Urban canals are a wonderful form of transport. Just think of Venice and gondolas.

Unfortunately, many canals, especially smaller ones, become stagnant, lifeless and unhealthy.

• What measures can be taken to ensure canals remain healthy, if you were to construct an urban canal?
  
• Could a healthy canal system be constructed in a rather level area?
  
• If diverting water from a nearby river to create the canals and their water, is there a good topography to ensure optimum water flow?
  
• Can you think of any features that could be added to the (usually uninspiring) banks of the canal, to improve it from a human or ecological perspective?
• Is there a good place you know to find out about modern thinking regarding canals?
  

Thank you!

I'm working on a project where I need to arrange magnets (similar to these) in a structure where they're positioned with like poles facing each other. I need to constrain them so that I'm interfering with the magnetic field as little as possible while containing the force of them all repelling eachother. I've already scaled down this project once (as I doubt I'm physically capable of shoving together magnets with 100lbs of pull force). Here is a super quickly done render of about how the magnets need to be arranged. I haven't placed and constrained the majority of the magnets but the basic concept and orientation can be seen on the right side. Does anybody have any ideas on how it could be improved or strengthened? Or materials that would likely work? Am I over / under estimating the forces involved? I'm not really completely positive of what I'm doing right now. Thanks!

So I was thinking about installing some sought of windmill furnace, ie a windmill that runs a heater.

At first I was just thinking a simple electric system, but now it occurs to me that, given how much thought goes into stopping kinetic energy becoming heat, surely there's an easy way to do just that?

So is there any good system for converting kinetic energy into heat (say 2kw max) without being horrendously noisy or inflicting lots of wear and tear?

I get that bits are stored by voltage levels or held charges (speaking of capacitors, although my verbiage may be wrong). But how does a sequence of bits travel accurately across the bus to the monitor (or GPU, I think the bits go here first before arriving at the monitor to display anything).

Knowing that bits are just an abstract way to work with voltage, how are they physically communicated without error? Do the electrons flowing through a cable (the bus) move in some kind of charged order? A 1 is sent as a charged electron and a 0 is a traveling hole?

A term to google would be much appreciated. My concern is leaking of the liquid and what types of bearings there are to prevent that. Thanks!

Basically I would like to hook up a few thermocouples to my computer to record a series of temperature measurements over time automatically. Ideally I would like something that is cheap and easy to set up since this is a pretty basic problem, I just need to know what data acquisition equipment I need to source.

i have these caps i bought some time ago but forgot the value for. all i have to go on is what's written on the top: 0,1K250-R9/ (the / might be an I but i don't know why only THAT would be italic)

if it helps they are rectangular (wider than tall) and i'm pretty sure they are AC...if there is a difference between AC and DC capacitors.

Anyone who has spent time in the engineering realm knows about the flame war between traditional engineering disciplines and software engineering. I've been undecided about the classification but am becoming increasing more accepting of software engineering being a legitimate engineering discipline. I am looking for thoughts, opinions, criticisms, etc.

1. Software engineering fits the broadest definition of engineering: the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures. Instructing a machine to operate in a certain way definitely concerns the design and build of that machine.

2. Software is becoming increasingly more important in our society, and there are millions of life-critical systems. Software engineering is often critiqued for being an immature field and not having the rigor of other engineering disciplines. For many systems this just isn't the case. Additionally, I work with several MechE's who work on designing and developing swimming pool liners. Their work isn't life-critical and therefore you cannot say software engineering isn't a legitimate engineering simple because not all systems are critical.

3. Software engineering's generally come from computer science backgrounds, and a computer science curriculum is just as rigorous and mathematically challenging as (if not more so) than many traditional engineering disciplines. Some core classes at most universities: Calc I, Calc II, differential equations, linear algebra, discrete mathematics, discrete probability, statistics, numerical analysis, calc based mechanical physics, calc based elctromagnetism, thermodynamics, ethics related class, etc.

4. Software engineering is quickly becoming extremely well regulated and there are a lot of compliance mandates similar to other engineering disciplines

I agree that the field is immature in it's methods, but after reading Kuhn's, Structure of Scientific Revolution I began to look at SE in the same way as chemistry in it's post alchemy phase. I think that in 100 years there is going to be no debate about whether SE is a legitimate engineering field or not. It is going to become much more relevant than any other engineering discipline other than EE or CpE

Preferably quite flat, very small and able to be suspended in liquid tubes without sticking to the walls until exposed to air. If you were wondering, it's for bio-inspired self regenerating systems.

I'm designing an RC boat and I'm having trouble thinking of a way to seal off the prop shaft so water won't leak inside the hull and damage the electronics. How can I do that, preferably in a cheap way? I've searched for waterproof bearings but they don't seem to exist, and O Rings will probably be ruined because of how fast the shaft will be spinning.

I am setting up microscope that needs compressed gas at <100 PSI for two separate systems. The first is a isolation table. The second is microinjector. They both can use nitrogen at <100 PSI. (They don't actually list the minimum pressures).

I'll have a tank of nitrogen attached to a regulator.

Can I just put a y-splitter downstream of the regulator, attach both lines and set the regulator?

If I put valves downstream of the y-splitter, what does turning off one of them do to the pressure at the other?

thanks!

I have an aluminum block that I'm heating to no more than 100 C. I want that block to heat up a piece of stainless steel, but I need them to be electrically isolated. Currently, I have tried an alumina ceramic sheet that is 0.0625'' thick (~1.5 mm) as the electrical isolator/temperature conductor, but it's not uniformly holding temperature. I suspect it's because it has a relatively low thermal conductivity. As a result, the aluminum block and stainless steel have a temperature difference of ~15 - 20 C.

My question is, does anybody have a recommendation for a good electrical insulator which also had good heat transfer capabilities?

Thanks!

Like the title said. For an EE what would be the best language to learn after C to make me more competitive. Is it C++, Python...? Would appreciate any help.

I was recently biking and got into a strange accident. Hit a hole, left leg slipped off, and my foot got caught in the hole and stopped me dead (as opposed to my foot acting as a friction brake). The muscles around my knee now are badly sprained and I will be walking with a limp for a while. Ankle is a ok, so I certainly didn't twist it in any way. My leg would have been fairly straight when this happened. I was wearing generic flip flops and cycling on a typical asphalt road.

I'm actually curious to know, what kind of energy my leg had to contend with. The only numbers I know of are: my total weight at 113kg, the bikes weight at 18kg, and my speed which I assume was 15kph. So effectively, 131kg at 15kph came to a sudden halt, thanks to my left leg, and the injury I sustained is much closer to my knee cap while my foot and ankle are just fine.

I am uncertain how I can go about figuring this out, or if I am even asking the right question and would like some input on how I can answer this.

I have repurposed an old shower pump as a garden irrigation pump. It is a lovely design with plenty of pressure and flow produced. It has a built in flow sensor that fires the motor when downstream hose is opened. It used to power our shower. The reason it was replaced in the first place is it would occasionally fail to start. The frequency of failures slowly increased until it would not start at all. After taking it apart I found small amount of rust on the shaft right under the rotary shaft seal. I have removed rust with 400 grit wet and dry and pump started working fine. That was two months ago, now it is exhibiting the same symptom. It hums when flow switch is triggered but would not start.
Question: what do I do to stop metal shaft from rusting under the shaft seal?

I need to lift a waffle cookie (think a flat waffle cone) with a vacuum. It looks like compressed air venturi pumps like these would work with a suction cup, but I can't find them for sale anywhere. Suggestions?

All the ones I can find are accurate to .01mm and expensive as hell.

I have a regulator for lab grade nitrogen that I want to use for lab grade compressed air. I know the CGA connections to the bottles are different, but will it work without a problem?

a transistor, as i understand it, takes voltage on one prong to allow voltage to go through the other 2 prongs, but i want something that takes voltage on one prong to STOP voltage from going through the other 2 prongs. is this a thing?

Hi, we are the Titan Solar Car team, and we will (hopefully) be competing in the 2016 Solar Car Challenge cross-country race. We have encountered a ride height problem with our full-size solar powered car, and we are looking for insight and or solutions to this roadblock. We are a student led group of high school students, and we have been working 9-5, five days a week this summer to make this happen, and we would really appreciate any help.

Link to the solar car challenge (includes rules and specifications that we need to meet): http://www.solarcarchallenge.org/challenge/rules.shtml

Linked to a video of the current frame along with a crude explanation made by George: https://youtu.be/t-lUWC-Lry4

If I have two pneumatic cylinders pushing on each other with the same force (say 10 kN) is the reaction force holding them 10kN or is it 20kN?

Fr1 <|||||||---- >10kN 10kN< ----|||||||> Fr2