Category: Electronics

Transparent Wood: Revolutions Ahead in Architecture and Electronics

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Research groups from the University of Maryland and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology introduced some chemical solutions that could make the wood completely transparent. This resulted in a glass-like wood you can see through. Wood is always a preferable material as compared to its existing transparent rivals such as plastic and glass. This transparent wood will soon revolutionize electronics and architecture as:

· Wood seems to possess some benefits over glass and plastic for architectural use.

· Its lower thermal conductivity keeps the buildings at a more consistent temperature making it reach higher energy efficiency levels.

· In the electronic world, the transparent wood might be used to manufacture solar cells.

· These low-cost cells will be readily available and can be a potential solution to build solar panels for large surfaces.

The transparent wood laser is another interesting application that is created by embedding an organic dye into the wood. These organic lasers have unique optical properties that can further enhance biophysics. The researchers believe that soon we will witness this technology.

Self-Healing Electronics: A Superpower from Sci-Fi Transformed to Everyday Devices

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Inspired by the Wolverine an X-Men character, a group of researchers created transparent, self-repairing and a highly stretchable material with electronical activation capabilities. This material is suitable especially to improve the performance of electronic devices such as smartphones and robots. Such material is created by combining a stretchable polar polymer with an ionic salt. Some of its features are:

  • This material has stretching capability to expand itself up to 50 times its size.
  • It can automatically repair itself within 24 hours of damage.
  • One of its applications can improve the battery lifetimes of the electronic devices.

One of the professors from the team believes that the market will have a range of self-healing products within the next three years such as the smartphone screens. Self- repairing robots is the most exciting application the scientists are working on. Although this material will change the lifestyle of people, scientists are still exploring it’s applications.

Satellites, Radar and The Electrical Engineer

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         Satellite and Radar design has a huge potential in this information era, where every technological giant is keenly involved in gaining more information through satellites. Giants such as Google, Facebook, and SpaceX need to expand their internet connection and hence are planning to launch many satellites. Google plans to invest around $1 billion in launching satellites. On the other hand, SpaceX aims at launching low-Earth orbit satellites.

The State of Satellite

 

Russia created history by launching the first satellite “Sputnik 1” in 1957. Today, more than 50 countries own their own satellites. There are a total of 1100 active and 2600 inactive satellites today. Among these 50% of them are in low-earth orbit (260 miles high), 20% are in medium orbit (13,000 miles high), and high orbit (22,236 miles), and 10% are in geosynchronous orbit (22,240 miles high). These satellites serve a lot of purposes including weather, navigation, and much more.

 

Weather Satellite: They send images of weather fronts and the changes that the environment faces.

Navigation Satellite: They calculate the location based time and signal distance using GPS and other navigation systems.

Communication Satellite: They connect remote areas and carry communication traffic.

Astronomical Satellite: They study about the universe.

Radar Satellites: The satellites are used for imaging the earth’s surface with the help of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The changes in the images of the same area are detected with the help of radar interferometry. The images of radar satellite can be extremely sharp.

 

The Future of Satellites

 

 

Pseudo- Satellites: High Altitude Aircraft with satellite abilities will be the future of satellites. The Zephyr, a pseudo-satellite flies at 70,000 feet during the day and 50,000 during the night. It runs with solar power and hovers over the same spot for an indefinite time.

 

Nanosats: Lightweight Satellites with small components similar to a smartphone will also rule the future. They have limited capability, but are cost-friendly.

 

Electrical Propulsion: They are used to keep the satellites in their orbit.

 

Electrical Engineer and Satellites

 

For a successful growth and innovation of satellites, an electrical engineer plays a very important role. A few firms are hiring 200-500 new employees and expanding their staff count. In the next 15 years, approximately 1,600 satellites are expected to get launched. These launches would give new opportunities to the engineers. Around 44,100 electrical engineering job openings are projected before 2022.

What are the Six Home Building Technologies of the Future?

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Technology seems to overpower our lives today and is likely to scatter in all sectors. Not only digital business but also residential construction is adopting technologies in a quick way. It is hard to find someone who is not using technology in order to comprehend routine tasks. Therefore, you can find engineers and builders to be using technology to its full potential. The future construction industry might incorporate the following technologies

  • Drones

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The drones are assumed to be small and remotely controlled copters. However, these flying vehicles also have auto-pilot feature. They not only possess the capability to transport materials but also have the ability to carry humans. The future drones are expected to have a high level of intelligence with fully robotic functionalities and capability to do real work.

 

  • Autonomous Trucks

By the year 2040, the autonomous trucks are expected to change the home building experience completely. These trucks will auto-load, auto-dispatch, and auto-offload. Daimler has already started testing self-driving trucks. The test showed that autonomous trucks reduced 7 percent of fuel consumption and consumed less road space.

  • Robots

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Robots have already started taking over some of the industries, and it will soon take over the construction industry too. With the use of construction robots, the need for the human crew to complete hard labor work will easily get eliminated. Haridon X, a robot is expected to be commercially available very soon. It has the capability of laying 1000 bricks approximately in just one hour.

 

  • 3D Laser Scanning

3D laser scanning will play a very important role in the construction industry. The technology could help in site planning, real-time structural analysis and much more. It wouldn’t be a surprise of the 3D laser scanning technology replaced the building inspectors.  Incorporating this technology will improve design, security, and cost.

  • Augmented Reality

According to experts, the wearables for augmented and virtual reality will reduce in size and could be as small as contact lenses. This technology will help you inspect job sites from almost anywhere as it will create full-scale and true-life models.

  • 3D Printers

China successfully 3D printed homes and large-scale structures in 2015. By the year 2040, the construction industry might witness 3D printers, printing almost everything. This technology has attracted the industry because it has the capability to print new shapes, reduces cost, and allows remote construction.

The above technologies are expected to replace time consuming man resource completely. With the rapid growth in the technology, it is impossible to predict what new technology might change the future of construction.

Trending Engineering Degree Courses for 2016

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Every year over 13 l6akh students appear for the JEE Mains Entrance Examination, making it one of the largest entrance exams globally. The most common dilemma among engineering aspirants is, about the “Best Engineering Branch” to choose. Basically, what matters in choosing your branch is your personal interest and aptitude for that particular branch. Some of the trending Engineering courses to go for in 2016 can be:

Computer Science and Engineering / Information Technology

Software Engineering is, undoubtedly, one of the most leading branches in Engineering. This branch offers highly paid packages than any other branch along with ample of overseas job opportunities. If you have a keen interest in the field of software development, mobile development or database systems, you should definitely go for this branch.

Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Electrical and Electronics Engineering is considered one of the evergreen branches of engineering. Students in this course learn about generation and transmission of electrical power, electronics, electrical circuit design, instrumentation, control systems, etc. The government sector generates a number of job opportunities with high packages in industries such as- railways, steel factories, etc.

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering is one the oldest branch of engineering. This field always has opportunities despite of the changing market trends and technologies. This involves designing, analysis, manufacture and maintaining machines. This branch also offers ample job opportunities and high salary packages as a candidate move up the hierarchy of an organization.

Civil Engineering

Civil Engineering is all about construction and buildings. This course can include study areas such as Fluid Mechanics, Soil Mechanics, Design of Structures, and Structural Mechanics. As a civil engineer, you will be building tunnels, roads, bridges, towers, canals, dams, seaports, airports, etc. Civil engineers, also works best in the government sector and are offered high posts and payments.

Chemical Engineering

Chemical Engineering is one the newest evolved branch of engineering. It was not considered as a branch, but factors such as Global Warming and its consequences, causing environmental issues raised this field of study as important. In the 4 year course of engineering, you will study Polymers, Chemicals, Petroleum and Pharmaceuticals along with the basics of Computer Science and Information Technology needed in the development of chemical engineering process.

Apart from the above engineering fields, there are other equally popular and relevant branches such as Industrial and Production Engineering, Instrumentation and Control Engineering, Bioengineering, Biotechnology, Aeronautical Engineering, etc.

All the top-notch engineering colleges and Universities in India and abroad offer powerful courses. Any of them can be picked up as per your interest and caliber.