My Science School

It is an integrated safety feature that turns off the engine in a vehicle or machine in an emergency so that it comes to a gentle stop.

Imagine a situation in which the driver of a train, a tram or even a heavy machine like a crane or a bulldozer that is in motion, dies suddenly or is paralysed or injured so severely that he cannot operate the vehicle or machine. A sure recipe for a disaster! The aim of a dead man's switch is to avert such a tragedy. It is an integrated safety feature that turns off the engine in the vehicle or machine, so that it comes to a gentle stop.

Such switches are also useful when the driver is harassed or obstructed, for example, by irate passengers in a train.

There are different types of dead man's switches, but all of them require the operator or driver to provide an input. If the sensor detects lack of interaction, it sends a signal to cut off the engine or apply the brakes.

The switch is usually located on a lever or bar that the operator or driver must use for the normal functioning of the machine or vehicle. For example, in most lawnmowers, the handle has to be held in a certain position to keep the engine on. It can also be a button or pedal which must be held down to keep the machine turned on. Some advanced systems use touch sensors which are activated by extremely light pressure of the hands or feet.

A dead man's switch has the additional advantage of making the machine difficult to steal! Unless the thief knows how to disable the mechanism, it is impossible to start the engine.

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1000 trees are presently walking down the streets of the city of Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Or rather, the indigenous trees planted in big wooden containers are being lugged around by volunteers. The idea is to let people experience a greener and cleaner alternative.

The unique initiative has been launched as part of the art project 'Bosk, envisaged by architect Bruno Doedens and his collaborator, the late Joop Mulder.

The trees will keep moving around the city till August 14, after which they will be planted across the city. The idea emerged from Doedens 2021 essay Planet Paradise. The essay questions the relationship of humans with the natural world.

Bosk means forest in the local Frisian language. The move is an attempt to raise awareness about climate change. The trees are being moved by thousands of volunteers and roads are closed when the trees are walking. The trees rest on the weekend.

It all started in the month of May, when volunteers started moving the trees in huge wooden containers. After starting their journey, the trees first stopped at Stationsplein. outside Leeuwarden's train station.

Whilst the trees aren't moving, seating areas are provided between the trees to let the people experience life when there is more green cover. Around 60-70 varieties of native trees such as maple, oak, elm, willow, alder, and ash are planted in the wooden containers.

QR codes have been given which lets one know the details such as the species name, its lifespan, soil type, and so on. The city gardening team gets an alert whenever water is required by the tree. A soil sensor alert has been provided for this.

 The trees will get their permanent home in the city after 100 days. The trees will trundle down these roads until August 14 and will later be planted across the city where the greenery is limited.

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A 400-million Euro, 500-MW project to generate heat for the Finnish capital will use seawater from the Baltic even when the sea surface is frozen.

Seawater will be carried to the heat exchangers via a 17-km tunnel being bored from the Baltic seabed - where the temperature is a constant 2 degree C year round. Heat exchangers will transfer and concentrate the heat from the seawater-which is returned to the sea through a nine-km tunnel-to the district heating system where it will reach around 88 degree C.

Already home to the world's largest heat pump, Helsinki is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050, and the new pump alone is expected to provide up to 40% of the city's heating requirements when it goes online in around 2029. A utility company currently provides around 8% of Helsinki's heating through recovering heat from waste water and the excess from data centres and other buildings.

Frequency converter technology plays an essential role in heat pump product development. ABB’s frequency converters increase the efficiency of Oilon’s heat pumps in almost all of its sites in Helsinki. Frequency converter control can be used for the variable rotational speed control of a heat pump compressor.

“A heat pump must be able to handle different load and temperature conditions. Frequency converter control enables precise control and a large partial capacity range,” Martti Kukkola explains.

Frequency converter technology has Finnish roots – the first frequency converter developed by the engineers of Strömberg controlled the speed of metro trains in Helsinki. In ABB’s hands, the technology has evolved into an extensive frequency converter range, and ABB Finland is responsible for the technology’s global product development.

“Our reasons for choosing ABB are reliability, an extensive range, and equipment that is functional from a techno-economic perspective,” Kukkola says.

Using Oilon’s and ABB’s technologies, Helen has been able to provide its customers with more energy-efficient solutions to cover heating and cooling needs. Valuable heat is produced in a climate-friendly way as a by-product of cooling.

“As a technology leader, we want to be the trailblazer for energy efficiency, and by cooperating with partners, we can do more and have a greater influence in this area. It is valuable to be able to build a more sustainable future with Oilon and Helen by combining Finnish innovation expertise,” says Mika Männistö, Sales Director, ABB Motion Finland.

Energy-efficient frequency converters and motors offer substantial potential for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. ABB encourages all stakeholders to cooperate within the framework of the Energy Efficiency Movement to bring about a comprehensive reduction in energy consumption.

Credit : Energyefficiencymovement.com

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Scientists study meteorites for clues about the origin of Earth and the solar system because most meteorites are bits of asteroids that have fallen to Earth, and asteroids are believed to be leftover material from the time the solar system formed.

In 2005, for the first time ever, scientists scooped up rock samples directly from an asteroid using a spacecraft built especially for that purpose. The name of the spacecraft was Hayabusa. It was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Hayabusa (Japanese for falcon') was launched on May 9, 2003, and arrived in the vicinity of the asteroid Itokawa in mid-September 2005. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of rock which it brought back to Earth on June 13, 2010. Hayabusa was the first spacecraft to land and take off from an asteroid.

In December 2014, Japan launched another spacecraft Hayabusa 2 to study the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu and to bring back samples of rock not only from its surface but also from deeper below the surface. Hayabusa 2 reached Ryugu in June 2018.

In September 2018, the spacecraft landed two rovers on the asteroid. They were the first rovers ever to move on an asteroid. They moved with a hopping movement instead of rolling around on wheels. The rovers are designed to take pictures of the landscape and measure the temperatures on the asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 left the asteroid in November-December 2019 and delivered a small capsule that contained the rock and dust samples when it was 220,000 km from the Earth's atmosphere. The capsule safely landed in the South Australian outback in December 2020.

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Self-driving cars are loaded with advanced technology that can sense their environment.

The concept of a driverless car has leapt out of the pages of science fiction with major auto-makers working to make them a reality. So far, driverless cars have logged millions of kilometres in test runs and are steadily becoming a reality despite the many hurdles still to be overcome.

Self-driving cars are loaded with advanced technology like radar, lidar, GPS, cameras, and laser scanners that can sense their environment. The control systems in the car evaluate the sensory information about obstacles, road signs, traffic signals and other cars on the road to chart out a navigable path to the destination. The car's computers accelerate, cruise at 120 kph, slow down, brake and pass without the human driver even touching the steering wheel or gear shift.

In December 2020, Waymo (formerly known as the Google self-driving car project) became the first service provider to offer driver-less taxi rides to the general public, in a part of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. While Honda has launched its self-driving car in Japan, Mercedes-Benz is in the process of doing so.

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3D printing upends the standard manufacturing process. There is no doubt that 3D printing is the future and that we may be able to ‘create’ everything, including organs.

The wheel is one of the earliest inventions of mankind. It revolutionised our life. Going forward, we have made many strides in varied sectors to change life as we know it. Enter 3D Printing, And now, we are in the throes of changing the way matter is being looked at and processed.

With 3D printing, life has become easy and different. You can now print what you want. From hobbyists to businesses everyone is using 3D printing. 3D printing upends the standard manufacturing process

What's 3D Printing

3D printing is three-dimensional printing and manufacturing of products, and it is an additive manufacturing process.

Additive manufacturing is the process of creating an object by building layers. This is in contravention to subtractive manufacturing where the end product is created by removing or cutting away matter from a solid block of material.

Since 3D printing is done by adding material and building layers, the layering goes on for n number of times until the end product is realised.

Application of 3D printing

 There is no doubt that 3D printing is the future and that we may be able to 'create' everything, including organs. While the manufacturing and construction industry has been seeing a lot of applications of 3D printing, other areas such as the medical industry, food, packaging, and arms industry are also being revolutionised by 3D printing technology.

 The cost-effectiveness, ease of manufacturing, ability to make complicated parts, and less waste generation are just some of the aspects in favour of 3D printing. From plastic models to steel parts and surgical implants are manufactured through 3D printing.

3D bioprinting is the process of applying 3D printing to produce tissues and organs. So imagine this scenario. Instead of waiting for a donor, what if we can just print the organs using the cells? We are still tiptoeing on bioprinting. Recently, a woman had her external ear reconstructed using a 3D-printed living tissue implant. The transplant was used on a woman from Mexico and was carried out in March in the US. The woman was born with a small right ear.

Over the years the construction industry has seen a lot of strides. Commercial buildings and houses have been created using 3D printing. The first 3D-printed bridge came up in Castilla-La Mancha Park in Alcobendas, Madrid.

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From fighter aircraft and missiles to cars, there are many examples of products made by reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is the process by which a product is dismantled to find out how it works so that a duplicate can be made or it can be improved upon. It is done for commercial purposes. It tries to deduce details of product design and manufacture in the absence of complete documentation. It is also used in military or commercial espionage. The rival's or the enemy's prototype is stolen and disassembled to collect sensitive data so that a similar product can be made or countermeasures taken. During World War II, British and American forces found that German cans were sturdy and had an excellent design. They used reverse engineering to copy the design and produce similar cans. They came to be known as Jerry cans. From fighter aircraft and missiles to cars, there are many examples of products made by reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is also used for software analysis. It is done to study the source code of a program if it is lost, or with a view to improving the program. It is also done to fix a bug or a virus.

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Mise-en-scène is French for placing on stage. As a theatrical term it refers to scene composition or deciding what to include in a scene and how must it be placed on the stage.

Mise-en-scène is French for placing on stage. As a theatrical term it refers to scene composition or deciding what to include in a scene and how must it be placed on the stage. Essential to the visual appeal of a film, it entails set design, costumes, props, movement of the actors, lighting, and essentially everything that frames a scene and is captured on the camera. The French film critic Andre Bazin was one of the greatest proponents of this component and broadly divided filmmaking into two basic approaches, the montage and the mise-en-scène. The difference between the two is that a montage depends on layering and juxtaposing multiple images to create meaning whereas the latter concentrates on storytelling through a single image.

Modern Inclusivity

The traditional definition of this framing method only included the visual components that contributed to the imagery of a scene, but modern film critics argue that elements like background sounds and music, camera angles, and the types of lens used are also crucial for enhancing the overall cinematic experience and hence, must be considered a part of the mise-en-scène.

 As a directorial stylist component, the mise-en-scène of a film must align with the vision of the filmmaker and be representative of his or her artistry.

Masters of the Mise-en-scène

Some legendary directors from the world of cinema who are renowned for their stylistic mise-en-scène include Satyajit Ray, Tim Burton, Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher and Stanley Kubrick.

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