#EngineerClips – “Drone Vacuum” Jan. 6, 2023
#EngineerClips – “Power Ski” – March 18, 2022
Rescue on Angel’s Landing – a near future fictional story by Ken Hardman
exploring heavy-lift drones, semi-autonomous control, bio-medical engineering, materials science, robotics, smartphone technology, tactile sensing, anatomical recognition, noise suppression, emergency 3D printing, inflight drone re-fueling, drone swarm weather sensing, power regeneration, and animal voice recognition.
STEM Magazine, February 2022, page 28 – 32, “Check it out!”
#EngineerClips – “Drawn to Write” – by Ken Hardman (Feb. 27, 2022)
#EngineerClips – ‘Elevator App’ by Ken Hardman
#EngineerClips – “High-Speed Chairs”
#EngineerClips – Bathing with Bottles
by Kenneth Hardman
“Jake!” Mom calls out from the bathroom.
“Ya, Mom?”
“Why is there a case of bottled water in my bathtub?”
“It’s an engineering experiment, for my middle-school science class.”
“An engineering exp…?” Mom pauses, then slowly inquires. “Let me guess, you are… trying to optimize… water cooling by…”
Jake enters the room. “No. It’s a water conservation experiment.”
“So…” Mom scratches her head. “You are re-using bath water by putting it in the bottles?”
“No, Mom.” Jake exhales a puff of air. “The water bottles displace, or reduce the water needed for the bath. You get the same deep soak with two gallons less fresh water using thirty-two, 8 ounce bottles.”
Mom now squinting, and still scratching her head. “Thirty-two? Do I have to sit on the bottles?”
“Of course not. Thanks to Archimedes’, the small air bubble in each bottle keeps it buoyant, barely breaking the water surface. They’re small enough that they should move around easily in the bath.”
“Oh!” Mom gets it, thinking through the process. “Who’s Archimedes’? Never mind. So, do I have to tell my friends that I bathe with plastic bottles?”
“Look,” Jake walks to the tub and picks up a bottle. “In addition to satisfaction helping the planet, you get drinking water storage, waste water reduction, less guilt from taking a 30 gallon bath instead of a 15 gallon shower, and reduced land fill, all by giving up your pride. And! If you get thirsty while bathing, well, they’ve never been opened; just grab a bottle. Oh, and did I mention the free reading material? The labels are waterproof.”
The Orbital Mechanic in STEM Magazine
Dear Engineering Stories readers, I am pleased that one of my engineering stories, “The Orbital Mechanic” is published in STEM Magazine and will be available to a large STEM and educator audience. Check it out and please encourage your friends and colleagues to follow Engineering Stories. Here is the link to STEM Magazine. See, “The Orbital Mechanic” on page 32. Best Regards, Ken Hardman
Please share the Jan. issue of STEM Magazine
www.stemmagazine.com/gJAN18
For HTML5 users:
www.stemmagazine.com/gJAN18/viewer/desktop
Special “Football” STEM edition for Superbowl Sunday
Wayne Carley
Publisher
www.stemmagazine.com
Ferril Losee – A Brilliant Engineer
On the farm young Ferril was taught by his father “to work hard and be a good person.” In addition to farming, football, dancing and music, Ferril was good “with [his] hands and could do construction and other tasks… The principal… once said, ‘I never had a son, but if I had I would like him to be just like you.’” Before graduating, with books in hand he hitchhiked each afternoon to learn about electricity and motors at a vocational school. With good grades in science, Ferril received a scholarship to BYU. He completing his undergraduate work at the University of Utah in his strongest subject, electrical engineering, where he “helped to run a student/faculty lounge, where we would electrocute hot dogs—the best hot dogs you ever tasted—with our electrical gismos.” In 1953 he earned his bachelor of science degree, complimented by the Outstanding Engineering Graduate award from the Institute of Radio Engineering, and received job offers from all seven of the companies with which he interviewed. Ferril chose Hughes Aircraft Company where he, “invented things and headed up the first satellite communications group,” completed his master of science degree at the University of Southern California, and for six years “did other things that were exciting.” At Aeroneutronics he “had an enviable record of getting new business, and that was very good for [him] financially.” After another 6 years, “I was shocked,” when “I received an offer to be the Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department,” at BYU. He built what “eventually became one of the outstanding electrical engineering schools in the country.” Ferril taught for a couple decades and consulted for government agencies and industries. His specialties were radio, radar, and x-ray. In his retirement, he wrote two successful editions of an engineering textbook, in which he wrote, “there is both a desire and a need to learn about this important subject as completely and as easily as possible.”
(by Kenneth R. Hardman, Reference: The Losee Family History – Ancestors and Descendants of Lyman Peter Losee and Mary Ann Peterson, compiled by Ferril A. Losee, Jana K. Hardman Greenhalgh, Lyman A. Losee, 2001) #AncestorClips
Engineering Family History Stories
Dear Engineering Stories friends, Thank you so very much for your interest in these Engineering Stories. I have enjoyed writing them both because I enjoy engineering, and I enjoy writing in general. In fact, at my regular job, I see myself in part as a technical writer because I’m always writing specifications, requirements, plans, presentations, proposals, and procedures. I enjoy writing whether technical, creative, or, yes about my genealogy. I have taken on the task of trying to make my ancestors accessible to their busy posterity by writing very very short succinct summaries of a key time in their lives. May I encourage this exercise? Those who lived on this earth before us, gave us so much, and there is so much we can learn from them. Take a look! Each story can be read in 90 seconds or less. And from one engineer to another, try writing some of these yourself, about your ancestors; it’s good writing practice for any anyone in any vocation, including engineering, it takes skill to write in so few a words. And each story is uplifting. Besides, you might find and engineer in your family tree; I did! Click here and FOLLOW my #AncestorClips blog. To help you write a short short meaningful story about your ancestor, engineer or not, I prepared a worksheet for you. Click here and start writing. www.ancestorclips.com #familyhistory #genealogy