Tim Panczak
I pulled into the parking lot of a small print shop in an industrial-looking area in Dublin, Ireland. I looked back at the one lane bridge I had just crossed. It was an ordinary looking bridge spanning a small canal and a rail line. I walked to the bridge,...
Brent Cullimore
It might be apparent by now that I get bothered by silly or strange things. But what’s the point of even having a pet peeve if you can’t enjoy it?
Thermally stratified tanks bother me. Fill a tank partially full of cryogenic liquid, leave it...
Jane Baumann
My husband and I have been lucky to have two wonderful human children, one who is a mechanical engineer living and working in California and the other is in her last year of college (opting not to be an engineer). My husband is Jim Harris, a mechanism...
Doug Bell
If, like me, you are a fan of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, you may have heard the Spherical Chicken joke in the episode “The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization:”
There's this farmer, and he has these chickens, but...
Brent Cullimore
The field of positive psychology is devoted to making so-called “normal people” happier. A key observation is that people tend to be happiest when they are in a state called...
Doug Bell
My career as a thermal engineer started with balloons.
Not the ones you see at birthday parties or even the big colorful ones full of hot air, but scientific research balloons: 400-foot diameter bags of helium carrying thousands of pounds of scientific...
Brent Cullimore
I like coffee, and when I need it, I need it now.
I have an electric pot that is powerful enough to dim the lights a little when I turn it on. I imagine Homer Simpson snoring with his feet resting on the control panel. When I turn on the...
Brent Cullimore
Being perturbed isn’t much fun if you are a human.
But models love getting perturbed. We don’t perturb them enough, in fact.
OK, perturb has negative connotations. And perturber just sounds wrong in so many ways!
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Jane Baumann
For much of my career I was fortunate enough to work in the world of heat pipes and loop heat pipes. While working in the Aerospace industry many years ago, I would often get a phone call from a program with a thermal problem. I would walk into their...
Brent Cullimore
This is a story of how one bird drains while another bird drinks.
The bird that drains is a commercial airliner.
The bird that drinks is a toy. Though I really wish it had been this chirpy chap:
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