Category Archives: Science & Engineering

You gotta know some heavy stuff in order to build cool cars. Get your learn on.

Venus Transit by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory

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The NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory took this video of the Venus transit on June 5th, 2012. We’re able to see it for the first time like this thanks to the technology developed for the SDO. It’s pretty amazing. I’ll let NASA explain the details:

“On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event–the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.  This event happens in pairs eight years apart that are separated from each other by 105 or 121 years.  The last transit was in 2004 and the next will not happen until 2117.

The videos and images displayed here are constructed from several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light and a portion of the visible spectrum.  The red colored sun is the 304 angstrom ultraviolet, the golden colored sun is 171 angstrom, the magenta sun is 1700 angstrom, and the orange sun is filtered visible light.  304 and 171 show the atmosphere of the sun, which does not appear in the visible part of the spectrum.”


Source: NASA Explorer on YouTube

Hummingbird Aerodynamics

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Here’s another interesting video by Smarter Everyday on how hummingbirds manage to hover. Most birds have wings that function similar to those on airplanes. They rely on airflow over the wing shape to produce lift. But what happens when you hover and don’t have that airflow? Destin shows us some high speed footage of hummingbirds from a camera he set up in his backyard. It turns out hummingbirds are able to generate vortexes with the flapping of their wings that keeps them in the air. Take a close look at the flow field he posts, it gives a good visual of how the whole thing works.


Source: Smarter Everyday on YouTube

BYU 2012 Formula Hybrid Winners

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BYU Hybrid Blue

This is the Brigham Young University Hybrid Blue. The car placed first place in this year’s Formula Hybrid competition beating out 40 other universities. The team that built the car was made up of 16 engineering students with the guidance of Dr. Robert Todd who has been the head of BYU’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone Program for 21 years. The team was able to win the competition as a retirement present for Dr. Todd. The Hybrid Blue is a parallel hybrid using both an internal combustion engine fueled with E85 and a 3-phase AC electric motor that makes a reported 100 hp and 450 ft-lbs of torque. BYU set a competition record for acceleration, placed 1st in fuel efficiency and was among the front runners for the autocross portion.


Sources: BYU and Formula Hybrid

Engine Porn: Bugatti Veyron W16

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This is seems to be some raw footage from the assembly line of the Bugatti Veyron’s W16 quad turbo engine inside Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft’s Salzgitter Engine Plant. This is where all of the VW Group’s W8’s, W12’s, W12 Twin Turbo’s and W16 Quad Turbo’s are made.


Here’s Bugatti’s promo video for the W16 if you want to find out more about it (embedding was disabled): http://youtu.be/t7gtmnOSmvU

Source: YouTube user katuwad

Practical Streamlining

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This is a video about the effects of streamlining released by Chevrolet in 1936. It’s a pretty good primer for a study of aerodynamics. There’s even some good shots of turbulence simulated by water and aluminum powder flowing around objects inside a neat little paddle wheel machine. You can see that the most aerodynamic shape is a teardrop. This was figured out early on by observing a water droplet as it fell through the air. It naturally took the shape with the least amount of drag.


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