Tag: Engineering

Lost in Translation – an Overdue Update

In this post I try something new: I will keep it short. This is actually an update long overdue. Months ago I have written a post on how to control the four elements that is how to harvest energy from ambient air, solar radiation, the freezing of water, and ground here. A loyal reader told…
What I Never Wanted to Know about Security but Found Extremely Entertaining to Read

This is in praise of Peter Gutmann‘s book draft Engineering Security, and the title is inspired by his talk Everything You Never Wanted to Know about PKI but were Forced to Find Out. Chances are high that any non-geek reader is already intimidated by the acronym PKI – sharing the links above on LinkedIn I have been…
Greatest Innovation Ever

I like silly Top Something Lists. In a more serious state of mind I wondered what a list of the top inventions or top innovations of humankind might comprise. Random googling yields list items such as The Internet, Money, Plumbing, and The Power of Story. This list contains what my biased mind was searching for:…
Stargate: Succumb to the Power of the Ritual

Thanks for your prayers, voodoo magic, encouraging tweets or other tweaking the fabric of our multiverse: Yesterday I have passed my final exams and defence – I did very well, and I am a Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Systems now. As the sensationalist title indicates I tried to play it cool but finally…
My Zen-ny Search Terms: Where Engineering Meets Art Meets Physics Meets Geekdom. (And Rodents, Sometimes.)

I am overwhelmed with spam comments such as “You should take part in a contest for one of the greatest blogs on the web!”, and I really appreciate thoughtful quote spam as: Perfectly composed articles, appreciate it for entropy. “He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.” by…
Controlling the Four Elements. Or: Why Heat Pumps Are Cool.

Despite my attempts to post mainly geeky and weird stuff peppered with (very often not down-to-earth) physics, I got involved in some serious discussions on renewable energy, sustainability, heat pumps, and the pleasures of Building Your Own Stuff. So I will describe what I am actually working on / playing with when I am not…
Trading in IT Security for Heat Pumps? Seriously?

Astute analysts of science, technology and the world at large noticed that my resume reads like a character from The Big Bang Theory. After all, an important tag used with this blog is cliché, and I am dead serious about theory and practice of combining literally anything. [Edit in 2016: At the time of writing this post,…
Joule, Thomson, and the birth of big science

This is a reblogged post: https://carnotcycle.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/joule-thomson-and-the-birth-of-big-science/ I know that I might be guilty of putting too much emphasis on the fancy / sci-fi / geeky fields in physics, as demonstrated by my recent post on quantum field theory. In order to compensate for that I want to reblog this excellent post by carnotcycle in order to demonstrate that I…
2012: The Year We Make Contact

What happened? Actually all of my private and professional milestones have been captured essentially in the new ‘tagline’ I added to my professional profiles: I am a physicist running a small company together with my husband. Following Star Trek terminology he is Chief Engineer and I am Science Officer. We work on planning and optimizing…
Almost There: Celebrating a Special Day

No, this does neither refer to the End of the World tomorrow(*), nor to Christmas, nor to the End of the Year. (*) In 8 minutes in my time zone. Since I have alluded to a ‘leap of faith’ and ‘passing through worm holes’ here or here I owe you a sequel. In a sense it is also a prequel. I…
The First Heat Pump Ever Was Built in Austria

I have confessed recently that I am from Austria. So the patriot in me wants to entertain her readers with the story of a milestone in the history of engineering thermodynamics – set by an Austrian! The development of the first heat pump is attributed to Peter von Rittinger [1]. (Note that [1] is by a Swiss author,…
Retro-Geek: On the Fascination of Machinery

I have no clue about art or design. I learned recently from The Time Traveler that stuff like this the following has its own genre and sub-culture: It is called Steampunk. I am intrigued – as I was by the illustrations in Stephen Hawking’s book Illustrated Brief History of Time long before I knew this was Steampunk at…
Microwave Ovens Are Not Rodent-Ready

It happened again. It took me four years to cope with, and now I have to start again from day zero. (Insert 2 minutes of silence and grieving here) Any device we use on a daily basis is designed for safety. You find hundreds of little logos near the serial number of the device which tell…
Physicist, Philosopher, and Engineer

The headline indicates that I am going to tell one of this old jokes: A physicist, a philosopher and an engineer meet … This is in fact correct, but in an extremely subtle way. As the title of this blog and the pseudo-intellectual summary in the left pane should imply I am of course considering myself…
Einstein and His Patents

No, this is not about Einstein’s achievements as a moonlighting scientific paradigm shifter, while working as a patent examiner in his day job. Einstein is famous for the theories of special and general relativity, and for the correct explanation of the photoelectric effect that has been rewarded with the Nobel prize. It is not so common knowledge that he contributed…
111 Years: A Shining Example of Sustainable Product Development?

The centennial light bulb has celebrated its 110th birthday last year and the story has percolated the web. According to its web cam the bulb is still alive. This light bulb has caused quite a stir when featured in the documentary on planned obsolescence: The Light Bulb Conspiracy. Actually, the bulb technology is very different from modern incandescent bulbs (that are not so…
Why Do You Want to Become an Engineer?

There is this cartoon that explains why one would aspire to become an engineer. It appeals to the Bill-Gates-junior-type geek who wants to build cool stuff, rather than musing about the foundations of “stuff”. I sympathize with all of these three roles, also with the philosopher. I have also been inclined to philosophy, and I…