The Futures Channel is developing a series of engineer video profiles designed to give young people a behind-the-scenes look at a wide variety of professional engineers.  We want to help answer the question: Who are engineers and what do they do?

Here’s another pre-release screening of one of the profiles.  (View Profile 1.)  It features Maria Bualat, a project manager and robotic engineer at NASA Ames Research Center.

We’d love to get your feedback.  Let us know what you think via the “Contact” tab at the top of this page or in the “Comments” section below.

It’s the busy season on our southernmost continent as scientists, researchers and staff converge on Antarctica’s research stations to take advantage of the warmer weather and 24-hour sunlight.  (Of course, “warmer weather” is relative… average summer temp at the South Pole Station is -18 F.)

View a live image from the South Pole Station webcam.

The Antarctic Connection web site features a click-able map with profiles of Antarctica’s research stations and information about all the different types of research conducted on the continent.

PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating in the Arctic and Antarctic) is a program in which K-12 teachers participate in polar research, working closely with scientists as a pathway to improving science education.

The Antarctic Sun web site is the official online news site for the United States Antarctic Program. The site provides news articles and features about polar science and life in the Antarctic.

And here’s a mesmerizing time lapse video of a year in Antarctica.

(South Pole Station image credit: Scot Jackson & National Science Foundation)

TOYchallenge 2010

TOYchallenge is a national toy design competition for teams of girls and boys in 5th-8th grades created and run by Sally Ride Science in partnership with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Teams have until February 12, 2010 to submit their entry but must register by this Friday, November 20th.

Visit:
http://www.sallyridescience.com/toychallenge

NASA’s Water Recycling System Design Challenge

Just because there’s water on the moon doesn’t mean future astronauts won’t have to worry about conserving and recycling it.  (It doesn’t matter how much fun it would be, we aren’t going to see a water balloon fight on the moon anytime soon.)

Students in grades 5 – 8 can join NASA’s waste limitation management and recycling design challenge and create a sustainable water recycling system for the moon. (more…)

The Futures Channel is developing a series of engineer video profiles designed to give young people a behind-the-scenes look at a wide variety of professional engineers.  We want to help answer the question: Who are engineers and what do they do?

Here’s a pre-release screening of one of the profiles.  It features Johnny Goff, a project engineer at one of the largest wind energy companies in the U.S.  We’d love to get your feedback.  Let us know what you think via the “Contact” tab at the top of this page or in the “Comments” section below.

There’s no doubt a rocket launch is an energy-intense, highly combustible event.  But fans of both outer space and the environment on Earth can rest easier thanks to this great article from How Stuff Works that details five of the top ways NASA helps the environment.

From air quality, atmosphere and climate research via satellites and ground-based observation systems, to the work NASA does that supports alternative energy research–it’s all important, but number one on the list is HUGE.  Can you guess what it is?

Read all about it here.

(Image: NASA)

“We really are society’s trained problem-solvers–people who solve problems to make life better for other people. In order to solve those problems we have to have tools like mathematics. This is simple, but clearly it is not well understood.”

That’s from the transcript of a terrific speech given in 1991 by Dr. Eleanor Baum, Dean of Engineering at The Cooper Union in NYC. Enlightening, moving and humorous–it’s one of the great personal descriptions of what it means to be an engineer, and what it meant to be a female engineer in the 60’s and 70’s.

You can read the entire speech here.

Here’s a profile of Dr. Baum via Crain’s Most Influential Women in NYC Business.

Avast mateys!  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wants to send kindergarten through college-level teachers on an all-expense-paid voyage to sea aboard NOAA research and survey ships to work with scientists and crew.  (Salty sea-dog lingo not required or even necessarily recommended during the application process.)

NOAA is now accepting applications until December 31, 2009 for its 2010 Field Season.  Since its inception in 1990, the program has enabled more than 500 teachers to gain first-hand experience of science and life at sea. (more…)

From their first graduating class of three men (back when it was called the School of Mines and Metallurgy) to an alum who blogged from space for three months, a lot has happened in the 140 years Missouri University of Science and Technology has been around. And someone there did a great job of summing it up in this fun, four-minute video for incoming 2009 freshmen.

Check it out:

 (Video:  Missouri University of Science & Technology)

So the other evening I stood in my front yard, fixed my gaze at a azimuth of 219 degrees, 11 degrees elevation, and watched something brighter than the planet Venus come into view and glide across the night sky for ten minutes.  It was the International Space Station (ISS) on yet another of its 90-minute-long orbits around the Earth. It’s surprising to many people how easy the Station is to spot with the naked eye and how frequent these opportunities are in any given week. (more…)

This Tuesday, First Wind will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the launch of commercial operations of the Milford Wind Corridor Project.  It’s another success for sustainable energy and it’s great for the local economy of the small town of Milford, UT.  Remarkably, it all started when a technology and engineering teacher at Milford High School named Andrew Swapp decided investigating wind energy with his students might make a good class project.
 
Swapp and his students started with handheld wind measuring devices, then installed a 20-meter tower for more accurate data collection.  This attracted a commercial developer who was interested in their wind speed data.  It looked promising.  It turned out their area receives very consistent daytime wind, which matches up nicely with electricity demand.  The developer bought them a taller measurement tower.  Later, Swapp’s students installed and became beta-testers of a small, grid-ready 1.8-kilowatt turbine for Southwest Windpower.  It ultimately lead to construction of the $400 million wind farm. (more…)