Issue Archive
14 issues published.
Konrad Dannenberg — The Quiet Engineer Behind the Saturn V
Von Braun got the streets, buildings, and biographies. Dannenberg got the propulsion system to actually fire. He lived in Huntsville until 2009, age 96, and most engineers in town today have never heard his name.
Builder's Day — A $30 ADS-B Receiver That Pulls Aircraft Out of the Sky
Forty dollars of parts, a coat-hanger antenna, a Raspberry Pi you probably already have, and you're tracking every aircraft within 200 nautical miles — including the ones the public maps redact.
The de Havilland Comet — Why Every Airliner Window Is Round
Three jet airliners came apart in the sky between 1953 and 1954. The British investigation that followed rewrote how the whole industry thinks about fatigue. Every Boeing and Airbus you've ever flown in carries the lesson.
The Three Modes of Heat Transfer — and the Numbers That Make Them Real
Conduction, convection, radiation. Every textbook lists them. Most engineers can quote one number from each. Here are the three numbers that show up most in real cluster work.
Three Fluid Dynamics Numbers You Should Be Able to Quote
Fluids show up in propulsion, hydraulics, HVAC, missile aerodynamics, and the wastewater pipe behind the building. If you can't quote these three, you can't argue with the fluids guy.
Control Systems — The Three Numbers Every Loop Lives or Dies By
If your controller oscillates, lags, or quietly walks away from setpoint, the answer is in one of these three concepts. They've been the same since Bode worked at Bell Labs in 1938.
Materials Under Stress — Beyond the Stress Block
Last week we did the three stresses. This week: the three numbers that tell you how a material actually behaves when you load it sideways, twist it, or pull on it from both ends.
Wernher von Braun — The Complicated Reason Huntsville Exists
Every street, building, and astronomical society in this town carries his name. The full picture is uncomfortable, important, and worth knowing.
Build a Load Cell Scale This Weekend
Three terms you'll use to build a working scale today — and the engineering concepts they teach without a textbook.
Galloping Gertie — How a Bridge Sang Itself Apart
On November 7, 1940, a four-month-old bridge twisted itself apart in a 42-mph wind. The lesson took half a century to fully absorb.
Entropy, Enthalpy, and the Process That Can't Trade Heat
Three terms every thermo course covers and almost every working engineer still misuses in casual conversation.
Three Terms You've Used Wrong
Words that show up in everyday engineering and almost nobody defines correctly when asked.
The AC Power Trio
Three numbers that explain why your utility bill is what it is — and why industrial plants get billed differently.
The Three Stresses That Govern Everything
Read these three numbers off any material, and you can predict almost everything about how it will fail.