What would happen to your aquarium during an earthquake? Engineers at the Powell Structural Laboratories here at the Jacobs School of Engineering recently helped the TV show "Totally Unprepared" to answer this question.
They placed two 60-gallon aquariums and two dummies on one of the laboratories' small shake tables. One tank was secured to the wall with $12 worth of furniture straps. The other was not. Engineers then put the whole set up through the lateral ground motion that took place during the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, which registered at 7.2 on the Richter scale. The unsecured aquarium shook and shattered, ultimately falling down on one of the dummies.
Morale of the story: secure your aquarium.
The episode marks the second collaboration between Powell Labs and "Totally Unprepared." Engineers helped put wine racks to the test in a previous episode, which you can watch here.
"Totally Unprepared" is funded by the California Emergency Management Agency, the California Earthquake Authority and the California Seismic Safety Commission.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
French Kids Magazine Highlights Smell-O-Vision
What better way to make science fun for children than to tell them about Smell-O-Vision? The French magazine "Science et Vie Decouvertes" (Life and Science Discoveries)is doing just that in its November 2011 issue.
The magazine ran a picture of Jacobs School of Engineering Professor Sungho Jin and two of his graduates students, who showed that it is possible to generate an odor, at will, in a compact device small enough to fit on the back of your TV.
The caption can be roughly translate to: "American scientists, well, they've invented a machine that emits smells that you can see on TV! Great!"
The photo is paired with a short story about the seven different families of odors.
You can read more about Jin's proof of concept work here.
Also, here is a link to excerpts from the current issue of Science et Vie Decouvertes.
Tesla Motors CEO Makes Bold Predictions at UC San Diego Event
Solar power will be the leading source of energy in the United States by mid-century. We will be sending men to Mars within the next 25 years. Within the next 20 years, the majority of cars manufactured around the world will be purely electric.
These were some of the predictions made by Elon Musk, CEO of the renowned electric car manufacturing firm Tesla Motors. Musk spoke during the first night of The Atlantic Meets the Pacific event at UC San Diego this week. The three-day conference is a joint venture between UC San Diego and The Atlantic magazine, a well-known, high-end publication.
Musk also is the CEO of SpaceX, which aims to design a rocket for inter-planetary exploration. On top of that, he is the chairman of Solar City, one of the leading providers of solar energy in the United States.
In case you missed it, here is our live Twitter feed from Musk’s talk, with more interesting tidbits from him.
@ElonMusk_news: SpaceX's focus is to transport many people at very low cost reliably to Mars, even when no one else wants to do it. #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet. It will take a couple of 100 years to terraform. #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: We should spend about 1/4 of 1 percent of GDP on space exploration. Less than health care but more than lipstick. #TAMTP @ElonMusk_news: the goal is to get the price of moving to Mars below the costs of a middle class home in California: $500,000 #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: We should try to establish a self-sustaining growing civilization on another planet. Best shot is Mars. #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: what originally brought him to CA was the find a high-energy storage device for electricity. #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: In 20 years, majority of cars manufactured purely electric. 15 years after majority of cars on the road will be too.#TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: the biggest challenge is to provide solar power at competitive costs without subsidies. #TAMTP@ElonMusk_news: in college 3 fields most important: Internet, alternative energy and making life multi-planetary. #TAMTP@JamesFallows: How can you be involved in so many fields: PayPal, Solar Power, Tesla, SpaceX, etc. #TAMTP@JamesFallows: the theme of the event is confluence of various kinds. @ElonMusk_news maybe has unified field theory of it all. #TAMTP
These were some of the predictions made by Elon Musk, CEO of the renowned electric car manufacturing firm Tesla Motors. Musk spoke during the first night of The Atlantic Meets the Pacific event at UC San Diego this week. The three-day conference is a joint venture between UC San Diego and The Atlantic magazine, a well-known, high-end publication.
Musk also is the CEO of SpaceX, which aims to design a rocket for inter-planetary exploration. On top of that, he is the chairman of Solar City, one of the leading providers of solar energy in the United States.
In case you missed it, here is our live Twitter feed from Musk’s talk, with more interesting tidbits from him.
UCSDJacobs UCSD engineering
This concludes our live tweet from The Atlantic Meets the Pacific event at UC San Diego. #TAMTP
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Musk: With Internet, more info than library of Congress on your iPhone. Wanted to add a brick to that edifice. #TAMTP
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UCSDJacobs UCSD engineering
UCSDJacobs UCSD engineering
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