Category: Engineering

How Tempered Glass is Manufactured

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Tempered glass is made from annealed glass which is regular glass, also referred to as “non-tempered” glass. Annealed glass is placed onto a roller table, taking it through a furnace which heats it 620 degrees Celsius, which is well above its transition temperature of 564 degrees Celsius in which it changes from a hard material into a soft rubber material. The glass is soon after rapidly cooled with forced air. The inner portion remains free to flow for a short time whilst the outer portion hardens quickly. An alternative chemical toughening process involves forcing a surface layer of glass at least 0.1 millimeters thick into compression by ion exchange of the sodium ions in the glass surface with potassium ions (which are 30% larger), by immersion of the glass into a bath of molten potassium nitrate. Chemical toughening results in increased toughness compared with thermal toughening and can be applied to glass objects of complex shapes

The Possibility of Terraforming Mars

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In order to terraform Mars, scientists have theorized that by blasting the polar ice caps on the north and south poles of the planet with lasers, the ice could be melted, turned into water, and used to grow vegetation. Terraforming has been successfully performed in the past, as 1600 kilometers off the coast of Africa is Ascension Island, a place in which nothing grew or lived (as far as scientists are aware of) because there was no fresh water or vegetation due to the top soil being prone to volcanic activity. Charles Darwin visited the island with his good friend Sir Joseph Hooker. Darwin and Hooker terraformed the destitute island by introducing approximately 220 different plants, transplanted by ship, on a Noah’s Ark of sorts. The experiment worked. Ascension Island is now home to hundreds of plant species and the lifeforms which go alongside vegetation

Cement vs Concrete

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Cement and concrete are not the same thing although they are commonly incorrectly used interchangeably. Cement is an ingredient of concrete which is a very fine powder made from limestone, sand, clay, iron ore, water, and stone. Proportions of these ingredients are crushed and heated in a kiln to form what is referred to as “clinker”. The clinker is crushed again with gypsum and a number of other ingredients, and the result is a fine powder which is then referred to as “cement”. Aggregates in concrete such as sand and stone, coarse and fine, are for volume only and are not active ingredients in the hydration process

The Vulnerability of Electrical Grids and Microgrid Backups

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All industrialized countries have power grids which are incredibly vulnerable to hacking as they are run by software which helps ensure load and demand is always balanced. Mitigation of this risk can be sought by creating micro grids which are smaller versions of the large scale grid currently in place. Microgrids, if attacked would not affect any microgrids surrounding it. Microgrids are often solar powered and store their energy in batteries. Microgrids can act as backups for power grids, namely for the most important institutions (e.g. hospitals, police precincts, and fire stations etc.)

American Inventor Thomas Edison Creating the Electric Chair

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Thomas Edison invented the electric chair so he could show the world how dangerous direct current truly is. Edison wanted to build an infrastructure from the ground up across the U.S. using direct current even though it could only travel 1.6 kilometers before degrading so greatly that it was essentially useless, due to the limited available technology during this period. Nikola Tesla believed that the world should be powered by alternating current as alternating current can carry electricity for hundreds of kilometers whilst only losing a fraction of its total power. During this period of competition between Edison and Tesla, most people thought that Edison was correct in his viewpoint and that the future electric age would utilize direct current