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

ME 527 Lesson 25: Corresponding States

We’re now shifting gears, and deviating from the syllabus, to touch on a classic topic that will set the stage for our Fluid Friday discussions this Friday.

A fantastic book I’ve recently discovered covering the last half of class is “How fluids unmix: Discoveries by the School of Van der Waals and Kamerlingh Onnes” by Johanna Levelt-Sengers. The book covers the primary historical context from which we can understand the status quo. Levelt-Sengers studies in Kamerlingh Onnes’ lab under Michels and is very familiar with the historical background.

The real triumph of the Van der Waals equation started from the very beginning. Van der … » More …

Lessons learned from the first five years: Building community

A letter came in the mail the other day that I’ll be granted tenure in August… and so it goes.

Looking back on the last and first five years at WSU there are a lot of lessons learned.

One of the most important being how to build a supporting, thriving community. I remember my old boss Dave Bahr asking me, “So what are you really trying to do?” My immediate response: “build a community.” I naively told my friend P.K. that it would take 3 years to build community, he laughed and said “eight.” In short, I had no idea what it took to build community, I just … » More …

Lessons learned from the first five years: What to teach

A letter came in the mail the other day that I’ll be granted tenure in August… and so it goes.

Looking back on the last and first five years at WSU there are a lot of lessons learned.

One of the most important being what to teach. Dr. Chuck’s adage is best, “Always remember what you’re teaching your students, because all they remember is confidence.” That’s confidence in both you and themselves. Even that simple word, confidence, is complicated.

I was lucky that my first class was undergrad thermodynamics — a foundational class with a well established process, one that I was well prepared to deliver. … » More …

Lessons learned from the first five years: How to spend your startup

A letter came in the mail the other day that I’ll be granted tenure in August… and so it goes.

Looking back on the last and first five years at WSU there are a lot of lessons learned.

One of the most important being how to spend your startup. This is one of those things that everyone has an opinion about, so listen politely, do what you think is best. What I’m about to tell you is something that I was not told, nor have heard, which is why I’m telling you.

The first and most important thing to do when you get to WSU … » More …

1. Focus, 2. Flow, 3. Flourish.

Are the three things every researcher needs to achieve.

We’re always told to focus, as a verb, to pay particular attention to something. The steady march of improving technology always ensures a greater ability to focus in finer detail. Drill down to derive a more discerning definition. The epitome of our legalistic research milieu.

Your reward for being good at focusing is being doomed to just that. You’ll get more projects requiring more of your focus in more areas with more people. This fractioning of your time into smaller and smaller fractals of focus can’t be good. After enough fractioning, pretty soon your not focusing at all, … » More …

Using design theory to explain the future of personal fitness routines

It’s well known and accepted that physical fitness is key to big beautiful brains over the course of our lives. I have spent a considerable portion of my life experiencing physical fitness routines over a contrasting array of styles, mostly stemming from my athletics background. As I’ve aged, and watch countless patrons of our Student Recreation Center make similar mistakes to those of my youth, began to realize that design theory can help us to inform of trends on the future of personal fitness. Perhaps more importantly, design theory can help us to contextualize personal fitness routines by a non-traditional value taxonomy that can help us … » More …

HYPER GAMES

WSU Mechanical Engineering Freshman Kacie Salmon drew inspiration from our four lab research themes of hydrogen cooling, storage, energy, and properties to develop this poster:

HYPER GAMES

Each column contains a hydrogen riddle. Feel free to e-mail me your riddle answers: jacob.leachman@wsu.edu

Kacie’s going to be great!

Making a Cryogenic-compatible O-ring seal

One issue that I ran up against while re-designing CHEF for my thesis research was the connection point on the hydrogen liquefaction tanks. I decided to use VCR connectors because of their reliability at vacuum and low temperatures, this meant that a VCR connection directly to the tank would be easiest for design and build. As all VCR connections, off the shelf, are made of stainless steel, and the liquefier tanks were made from Aluminum (because of thermal concerns), welding a connector directly on was not an option. NPT connections were another possibility, but ultimately not chosen for fear of leakage at low temperatures. Luckily, … » More …

The not so ideal later days of thermophysical properties

Last time we discussed the ideal early days of thermophysical properties. Specifically we looked into the progression of the ideal gas law by the natural philosophers and eventually physicists that culminated in the virial equation of state in 1905. After this, physicists generally took the research into the micro-scale and using statistical thermodynamics to show how quantum phenomena affect bulk properties. Over the years many intermolecular potential assumptions have been mapped to the virial equation to model bulk properties — hard-sphere potentials, soft-sphere potentials, squishy-sphere potentials, staticky-sphere potentials, non-spherical potentials, etc. Even going to direct solution of the Schrodinger wave equation to determine the … » More …

The ideal early days of thermophysical properties

Flash back to the literal days of Sir Isaac Newton and horse drawn carriages. Natural Philosophy was the hobby of the wealthy elite. It is in these humble beginnings that we learn the story of thermodynamic properties and equations of state.

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was one of the first “scientists”, actually at the time known as a natural chemist, to consider the behavior of gases while changing temperature and pressure. It’s widely considered that his laboratory assistant, Robert Hooke (from Hooke’s Law) built one of Boyle’s original apparatus on the assumption that air was a fluid of particles connected by small invisible springs. … » More …