Consider this cherry tree in the WSU Arboretum:
While a great view for enjoying Ferdinand’s ice cream, this tree can also teach about the design and evolution of complex systems. Why does the tree branch the way it does? Why does it branch in similar ways as these?
The image on the left is a river delta, the image on the … » More …
What is education for? –is a question too seldom asked and posed by Seth Godin in this fantastic TED-x talk and discussed in his open-access manifesto on education.
Here’s my opinion: education is for fostering the traits needed by humanity. As such, what education is for must continue to evolve with humanity. Humanity’s needs in the 18th century are very different from the needs of today. Humanity’s needs in the 1950’s, when Bloom originally posited his taxonomy of learning, are more similar yet still different–and continue towards obsolescence–from the needs of today. So why are Bloom’s values still the gold standard of engineering academia?
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The Seattle Times recently posted a user testimony of the Hyundai Tucson hydrogen fuel cell vehicle:
Sadly, the closest fueling station to Seattle is in San Francisco. Let’s take this moment and think about Seattle’s commute and the zero-emission options.
Downtown Seattle is extensively electrified for trolley buses. Aside from the mountain of copper it took to run the wires, that’s great for the environment, not so great for tourism or the pocket book. Electrification of just Seattle … » More …
Last Friday I sent the following message to all students, faculty, and staff in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture at WSU:
It is my pleasure to announce the formation of WSU’s H2Refuel team. The team is competing for a Department of Energy $1 million prize competition to develop an in-home or community based hydrogen vehicle refueling system.
We will leverage our prior win in the 2014 Hydrogen Student Design Competition to develop a drop-in hydrogen refueling station, 2nd place in the 2012 Hydrogen Student Design Challenge to generate heat, hydrogen, and power for the local … » More …
NASA announced the winners of the 2015 SBIR Phase 1 competition. We partnered with Matthew Wright of Ultramet, an advanced material solutions company based in Pacoima CA, to win the Cryogenic Fluid Management for In-Space Transportation sub-topic with a proposal titled, “Parahydrogen-Orthohydrogen Catalytic Conversion for Cryogenic Propellant Passive Heat Shielding.” As stated in the citation abstract, “The Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research (HYPER) laboratory at Washington State University (WSU) recently demonstrated a Cryocatalysis Hydrogen Experiment Facility (CHEF) to characterize parahydrogen-orthohydrogen catalysts for passive heat shielding.” This work builds off of Ron Bliesner’s graduate work during his Master’s Thesis that eventually built CHEF.