5 Coolest Engineering Stories This Week
This week we learn to create clothes with a new bug based bio-silk 50% stronger than any silk ever created. Harvest 17,000 tons of tomatoes created with only sun and seawater. Spectate new competition featuring cyborg athletes breaking the boundaries of sport. Understand how an Australian student joined the space race to Mars and take a ride on BMW’s new motorbike that’ll keep you safe without a helmet. These are the coolest engineering stories of the week.
Why are Silkworms being fed Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene?
Not famous for it’s incredible strength, silk has been a staple for high end luxury garments for 100’s of years. Researchers now are disrupting this classic fabric by giving it new levels of strength and toughness.
The method: feeding silkworms graphene or carbon nanotubes through treated leaves containing a solution of 0.2% weight of the mentioned materials. Previous to this new method, researchers had attempted to treat already spun silk with toxic-chemicals in a far more complex and environmentally damaging way.
The researchers even took the silk fibres up to 1,050°C carbonizing the silk in the process making it conduct electricity
So why is this cool, well this unorthodox method creates carbon-enhanced silk that is twice as tough and can withstand 50% higher stress before breaking. The researchers even took the silk fibres up to 1,050°C carbonizing the silk in the process making it conduct electricity, a feat never previously achieved. Researchers explained the applications of the reinforced silk include durable protective fabrics, biodegradable medical implants and eco-friendly wearable electronics.
An Australian University student just beat NASA’s top scientists
This is Dr Paddy Neumann and as a third year student at the University of Sydney he made the Neumann Drive a world record-breaking ion engine. NASA’s best experimental ion engine maxes out at 9,600 seconds of a specific impulse whereas his can achieve more than 11,000 seconds of a specific impulse. What does this mean? Well in order for a rocket to move through space it needs a helping hand from the propellant of a working engine. The higher the impulse the more push is created and less fuel is burned allowing for a rocket to move further with less fuel, and less fuel means more room for important cargo (space food)!
The Neumann Drive works by using electricity to heat up solid metal in turn creating plasma which is then used and pushed out the back of the rocket to get it going. Ordinarily fuel is carried on a rocket and then burned up as needed although the Neumann Drive has the unique ability of being able to use space junk such as broken pieces of satellite which means it could go further than the modern spacecraft currently in use. Although still a prototype the Neumann Drive has an exciting future, the biggest barrier now is funding something that they hope to solve by selling off the excess room they’ve been given on ISS whilst they run tests.
This is the BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100, a concept motorbike that’s fully electric and self balancing. BMW boasts that helmets are a thing of the past thanks to the single unit design of the bike, the handlebars allow you to turn the whole motorbike frame whilst the gyroscopic stabilisation system ensures your always kept in the driving seat.
The motorbike is further assisted through a smart visor that allows for information to be overlaid in front of the driver’s eyes. This means direct relay of driving data, easy navigation mapping and push messages for important updates whilst on the road. The long term vision for the project is to push forward the idea of autonomous vehicles and a future without traffic collisions.
A farm of the future that uses only sun and seawater
In the barren South Australian desert lies a 20 hectare site where a space age industrial greenhouse sits producing 17,000 tonnes of tomatoes per year. It’s a world first in terms of how the site functions using nothing but seawater and sun, that means no pesticides, fuel or even soil. This pioneering approach from Sundrop Farm is a means of battling the continuing increase in food demands of a growing population and the hard effects that has on the water supply.
The site works through a seawater pipeline coming in from the gulf, where a solar-powered desalination plant then begins processing out the salt making fresh water for their crops. The hot arid climate make it’s perfect for harnessing the power of the sun, using the 23,000 mirrors surrounding the plant to create up to 39 Megawatts of energy powering the entire plant. Supermarkets are already stocking Sundrop’s produce with the future looking bright with the upcoming similar sites in Portugal and US.
Cyborg athletes compete for gold at the World’s First Cybathlon
Zurich hosted the world’s first cyborg olympics last week, conjuring up a combination of inspirational athletes paired with groundbreaking technology. The Cybathlon as it’s formally known is an event bringing people together of varied disabilities to utilise modern robotics to compete in an olympics style event.
The competitors were given the task of commandeering advanced technologies, for example amputees using machine powered prosthetics or paraplegics racing with robotic exoskeletons. The pilots as they are known in the competition competed amongst 66 teams from around the planet. The next Cybathlon will take place in 2020 where this new motivation pushing the tech forward is sure to create some amazing innovations.
