquid-injection damp-proofing" work to water-proof walls?
There are technologies for sale, especially in Germany, to drill holes in the walls of a cellar, and inject into the concrete or masonry a liquid, such as Sodium Silicate
The manufacturers promise these chemicals will make walls waterproof and sell…
Jonas Stein
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Do bimetal jigsaw blades last twice as long as HSS blades and ten times longer than HCS blades?
Bosch makes this claim in their jigsaw blade documentation:
Bi-Metal (BiM): This highly flexible, tough combination
of HSS [High-Speed Steel] and HCS [High-Carbon Steel] results in a blade
suitable for the most demanding
applications when…
Fizz
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