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

The performance of the instructor is…

… increasingly a difficult question to answer.

I’ve flipped both of my classes to varying degrees this semester. As one of my seniors in Applied Rocket Design put it, “Many professors say they’ve flipped a class, but most of what we students actually do remains the same. You’ve forced things to be very different and that in itself has been valuable.”

I replaced faculty structured lectures with student team originated design reviews… let’s be clear, the students decide what aspect of their rocket designs to present about for ~40 minutes, examples are posted under the teaching link. Feedback/scores come from their peers via an online … » More …

The TFRB renovation begins!

We kicked off the renovations of TFRB suites 113 and 108 began yesterday. The spaces previously held a wood shop and furniture studio. While it’s difficult to imagine the future from the pictures below, let me just say we’re excited! We’ll definitely give the cryogenics labs at Wisconsin and MIT a run for their money on low-stakes innovation spaces.

Remember the plan is to merge an outdoor hydrogen testing area with high bay fab area, helium liquefier, student design space, and library.

20150329_161552» More …

Algorithms vs. heuristics and TEDx talks

WSU is gearing up for a 2nd attempt at running a TEDx event. I was lucky enough to give a talk at last year’s event:

In the process of researching and developing the talk, I dreamed up an interesting question: If TED is indeed where conventional wisdom goes to die, and TED becomes conventional wisdom, then what happens to TED?

While the question was posed in fun, and TED talks are a lot of fun, there is a serious side to this. TED does indeed have it’s own » More …

Why the students act like, well, students

…because you treat them like students and not professionals.

One summer I was lamenting to my friends Dan Bukvich and P.K. the finish of a high school student who worked in my lab as part of the Army’s REAP program. The summer had been fine, just fine. I knew we were capable of much more. Here’s  the dialogue:

Me: “How much can you expect from a high school student?”

Dan: “Did you treat them like a high school student?”

Me: “Damn.”

(Mental note: they are soon to be professional engineers and can begin whenever they choose to. Don’t treat them like students. Definitely don’t ever … » More …

Why WSU instead of higher ranked schools?

Well the rankings are out again, WSU’s College of Engineering ranked 76th out of 215 for 2015 by US News and World Reports for best engineering graduate schools. Ironically, this ranking actually became the lifeblood of US News in the late 1990’s due to popularity. The methodology behind the ranking, no surprise, has evolved over the years due to complaints.

The major score component to the US News rankings is a whopping 25% from a “peer survey”- they send a list of blank lines to program directors around the country who are then tasked with listing the best schools in their area. No surprise, … » More …

Explaining ullage volume collapse

Jim Lovell is famously quoted for saying, “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing” after a routine collapse of the liquid oxygen tank ullage volume caused an explosion that infamously rocked Apollo 13. While the explosion was the result of an overpowered motor switch, the ensuing disaster underscores the importance of ullage volume collapse.

Ullage is defined as the volume of vapor above a liquid in a sealed storage tank. Ullage volume collapse is the process of stirring the contents of a cryogenic liquid tank to reduce pressure. That sentence alone should give pause to those of you who have taken thermodynamics.

Not head … » More …

We’re all ambiverts to some degree

Susan Cain’s TED talk entitled The Power of Introverts came up recently (thanks John) and presents a great opportunity to merge many of my prior posts on spiral memes with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) that many of us experienced as youths.

To provide some context, in 1962 Isabel Briggs and her spouse Clarence Myers co-created MBTI as an associative test for the Theory of Psychological type originated by the Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1921. MBTI seeks to inform a person of their “personality type” through four measures:

Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
Sensing … » More …

Cryogenic Temperature Sensing

The following introduction to cryogenic temperature sensors is based of LakeShore Cryotronic’s available sensor packages. Much of the information in this post is from their appendices, technical information, and specification pages. General information about the sensors should be accurate for all manufacturers, but specific details about a sensor may not be. For more information, see LakeShore’s website or their Appendix B, D, or E.

Types of cryogenic temperature sensors are as follows:

Diodes: Diodes are semiconductor based temperature sensors … » More …