BCECE Engineering

In 1925 Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose proposed that a new state of matter could exist, based on his work in quantum mechanics. It took seventy years before Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, at the University of Colorado, managed to make it. Known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, the new matter was essentially a collection of atoms so cold that they behaved like one large "superatom," demonstrating quantum mechanical effects on a macro scale. The science of the super cold has been hard to switch from theory to practice because the art of getting matter to fractions of a degree above absolute zero is far from simple. Indeed, many of the methods involved have been as groundbreaking as the scientific results they have yielded. A critical step was the invention of the magnetic atom trap, proposed in 1983 in a research paper by David Pritchard (b. 1941). It relies on the more...

Dutch ophthalmologist Hermann Snellen (1834-1908) first came up with the idea of a standardized test to measure how well a person can see and also allow comparisons of different people's visual capabilities. The Snellen Chart, developed in 1862, consists of eleven rows of block letters. The first row consists of very large letters; subsequent rows decrease in size. A person taking the test covers one eye and reads aloud the letters of each row, beginning at the top. The smallest row that can be read accurately indicates the patient's visual acuity in that eye. The patient then reads the letters with the other eye, and then again with both eyes. A traditional Snellen Chart features only the letters C, D, E, F, L, N, 0, P, T, and Z. The relationship between the size of letters and the distance at which they are seen has become the standard method of more...

American entrepreneur and inventor George Eastman (1854-1932) became fascinated by photography in 1874. He pioneered a process making dry plates for photography and formed the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company to produce them. In 1889 he patented a system where photographic emulsion was coated onto a roll of flexible paper. The basis of this process was devised by a chemistry student, Henry Reichenbach, at Eastman's company. This convenient foil film on a transparent base replaced the fragile, unwieldy glass plate. Paper film created an unsatisfactory grainy image and was later replaced by a cellulose nitrate film that was unbreakable. Eastman came up with the trademark "Kodak." His early Kodak camera was a wooden, handheld box with a simple lens, and a fraction-of-a-second shutter. This box camera was preloaded with enough film for 100 exposures. After all the negatives had been exposed, the whole camera was returned to the factory more...

There was a long queue of passengers in front of second class booking window. They were waiting for their turns to get tickets, when the window opened, they pushed one another and there was chaos. Lo! The old man fell. At once a policeman ran for his help. He saved him from being crushed. He purchased a ticket for him. On platform also there was a great rush of passengers. They were waiting for the arrival of the train. Some were sitting on the benches. The villagers were sitting on the floor or on their boxes. Some gentlemen were walking up and down the platform. Every now and then they were looking in the direction from which the train was scheduled to come. There was a great rush of hawkers at the platform. They were crying at the top of their voice in order to sell their goods. When the more...

"[The committee] do not take upon themselves to decide upon the policy of introducing it." British Army's rejection of the shrapnel shell, 1801 In everyday language, the word shrapnel is normally used to describe fragments of metal from an explosion—often those lodged into human flesh. However, the word has a more specific meaning; it is the name of an important artillery weapon invented in 1784 by Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842), then a lieutenant in the British Army. In its original design, the shrapnel shell was a hollow iron sphere filled with gunpowder and about 200 musket balls. Protruding into the shell was a timed explosive fuse. As the sphere flew through the air, the fuse exploded, causing the shell to blast open and release the musket balls. The balls continued to travel in the same direction, at the speed at which the shell had been traveling—fast enough to cause death and more...

In 1784 Scottish millwright and inventor Andrew Meikle invented the threshing machine, probably drawing inspiration from a design Michael Menzies had patented fifty years earlier. Once grain plants are harvested it is necessary to separate the grain from the plant. After a failed first attempt in 1778 Meikle built a machine that could complete this process in a fraction of the time that had previously been required. As the machines slowly spread across Britain, they were greeted with a wave of hostility from discontented villagers. Threshing had previously offered an opportunity for laborers to supplement their income during the winter period, and their livelihood was now under threat. Understandably, they revolted. Threshing machines are not particularly safe to operate; they beat and thrash at whatever is fed to them, be that sheaves of grain plants or arms and legs. Meikle's final design used a strong drum with fixed beaters. Thus, more...

The invention of the sandwich is popularly credited to John Montague, Fourth Earl of Sandwich. Its origins. Go much further back than this, however. Another common belief comes from the Jewish tradition— that the sandwich was invented by Hillel the Elder in the first century B.C.E. During Passover, Hillel the Elder's invention is commemorated in the text: "This is what Hillel did when the Temple existed: he used to enwrap the Paschal lamb, the matzo, and the bitter herbs and eat them as one." At this point of the remembrance service, the participants do likewise. Evidence suggests that the sandwich may go back even further than this, to the days of the Hittite Empire, hundreds of years before. There are records of soldiers of the empire being issued with meat between slices of bread as their rations.              Today's sandwich comes in a multitude of more...

"[I'm looking for] improvements in the taste and science of architecture." Ithiel Town A Clun Castle steam engine crossing the Royal Albert Bridge, built by 1. K. Brunei in the 1850s in England. The viaduct above the Upper Genesee Falls at Portageville, New York, exemplifies the truss bridge. The concept of a bridge built from trusses— frameworks of straight parts connected to form a pattern of triangles—was first described by the Italian father of Western architecture, Andrew Palladio, in 1570. However, trussed frames had already been in use by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and simple timber trusses are believed to have been used in bridge construction in Europe by the time Palladio was writing. However, the heyday of the truss bridge came in the early nineteenth century in the United States. The impetus came from the development of rail transport and the need to convey heavy rail vehicles safely more...

Games and sports are a very necessary part of education. As we know the aim of education is all round development physical mental and moral - of a student. Only a sound body can have a sound mind. Mind cannot be stronger if the body is weak. There is a very old saying that "Health is Wealth". One can build his body by playing games as it provides exercise in open and fresh air. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. India does not need book worms with ill health. A good student must take care of all the things. He must give time to his studies, but he should not neglect games. He should follow the maxim, "work, while you work, play, while you play, that is the way to be happy and gay." Games teach us discipline and sportsmanship. A sportsman treats victory and defeat more...

The year 1982 marked a huge step in diabetes care and ushered in a new era of drug production, thanks to the development of Humulin", the first fully human insulin product. Until then, diabetes patients were given insulin derived from animal sources, mostly cattle and pigs. At around the same time, advancements in gene technology finally allowed for the manufacturing of fully human insulin. The molecule insulin was discovered in the early 1920s, and the first injections of insulin from cattle into humans quickly followed. Although this early insulin was extremely impure and had numerous side effects, it certainly saved the lives of many diabetics.  In the following decades there were further advancements in the development of insulin, including improvements in purity and the chemical synthesis of human insulin. In 1978 researchers at Genentech, Inc., in San Francisco, California began working on producing fully human insulin from recombinant DNA in more...