The Thermostat – Why does it look like it does?
Armed with a pair of wire cutters Bill shows how a common thermostat reveals how good industrial designers keep track of the dimensions of a human being.
More details | Watch nowThe Transistor 2
Bill shows how a transistor works by examing a replica of the first one ever build: The Bardeen-Brattain point contact transistor.
More details | Watch nowIBM Selectric Typewriter
Using slow motion video Bill Hammack shows how the mechanical digital-to-analogue converter of IBM's revolutionary 'golf ball' typewriter works.
More details | Watch nowAluminium drinks can tab
Bill uses slow motion video to show the ingenious engineering design of the apparently simple tab of a pop can.
More details | Watch nowBlack Box – A flight data recorder
In designing an object an engineer must choose the proper material. Never is this more important than in the 'black box' flight data recorder.
More details | Watch nowQuartz Watch
Bill takes apart a cheap watch to show how it works. He describes how a tiny quartz tuning fork keeps the time.
More details | Watch nowThe Whiffletree
Bill describes how a whiffletree was used in early calculating devices to do mechanical digital to analog conversion. He shows briefly the device used in an IBM Selectric Typewriter.
More details | Watch nowCoffee Maker: Pumping water with no moving parts
To engineer an object means to make choices. Bill illustrates how the choice of having a single heating element made an engineer find a creative way to pump water with no moving parts.
More details | Watch nowAeronautical Engineering
My presentation is on the history of flight, the physics of flight and the different types of aircraft that exist. This includes the Wright brothers , the Bernouli effect and jet propelled aircraft.
More details | Watch nowPlastic Electronics.
Plastics have become ubiquitous structural materials due to the ease with which they can be processed at low cost into complex shapes. Imagine a world in which metals and semiconductors have similar attributes ? that is the world of Plastic Electroni....
More details | Watch nowGeoengineering: a brave new world?
This is a very new and rapidly developing area of science and technology and the proposals range from placing giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight to fertilising the oceans with nutrients in order to produce more phytoplankton to soak up atmosp....
More details | Watch nowMulti-field problems involving multi-fracturing solids.
For many problems involving multi-fracturing solids and/or particulate media, the system response is governed by the presence of an additional phase, either gaseous, liquid or both, or by the need to consider other physical phenomena, such as thermal....
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