tingilinde

engineering on a massive scale

killer cars in america

The problem is known along with solutions, but there's no will.

 

 

where will all of the lithium and rare earths come from

Lithium supplies are starting to strain and most of the rare earth materials in lithium-ion batteries come from China, which is potentially an issue. Here's another way of thinking about an issue - how much vehicle does it take to move people around?  The electric version of a Hummer's battery weighs about 3,000 pounds.  Batteries in sedan class cars are in the 1,500 to 2,000 pound range and compacts 1,000 to 1,200.  An electric bike's battery is in the 6 to 10 pound range. 

If your home is in an area with safe enough roads and shopping and most other errands within about five miles, getting an e-bike - particularly an e-cargobike - and using your current car for longer trips makes a lot of sense and may well be the greener choice until EVs are less expensive.  Even then it still makes sense to use the bike.

 

1881 isochron centered on london

 

 

tagging along with amtrak

Amtrak lets you hook your private railcar to the back of an Amtrak train for about five bucks a mile.  

 

a physical manifestation of information

When I was a teenager the Great Falls International Airport (daily service to Calgary and Edmonton) added a large map/clock to the main lobby that displayed the time of day in several cities as well as where it was night or day. It adjusted itself for the seasons and struck me as attractive - even desirable. Of course that type of display is easily done on a phone or PC now, but there was something special about the physical manifestation of the information.

Today a self-described nerdy friend in Cambridge sent a note on his latest toy - a status display of Boston MBTA. It makes a network connection via your home wifi and displays train status in real time. At a bit over $200 it’s not cheap, but he says he hasn’t been so delighted with a purchase in over a decade. The company has units for London, NYC, DC, Chicago, and the Bay Area BART system. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult for someone with EE chops to do the hardware and software design, but if you value your time at anything more than half minimum wage, these are something of a bargain.

So if you’re into this sort of artwork or want to give an unusual gift to someone who might appreciate something they probably haven’t thought about:

Traintrackr

 

airline seat size

People are upset at shrinking airline seat sizes.

It seems like there are good medical reasons why extremely small spaces shouldn't exist. It's also a tax on some who are forced to move purchase more room.

 

something neat about the ny subway

Greg pointed out a fantastic segment on Radiolab.. it starts around 56 minutes (the interface is terrible.  start it and then go to the bottom of the page for the progress bar .. or find the episode elsewhere)

 

 

a nice engineering project

College students working on a very specialized electric vehicle.  Lessons learned should prove very useful to them.

 

an acceptable number