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The key to creating a material that would be ideal for converting solar energy to heat is tuning the material’s spectrum of absorption just right: It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light...
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Last week, at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, MIT researchers unveiled an oval-shaped submersible robot, a little smaller than a football, with a flattened panel on...
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Cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are among nature’s most skillful camouflage artists, able to change both the color and texture of their skin within seconds to blend into...
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Speed and agility are hallmarks of the cheetah: The big predator is the fastest land animal on Earth, able to accelerate to 60 mph in just a few seconds. As it ramps up to top speed, a cheetah pumps...
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Where other mechanical engineering faculty come bearing specific innovative artifacts, Maria Yang offers conceptual strategies for innovation, regardless of the technology. For her, innovation first...
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Objects in space tend to spin — and spin in a way that’s totally different from the way they spin on earth. Understanding how objects are spinning, where their centers of mass are, and how their mass...
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While Evelyn Wang (SB '00), an associate professor of mechanical engineering, attended MIT as an undergraduate, her connection to the Institute goes back much further than that: This is where her...
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Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers at MIT.
The researchers evaluated an emerging...
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MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. Depending on the field’s orientation, the microhairs can...
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Paper wrinkles, tape tears, cables kink, columns buckle, eggshells break. Pedro M. Reis hopes to transform today’s annoyances into tomorrow’s technology.
Reis, who holds a dual appointment in...
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Researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia have developed a new way of making surfaces that can actively control how fluids or particles move across them. The work might enable new kinds of biomedical or...
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Several years ago, as a graduate student at MIT, Amos Winter spent a summer in Tanzania surveying wheelchair technology. What he found was a disconnect between products and the lives of their...
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Twisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand...
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Alberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and incoming graduate student Nikhil Chavan-Dafle presented their work on robotic extrinsic dexterity — which they began at...
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The fields of data communication, fabrication, and ultrasound imaging share a common challenge when it comes to improving speed and efficiency: light’s diffraction limit. Nicholas Fang thinks his...
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There is a story about how the modern golf ball, with its dimpled surface, came to be: In the mid-1800s, it is said, new golf balls were smooth, but became dimpled over time as impacts left permanent...
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What’s the difference between the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument?
Both structures soar to impressive heights, and each was the world’s tallest building when completed. But the Washington...
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The Case of the Welcome “Hairball”
by Alissa Mallinson
PhD student Folkers Rojas (SB ‘09, SM ‘11, PhD ‘14)Photo credit: Tony Pulsone
What do a bathtub hairball and a MechE-developed blowout ...
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Engineering and the Ocean Environment: Challenge and Opportunity
by Alissa Mallinson
Vast and seemingly impenetrable, the ocean inspires endless fascination. It is the topic of countless tales...
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You can quickly run out of fingers and toes counting the many ways we waste energy. Take our sewage systems, for example: The energetic content of wastewater is about 10 times the amount of energy it...