Tinkercad
Online browser-based 3D modelling services looks like a great way to introduce anyone into designing, from children to adults. Uses modern web technology (such as WebGL) and it’s presentation is clean, functional, and undaunting. Anything created can be made with a 3D printer, and has the option to be sent to services that can make your designs.
Free To Use, Pay When You Order
With Tinkercad you can design real things that come out of the 3D printer, into your life. You don’t need any previous design expertise. Just open the browser and start creating! Share your designs with friends and explore things made by other makers. 3D print things on your own printer or order things delivered to your doorstep by high quality 3D printing services.
You can check out Tinkercad here
The “Most Important Algorithm Of Our Lifetime” Could Change This Modern World
Math breakthroughs don’t often capture the headlines—but MIT researchers have just made one that could lead to all sorts of amazing technological breakthroughs that in just a few years will touch every hour of your life.
Here’s a quickie explainer: Fourier transforms are a mathematical trick to simplify how you represent a complicated signal—say the waves of sound made by speaking. They work by reducing the complex wave pattern to a simple and pretty short list of numbers that, when run through the system again, result in a very good approximation of the original signal. FFTs (Fast Fourier Transforms) are simply a way of making this magic happen in a digital computer, but the combination of math and machine means the FFT has revolutionized science and many industries that have technology at their core. Which is why it’s been labeled the “most important algorithm of our lifetime.”
Now, you should remember that sound waves, and both picture and video signals, are all handled by processors in your TV, PC, and phone, and that the radio waves that whizz through the air to keep us all connected to the Internet need digital processing too. That’s every compressed sound signal that you listen to as an MP3 or similar format, most every image that you snap with your smartphone or DSLR, every image frame in the video you’re watching on your TV streamed over the Net, many images—such as those from an MRI—your doctor uses to diagnose your disease and every burst of radio that connects your cell phone to the nearest tower or your PC to its Wi-Fi router.
So calculating FFTs up to ten times faster is a big deal. It means that if you use existing hardware to do the math, it’ll be quicker at solving the problem you’ve set—so you need less compute time to do the task. If you’re talking about a portable computer like the one in your smartphone, that means it can spend more time doing other things instead. And with the valuable computing and battery resources of these portable devices under such pressure (you wouldn’t want your phone to be laggy now, would you?) that’s a good thing.
Another excellent tip.
Engineers are often required to have skills in multiple disciplines. You may not be doing as much coding as, say, a computer or electrical engineer but you may find yourself sitting in front of Matlab writing a code to reduce raw probe data. You’ll be expected to be able to do that sort of stuff.
Most universities require at least one programming course for every engineering student regardless of discipline.
Keep the tips for aspiring engineers coming!
-Alex
Yeah that’s for sure. It will be a lot easier in college if you get as much math as possible in High School.
I was fortunate enough to get pretty good instruction in Higher Level IB Maths and found all of the Engineering Math courses pretty reasonable as a result.
So, to the previous askee, in addition to Chem and Bio courses take as much math as possible. Try to get into a course that will touch on differential equations.
-Alex
I would suggest taking all the Biology and Chemistry classes you can, including AP/IB Bio and Chem if possible. They will definitely help get your foot in the door.
Also, if your school offers some intro engineering classes, take them. My school had a 4 year engineering prep course that helped me get ready for my college courses. They might not focus specifically on bio-chemical engineering, but again, it will help introduce you to engineering.
-Sal
[I’m sure a few of the other contributors to this blog may have some suggestions as well]
A civil engineering student reaches for an engineer’s scale; on the drafting table are a t-square, triangle and ink well – all of which outlasted typewriters in student life, but only by a few years.
I’m happy to announce today that O’Reilly’s MAKE division, in partnership with Otherlab of San Francisco, has received an award from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in support of its Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) program. The team will help advance DARPA’s MENTOR program, an initiative aimed at introducing new design tools and collaborative practices of making to high school students.
The new Makerspace program, developed by Dale Dougherty of MAKE and Dr. Saul Griffith of Otherlab, will integrate online tools for design and collaboration with low-cost options for physical workspaces where students may access educational support to gain practical hands-on experience with new technologies and innovative processes to design and build projects. The program has a goal of reaching 1000 high schools over four years, starting with a pilot program of 10 high schools in California during the 2012-2013 school year.
The MENTOR effort is part of the DARPA’s Adaptive Vehicle Make program portfolio and is aimed at engaging high school students in a series of collaborative distributed manufacturing and design experiments. The overarching objective of MENTOR is to develop and motivate a next generation of system designers and manufacturing innovators by exposing them to the principles of foundry-style digital manufacturing through modern prize-based design challenges.
Russia wants Europe and the U.S. to go in on a moon base
After six Apollo missions that delivered astronauts to the surface of the moon, the people of Earth have pretty much left the thing alone. Now, Russia’s national space agency, Roscosmos is talking with NASA and Europe’s ESA about establishing a permanent manned presence on the moon.Not only is Russia planning to put boots on the moon, the country is looking to do so with international cooperation — something that harkens back to the Cold War, where it was “talked about by some Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s,” according to Russian news site RIA Novosti.
