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Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research (HYPER) Laboratory Cool. Fuel.

Introducing, and bidding farewell to Dr. Jake Fisher

Congratulations to Jake Fisher on successfully passing his thesis defense! He is the first Ph.D. student to graduate from the HYPER laboratory and the first graduate student to start with the lab back in 2010. He’s moving on to start a small business related to cryogenic equipment manufacturing and consumer products in Redmond.

Read the full story of the achievement on his alumnus page.

How to reliably get brilliant students

 

Make them.

We’ve got an incredible group of alumni and current students from the first six years of the HYPER lab —  at last count five most outstanding students in the department, three more that won most outstanding in the college, a Goldwater honorable mention, two NASA STRF winners, and a Timmerhaus award winner. We’ve won International competitions, helped people land jobs with the most cutting edge companies in aerospace, and even spun out a company. People are noticing and asking for my recruitment and interviewing strategies. So here goes:

I don’t recruit.

Not once in the first 5 years did I recruit a student from the … » More …

The magic of the lentil pit at the Palouse Science and Discovery Center

I love a good science center.

One of my favorite reads is K.C. Cole’s “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and His Astonishing Exploratorium.”  At first it’s a biography of Frank Oppenheimer growing up in the shadow of his “cerebral” older brother J. Robert through the Manhattan Project years, becoming faculty at Minnesota only to be exiled during McArthyism — all of which is essential context to explain how San Francisco’s Exploratorium came to be the seminal science and discovery center in the world. Some of Frank’s values that defined the space that have stuck with me are: 1) admission should always be … » More …

A critique of Nature’s “Why we are teaching science wrong, and how to make it right”

Nature published a piece today that’s relevant to several of my discussions on this blog: “Why we are teaching science wrong, and how to make it right.” In short, it’s a demonstration of exactly what is wrong with the new active education movement. Let me be very clear that my negativity does not mean that I’m against the movement — active learning is indeed an advance over the status quo. This larger national movement is simply a small step in the right direction, one that can easily be skipped over towards the inevitable future of STEM education.

The article advocates gimmick in-class discussion problems. … » More …

Why equilibrium hydrogen doesn’t exist

As you already know, hydrogen is unique among fluids for a number of reasons. I like to introduce one of these key differences from the historical perspective:

In 1932, Werner Heisenberg won the Nobel Prize in physics “for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen.” These allotropic forms of hydrogen called orthohydrogen and parahydrogen exist due to parity between the nuclear spin and rotational spin function for the hydrogen molecule. Orthohydrogen is a higher energy triplet restricted to odd rotational energy levels (J = 1,3,5…) and parahydrogen is a lower … » More …

System design guidelines for user facilities

Initial floor plan sketches

We’re just over 1 month into refurbishing our new lab space in suites 108 and 113 of the Thermal Fluids Research Building (TFRB). We’re following the 5-S philosophy from Lean Manufacturing: 1) Sort, 2) Systemize, 3) Shine, 4) Standardize, and 5) Sustain. Recent posts have shown we’re nearing the end of phase 1 and are starting to look towards the design of our working systems within the space. What we decide matters. So what design rules can we follow to … » More …

How universities evolved tree-like hierarchies

Consider this cherry tree in the WSU Arboretum:

WSU Arboretum Cherry Blossoms

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?

Branching flow systems

 

The image on the left is a river delta, the image on the … » More …

What is education for?

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?

… » More …