Today in History – July 27, 2010 – Plastic bottle catamaran named “Plastiki” completes epic pacific crossing. A crew of experts, scientists, and creatives, led by visionary explorer David de Rothschild,  sailed over 12,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a boat made out of plastic bottles and recycled waste products. The name “Plastiki” was inspired by Thor Heyerdal’s 1947 epic expedition the Kontiki.

The purpose of this bold adventure was to draw attention to our carbon footprint with a focus on those ubiquitous PEP water bottles and the Pacific Garbage Patch.  The catamaran design was a pioneering example of sustainable design.

The team aims to captivate and inspire, as well as to motivate tomorrow’s environmental thinkers and doers to take positive action for the planet and be smart with waste. Ultimately, they hope to inspire people to rethink waste as a valuable resource. One person’s waste could be another person’s treasure.”

When teaching a course for engineering faculty in India, I used the problems of PEP water bottles as the week-long class project. Usually made of PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate), ~25g per bottle, these plastics use:

• 6.45 kg oil/ kg PET
• 294.2 kg water/ kg PET
• 3.723 kg Green House Gases/ kg PET
• and that’s not even including transportation!

You are welcome to use my slides. This problem is ubiquitous, and the solutions will be geographically and culturally depend. Makes a great project for human-centered sustainable design. Also allows for some creative designs that address the triple bottom line of planet, people and profit. My favorite case study is the formation and expansion of the TerraCycle company.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on Plastiki and  water bottles.  Or take a virtual tour of the Plastiki and learn how this boat survived the mighty ocean. Click on “hot spots” for more details on the catamaran design. For related educational resources, visit the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Education and Ocean Engineering Education disciplinary communities.

Also on this date on July 27, 1866, the First transatlantic cable was completed.

Today in History – July 14, 1867 - Nobel first demonstrates dynamite. While in Paris, Nobel came to work with Ascanio Sobrero, the inventor of nitroglycerine. Though it was ten times stronger that black powder, it was highly unstable. Nobel was intrigued with nitroglycerine’s potential as a construction tool. But he knew he had to make it safer to use. In 1860 he began his experiments on nitroglycerine and went on to create an detonator (blasting cap) for it. Though one of his brothers died in an 1864 nitroglycerine accident, Nobel continued his work to improve the substance. In 1866 he finds that the addition of kieselguhr (diatomaceous earth) stabilizes the substances and makes it moldable. Because the substance could be shaped into cylinders it made it a perfect fit for the holes created by the newly invented diamond tipped drill. With dynamite construction on bridges, tunnels, and other projects occurred faster, cheaper, and safer. And in 1867 Nobel obtained the patent for the substance now known as dynamite.

Nobel’s makes much of his fortune through dynamite. And it later years he pursues further work in weapons technology. However late in his life, and especially through his interactions with Bertha von Suttner, he became increasingly interested in working for world peace. In 1888 a premature obituary was printed condemning him for inventing dynamite, which was now also used as a weapon in wars. In order to create a more positive legacy, Nobel left much of his estate to create the Nobel Prizes.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on, Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize, and other scientific and engineering awards. Or browse related curricular resources and events in the Civil Engineering Education, Construction Engineering Education, Mineral and Mining Engineering Eduacation or the Chemical Engineering Education community sites.

Today in History – June 25, 1903 – Marie Curie defends her doctoral thesis, then gets Nobel Prize five months later. Did she just procrastinate? Or were thesis standards higher a century ago at the Sorbonne? I haven’t seen a good explanation for the delay, other than she was busy discovering new elements.

Earlier in 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie made repeated separations of the various substances in pitchblende (photo on left) and used a Curie electrometer to identify two unidentified radioactive fractions that remained in pitchblende after uranium was removed. They discovered that the one containing mostly bismuth also contained a new element they named “polonium” in honor of the country of Marie’s birth. The barium fraction contained another new element, which they named “radium” from the Latin word for ray. They were able to add two new elements in the Periodic Table. While the chemical properties of the two new elements were completely dissimilar, they both had strong radioactivity. Radium was later isolated as a pure metal in 1902, but the discovery was not published in the popular press until this day in 1903.

Evidently, Marie Curie was so focused on her research that she had neglected to complete the writing of her thesis, which she finally got around to defending on June 25, 1903 titled: “Research on radioactive substances”.

Marie and Pierre Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Henri Becquerel, their contributions associated with the discovery of spontaneous radioactivity. Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 “in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”. Alas Pierre Curie was not able to share the Nobel Prize this time as he was killed earlier in a carriage accident in a rainstorm in Paris on April 11, 1906. The curie is a unit of radioactivity originally named in honor of Pierre Curie by the Radiology Congress in 1910, after his death.

Marie Curie was the first person to win two Nobel prizes. Her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie (photo below right), also won a Nobel Prize in 1935.

See the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on Marie and Pierre Curie and radium. Or visit the Nuclear Engineering Education community site for more information. Also our resources on women in science and engineering and gender equity today.

Today in History – June 22, 1908 – Founding of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Last year, the AIChE Annual Meeting  celebrated AIChE’s centennial in its founding city of Philadelphia. The conference highlighted chemical engineering innovations over the past 100 years and looked into the future of chemical engineering and chemical engineering education. Below is a description of the Centennial activities from the AIChE Centennial website:

“The microchips in your cell phone. The LCDs in your new flat screen TV. The plastic wrap on last night’s leftovers. The pills in your medicine chest. The fuel in your car. The carpet in your living room. The insulin pump in your chest. In fact, there isn’t a single facet of modern life that chemical engineers haven’t touched. And AIChE members have been part of almost every major development from plastics and fibers to unleaded gasoline to nuclear and even solar power. If it’s modern, chemical engineers helped make it happen. Join us as we celebrate the centennial of AIChE’s founding. Throughout this year this space will grow to feature important events and developments, people and schools. And while we’re celebrating the past we’ll also be looking to the future, incorporating contributions from student members and content especially for younger students.”

For more on the history of chemical engineering and chemical engineering education download the chronology prepared for the centennial or visit the Engineering Pathway’s curricular resources in the Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering disciplinary communitity.

Today in History – June 8, 1940 – The discovery of element 93, neptunium (symbol Np), a decay product of uranium-239, was announced by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson working at the University of California at Berkeley. Neptunium was named after the planet Neptune and, at the time, was the first element heavier than uranium. Such elements with stable isotopes are called transuranium elements. McMillan was awarded a share of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 for the discovery of Neptunium. McMillan was a member of the Radiation Laboratory under Professor E.O. Lawrence with research on nuclear reactions and their products, and the design and construction of cyclotrons and other equipment. He succeeded Lawrence as director of what is now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1958. McMillan was also a member of the Faculty in the Department of Physics at Berkely from 1935 till his retirement in 1974. Today, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), named after Ernest Lawrence, has taken the lead in a diverse range of projects in particle physics and energy, such as environmental energy technologies.

See the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on radiactive elements, particle physics and the cyclotron or visit the Nuclear Engineering Education or the Chemical Engineering Education community sites for more information.

Today in History – May 17, 1954 – Official groundbreaking of the CERN laboratory occurred in Geneva. A small number of scientists first envisioned CERN vision as an opportunity to bring nations together through science and build a world-class laboratory for nuclear and particle physics in Europe. CERN’s founding convention emphasized that that it should foster international collaboration, promote contacts between and interchange of scientists and make its results freely available through  advanced training and publications. “When the 12 founding Member States ratified the CERN convention on 29 September 1954,” explains CERN’s Director General Robert Aymar, “they gave the new organization a mission to provide first class facilities, to coordinate fundamental research in particle physics, and to help reunite the countries of Europe after two world wars.“

Today, CERN has achieved its mission and more, hosting around half the world’s particle physicists, with  membership that includes 60 countries and 8,000 scientists; it boasts a large number of Nobel Laureates as well.  CERN supports the world’s largest set of complex scientific instruments so study the basic particles of matter and related energy releases when they collide.  “It is no accident,” says Aymar, “that many of the countries about to join the European Union are already members of CERN. Scientific collaboration has proved to be a valuable step on the way to collaboration at the political level.“

The 50th anniversary of CERN officially  began on 8 March 2004 with the launch of a Swiss postage stamp dedicated to CERN (see upper left figure).

More recently, CERN launched the Large Hadron Collider as the center for world-wide research on particle physics for the next decade.

CERN has also stimulated a number of other developments beyond fundamental particle physics. It was here that the World Wide Web was launched when CERN’s Tim Berners-Lee submitted a proposal titled: Information Management : a Proposal” in 1990.  His idea, later refined by collaborator Robert Cailiau, was to “merge the technologies of personal computer, computer networking and hpertext into a powerful and easy to use global information system“. The first web server in the U.S. came on-line in December 1991 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California.  The first browsers in the X-window system. The version called Mosaic published in 1993 by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois became the version that was most widely used with its easy to use user interface and ability to run on a wide range of  computer platforms. The world’ first WWW conference was held at CERN in May 1994, attended by 400 users and developers. By the end of  1994, the Web had 10,000 servers and exponentially increasing traffic. The rest is history. In March 2009, CERN celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Web.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway‘s resources on the CERN and particle physics, including their educational site.  For related educational resources, visit the Engineering Science Education Community site. The Engineering Pathway also hosts Engineering Education communities in all ABET-accredited disciplines.

Today in History – May 13, 1958 – Velcro® trademark is registered for a fabric hook and loop fastener.

The way George de Mestral, a Swiss mountaineer, tells the story, he was hiking with his dog in 1948 and was frustrated to see all of these burrs covering them both when he returned home. He says he was fascinated by how tough they were to take off and looked at them in a microscope. He saw that they had small hooks that enabled the seed-bearing burr to cling effectively to the small fabric loops on his pants. This was an “aha” moment and he was inspired to design a fastener using the same concept. He called  his invention ‘velcro’, combining the French words velour (velvet) and crochet (hook). He predicted: “It will rival the zipper in its ability to fasten.”

The idea was not an immediate success and met with derision by some. He persevered and worked with a  weaver from a textile plant in France to develop a nylon type fabric that had the hook and loop fastener concept, patented it in 1955 and trademarked it in 1958. A U.S. patent was filed on May 9, 1958 and awarded on Nov. 21, 1961. The original Velcro® company was formed in 1952 to manufacture this invention and now Velcro® is a multi-million dollar industry.

One interesting note on trademarks: if it becomes a commonly used generic word, then the trademark can be invalidated. Thus Velcro International emphasizes: “Velcro is the name of our companies and is a registered trademark for our products,” the highly protective company says. “It is not the generic name of the product that… is generically known as ‘hook-and-loop fastener’ or ‘touch fasteners’.”

Velcro® is a wonderful example of biologically-inspired design, or biomimicry.

Also on this day, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (to later merge with another society to become the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE) is founded.

For more information see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on biomimetic design and trademarks and patents. For related curricular resources, visit the Materials Engineering Education, Materials Engineering Education and the Chemical Engineering Education community sites.

Today in History – April 29, 1998 – Ten percent of the Amazon rain forest is preserved. On this day, Brazil agreed to set aside about 25 million ha (62 million ac) of the Amazon rain forest for conservation in cooperation with the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund. This initiative will  protect 10% of its forests by the year 2000. The estimated cost of setting aside this land the size of Great Britain is between $84 million and $156 million.

The plant-rich Amazon ecosystem is sometimes called “the lungs of the Earth” with  one-fifth of the world’s plants, one sixth of all the world’s birds, one in 11 of the world’s mammals and one in 15 of the world’s reptiles.

Alas, massive deforestation and development have polluted the environment and now Brazil is one of the world’s top four emitters of greenhouse gases. Between May 2002 and May 2003, it is reported that Brazil lost more than 24,000 square kilometers of forest – an area larger than the size of Israel.

This  1998 initiative has been followed by more recent efforts, but the work seems to be trying to hold back the tide. A recent news article claims: “Since reaching a recent peak of 10,588 square miles of forest destroyed in the Amazon in 2004, deforestation dropped for the next three years, before rising slightly this year to 4,621 square miles, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, which monitors deforestation. “

The good news is that Brazil has decided recently  to set a target for reducing deforestation by 70 percent over the next decade. The success of these plans for set asides require finding economic alternatives for the people living in the rain forests and close monitoring for illegal clear cutting.

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on rain forest preservation and global warming or view our Environmental Engineering Education community site.

Today in History – April 20, 1940 – RCA Demonstrates Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The history of the SEM begins in 1928 and RCA’s demonstration in 1940. In 1965 the first SEM was marketed by the Cambridge Instrument Company. The provided link includes an article that details the history of the SEM from 1928 to 1965. The author (McMullan), himself an important contributor to this field, traces developments such as the first attempts to image solids (Ruska 1933 and the more successful Von Borries 1940).He discusses von Ardenne’s 1938 highly magnified probe and Mahl’s 1941 transmission electron microscope (TEM).

The author speaks at some length about the Cambridge microscopes since this is where he worked with Oatley and added significant contributions to the field. Other contributors from around the world are detailed. Since this is an excellent article on the history of the SEM until 1965, added here will be a few contributions since that year.

An environmental scanning electron microscope, since it doesn’t need to operate in a vacuum like a standard SEM. Allows for the examination of almost any sample under any gaseous condition. Danilatos in the 1980s first used the term environmental SEM and the first commercial environmental SEM was produced by Electroscan.

In the 1990s Chumbley at Iowa State University, working with R.J. Lee Group, successfully created a remote, web-based control for a SEM. He calls this Project ExCel. This microscope allows pre-collegiate teachers to use the SEM in their classroom by remotely logging in to the SEM at Iowa State and controlling it over the internet. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’seducational resources on SEMs and microscropy or view our Materials Engineering Education and our Ceramic Engineering Education community sites.

Also on this date in 1902 the Curies isolate radium and in 1964 the first picture phone is demonstrated. For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s nuclear engineering, information technology and picture phones.

Today in History – April 14, 1932 – First atom is split by a proton beam on a lithium target.

Two physicists, Englishman Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Irishman Ernest Walton developed the first nuclear particle accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator. With this equipment, they succeeded in being the first to split the nucleus of an atom. When a proton from the beam supplied by the accelerator struck a lithium nucleus, their unstable combination disintegrated into two alpha particles (helium nuclei). They shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

Their accelerator cost 500 pounds, the most ever for a single piece of equipment at the Cavendish Laboratory. The beam of protons produced in a discharge tube containing hydrogen was accelerated through three cylinders containing high-intensity electrical fields. The beam passed through a mica window, hit targets of lithium or boron, and produced alpha particles which were confirmed by photographing their tracks in a cloud chamber.

Annotations of two books which provide interesting insights into the lives of these scientists and details of their work are found in Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (http://alsos.wlu.edu).

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on particle physics or view our Nuclear Engineering Education community site.

Today in History – April 14, 1932 – First atom is split by a proton beam on a lithium target.

Two physicists, Englishman Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Irishman Ernest Walton developed the first nuclear particle accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator. With this equipment, they succeeded in being the first to split the nucleus of an atom. When a proton from the beam supplied by the accelerator struck a lithium nucleus, their unstable combination disintegrated into two alpha particles (helium nuclei). They shared the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

Their accelerator cost 500 pounds, the most ever for a single piece of equipment at the Cavendish Laboratory. The beam of protons produced in a discharge tube containing hydrogen was accelerated through three cylinders containing high-intensity electrical fields. The beam passed through a mica window, hit targets of lithium or boron, and produced alpha particles which were confirmed by photographing their tracks in a cloud chamber.

Annotations of two books which provide interesting insights into the lives of these scientists and details of their work are found in Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues (http://alsos.wlu.edu).

For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on particle physics or view our Nuclear Engineering Education community site.