METRIC CALCULATOR

http://www.worldwidemetric.com/measurements.html

Firefighting Robot Paints 3-D Thermal Imaging Picture for Rescuers

A sophisticated on-board software system takes the thermal data recorded by the robot's small infrared camera and maps it onto a 3D scene constructed from the images taken by a pair of stereo RGB cameras.This allows small mobile robotic vehicles to create a virtual reality picture that includes a 3D map and temperature data that can be used immediately by first responders as the robot drives through a building on fire.The research is part of a plan to develop novel robotic scouts that can help firefighters to assist in residential and commercial blazes. Researchers will present their results at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation to be held from May 31 to June 5, 2014, in Hong Kong.The robots will map and photograph the interior of burning buildings by using stereo vision. They will use data gathered from various sensors to characterize the state of a fire, including temperatures, volatile gases, and structural integrity while looking for survivors. Working together both collaboratively and autonomously, a number of such vehicles would quickly develop an accurate augmented virtual reality picture of the building interior. They would then provide it in near real time to rescuers, who could better assess the structure and plan their firefighting and rescue activities. Bewley's dynamics and control team has already built the first vehicle prototype, essentially a self-righting Segway-like vehicle that can climb stairs."These robot scouts will be small, inexpensive, agile, and autonomous," said Thomas Bewley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "Firefighters arriving at the scene of a fire have 1000 things to do. To be useful, the robotic scouts need to work like well-trained hunting dogs, dispatching quickly and working together to achieve complex goals while making all necessary low-level decisions themselves along the way to get the job done."This project represents a collaboration between researchers at the Jacobs School of Engineering and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, and local corporate partners. The team has applied for large block funding from the National Science Foundation Robotics Initiative to sustain this effort. But significant preliminary work has been conducted to get the research in motion even before this proposal was submitted.This interdisciplinary effort also involves:- computer scientists in Prof. Yoav Freund's lab developing software for robotic mapping in smoky and partially obstructed spaces,- nanoengineers in Prof. Deli Wang's lab developing an "electronic nose" capable of detecting volatile organic compounds, and- researchers at the University of Illinois addressing the inherent human interface and obstacle avoidance problems.

E-CIVIL MAGAZINES

http://engineeringtoolbox.tradepub.com/free-offer/equipment-world/eqw?sr=hicat&_t=hicat:1199

STAIR CALC

http://www.ez-stairs.com/widgets/stair_calculator/index.html

ENGINEERING DETAILS

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/stairs-calculator-d_1372.html

CIVIL ENGINEERING NEWS AND UPDATES

http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/matter_energy/civil_engineering/

Geotectura's AIRchitecture: Flying Buildings!

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a building? The latest from Geotectura and Malka Architects is a concept for Delft University’s Architecture Faculty- a flying structure called AIRchitecture that’s already making our heads spin. The campus building concepts combines a static learning center for libraries, offices, lecture halls, and an auditorium, with flying workspaces and off-site “zeppelins” to allow for more dynamic collaboration and exchange. This concept might sound crazy, but it is certainly a great example of a minimal footprint.
The studio spaces will be split between an off-site “floating building” with “plug-and-play” flying classrooms for minimal environmental impact, along with satellite “zeppelins” in locations around the world. The complex is to operate as an educational machine, providing the structure to support multiple programs, and a dynamic, kinetic architecture that inspires awareness and innovation for young environmental designers, “Learning through motion and arising the activist part of the student,” as described by Geotectura.

If you’re wondering about the mechanics of this UFO-type building, the structure of the zeppelin will be built from carbon and aluminum, outfitted with PV cells embedded within the skin of a balloon frame. The designers describe the experience as “More than a building – a way of life,” that will encourage architecture students to question everything.
+ Geotectura
We don’t know why this flying building would be hanging out over Luxor Casino in Las Vegas, but we LOVE this crazy image!

constuction of bridges

NUMBERS IN CHINESE

Numbers	Simple Chinese	Complex Chinese
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
100
1000
10000

Math Magic

 Number fun

This ia a simple math magic. Here involved few maths tricks to play. You can play these number tricks as instructed, with your parents or friends and prove your talent to them. Have fun with maths.

Math Magic / Number fun / Maths Tricks

Trick 1: 2's trick Step1: Think of a number . Step2: Multiply it by 3. Step3: Add 6 with the getting result. Step4: divide it by 3. Step5: Subtract it from the first number used. Answer:2 Trick 2: Any Number Step1: Think of any number. Step2: Double the number. Step3: Add 9 with result. Step4: sub 3 with the result. Step5: Divide the result by 2. Step6: Subtract the number with the number with first number started with. Answer: 3 Trick 3: Any three digit Number Step1:Add 7 to it. Step2:Multiply the number with 2. Step3:subtract 4 with the result. Step4: Divide the result by 2. Step5:Subtract it from the number started with. Answer: 5

ELEVATIONS

WORDS OF LENIN

சுரண்டலையும், லாபம் சேர்ப்பதையும், பகைமையையும் அடிப்படையாகக் கொண்ட முதலாளிய சமுதாயத்தில் தேசிய அமைதி சாத்தியப்படுமா எனில் அது முரணற்ற முழுமையான ஜனநாயகக் குடியரசின் கீழேதான் சாத்தியமாகும்!

- தோழர் லெனின்
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

Engineering Quotes

“The road to success is always under construction”
Get it right….CIVIL ENGINEERS

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A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
- Douglas Adams

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Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretence and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer.
- British Engineer to the Royal Aeronautical Society, 1922.

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A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible
- Freeman Dyson

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A great bridge is a great monument which should serve to make known the splendour and genius of a nation; one should not occupy oneself with efforts to perfect it architecturally, for taste is always susceptible to change, but to conserve always in its form and decoration the character of solidity which is proper.
- Jean Peronnet

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An engineer is someone who is good with figures, but doesn’t have the personality of an accountant.
- An Arts graduate’s view of engineers

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Architects and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often public money.
- John Prebble

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A theory may be so rich in descriptive possibilities that it can be made to fit any data.
- Phillip Johnson-Laird

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Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.
- Dr AR Dykes

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Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice.
- Ove Arup

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Engineering refers to the practice of organizing the design and construction [and, I would add operation] of any artifice which transforms the physical world around us to meet some recognized need.
- GFC Rogers

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Engineers … are not mere technicians and should not approve or lend their name to any project that does not promise to be beneficent to man and the advancement of civilization
- John Fowler

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Engineers … are not superhuman. They make mistakes in their assumptions, in their calculations, in their conclusions. That they make mistakes is forgivable; that they catch them is imperative. Thus it is the essence of modern engineering not only to be able to check one’s own work but also to have one’s work checked and to be able to check the work of others.
- Henry Petroski

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Experience serves not only to confirm theory, but differs from it without disturbing it, it leads to new truths which theory only has not been able to reach.
- Dalembert

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From the laying out of a line of a tunnel to its final completion, the work may be either a series of experiments made at the expense of the proprietors of the project, or a series of judicious applications of the results of previous experience.
- HS Drinker

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Go for civil engineering, because civil engineering is the branch of engineering which teaches you the most about managing people. Managing people is a skill which is very, very useful and applies almost regardless of what you do.
- Sir John Harvey Jones

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He … insists that no mathematical formula, however exact it may appear to be, can be of greater accuracy than the assumptions on which it is based, and he draws the conclusion that experience still remains the great teacher and final judge.
- James Kip Finch

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He was living like an engineer in a mechanical world. No wonder he had become dry as a stone.
- Simone de Beauvoir

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His father loved him dearly, but his work, that of a civil engineer, had left him with but little time for his family. Energetic, active, and always taken up with some responsible work, he did not spoil his children with excessive tenderness.
- Mme Estafavia

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I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightement. One is quantum electrodynamics and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather more optimistic.
- Sir Horace Lamb

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Improvement makes strait roads: but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.
- William Blake

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In practical work he can be ingenious with regard to modifying apparatus; he uses engineering rather than imagination.
- Head Teacher’s reference for a student applying to University

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It takes an engineer to undertake the training of an engineer and not, as often happens, a theoretical engineer who is clever on a blackboard with mathematical formulae but useless as far as production is concerned.
- The Rev EB Evans

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Let him not be grasping nor have his mind preoccupied with … receiving perquisites, but let him with dignity keep up his position by establishing a good reputation. No work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility.
- Vitruvius

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Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them. Accordingly, they don’t have to sew buttons.
- Heywood Broun

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No greater care is required upon any works than upon such as are to withstand the action of water; for this reason, all parts of the work need to be done exactly according to the rules of the art which all workmen know, but few observe.
- Sextus Julius Frontinus

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Nor aught availed him now
To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
- John Milton

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Nothing can be of great worth or holy which is the work of builders and mechanics.
- Zeno, Stoic Philosopher

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Nothing is so inspiring as seeing big works well laid out and planned and a real engineering organisation.
- Frederick Handley Page

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One has to watch out for engineers – they begin with the sewing machine and end up with the atomic bomb.
- Marcel Pagnol

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Phases of a Project:
1 — Exultation
2 — Disenchantment
3 — Search for the Guilty
4 — Punishment of the Innocent
5 — Praise for the Uninvolved
- Anon

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The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.
- Thomas Koenig

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The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
- Douglas Adams

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There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation. By it we can readily measure an important part of a people’s progress.
- Franklin D Roosevelt

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Therefore O students study mathematics and do not build without foundations.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

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…as for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
- Bertrand Russell

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This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
- Lancelot Hogben

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We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
- Winston Churchill

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When engineers and quantity surveyors discuss aesthetics and architects study what cranes do we are on the right road.
- Ove Arup

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You have been found guilty of indulging in unnatural practices under one of London’s most beautiful bridges.
- Judge reprimanding prisoner before sentence
Urban myth at the Bar

15 Amazing Civil Engineering Feats

Ever since people transitioned from hunter gatherers to farming the quest to build bigger and better structures has been going on. From the ancient pyramids at Giza to the modern day International Space Station, these structures represent the pinnacle of human engineering achievement.

• The Great Pyramid at Giza

  

  As the only remaining representative of the original Seven Wonders of the World, any discussion of the greatest engineering feats of humanity without its mention would undermine any authority. This structure is at least 5000 years old, with some claiming it to be up to twice that. For more, check out "The Age of the Pyramids" here at Bright Hub Engineering. There are several theories on how it was constructed, but there is no actual proof to push any one theory to the forefront. No matter which theory is eventually accepted, there is no doubt that this is one of the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world.

• Great Wall of China

  

  The massive scale of the Great Wall of China merits its inclusion on this list of engineering marvels. At just over 5500 miles long it is the longest continuous construction in the entire world. Although claims were made that is the only man-made object that can be seen from space by the naked eye, this is not true. What astronauts thought was the Great Wall was actually a river.

• Channel Tunnel in France

  

  The "Chunnel" is a 31.4 mile underwater tunnel that connects France and England. It was first proposed back in 1802 but because the technology was too expensive it had to wait almost another 200 years. When it was completed, the Channel Tunnel had the longest underwater run of any tunnel in existence (over 23.5 miles). For more on the construction of the Euro Tunnel, see "Engineering the Euro Tunnel."

• CN Tower

  

  The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada stands at a breathtaking 1,815.4 ft tall as is currently the tallest free standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. The American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World. Interestingly enough, the tower was originally designed as a radio antenna without any plans for an observation deck. The main pod wasn't added to the design until much later. For more on this iconic structure, check out "The CN Tower - Enduring Engineering."

• China's Bird's Nest

  

  The Bird's Nest (Beijing National Stadium) is one of the most recognized of all recent construction projects, as the crowning jewel of the Beijing Olympic Plaza it was beamed into millions of homes for fourteen straight days. The unique design was based on a study of Chinese ceramics and incorporates more structural steel than any other building on the planet (110,000 tons).

• Delta Works (Netherlands)

  

  Constructed in several different phases between 1950 and 2010, the Delta Works is a ongoing project that contains a compilation of dams, sluices, locks, dikes, levees, and storm surge barriers that act to protect the coastline of the Netherlands by reducing the amount that is exposed to open seas. It is also on the list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World as composed by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

• Panama Canal

  

  The Panama Canal has long been considered an engineering marvel. First proposed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain the 48-mile long man-made canal links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. When the canal was completed in 1914 it cut 14,000 miles off a trip around Cape Horn. Consisting of several man-made lakes and three locks, the canal is one of the busiest sea ports in the world. Take a full tour of the Panama Canal Transit in Pictures.

• Golden Gate Bridge

  

  The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most elegant structures in the world. Designed by famous Manhattan designer Leon Moisseiff, the 8,981 foot long suspension bridge takes advantage of the "deflection theory" which allows that a small, flexible suspended roadway can flex to compensate for high winds. See "Details of the Golden Gate Bridge" for more specifics. The bridge is the fastest route over San Francisco Bay (before its construction the only way across the bay was by ferry) and an integral part of U.S. Highway 1.

• The Millau Viaduct

  

  If this isn't a breathtaking view, I'm not sure what is. The Millau Viaduct is the highest bridge in Europe, standing over 890 feet above the ground. It broke several records when it was erected including the highest pylons in the world (803 ft. 8 in.), highest bridge tower in the world (1,125 ft.), and the highest road bridge deck in Europe (890 ft.). Follow the entire construction process at "The Engineering Story of the Millau Viaduct."

• The Ice Hotel

  

  The ice hotel makes this list because it is rebuilt every year in a matter of months, the entire structure is made from ice, and the workers brave temperatures of up to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. Now in its 22nd year, the hotel is located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle in Jukkasjärvi, Norway. It is just as much an art project as an engineering marvel and should rightfully find its place on this list as the only transient engineering marvel.

• The International Space Station

  

  The international space station is a collaborative engineering marvel. Constructed primarily at ground level facilities and launched into space on rockets or in shuttles, the space station is the only permanent structure to be assembled in space. The assembly logistics are mind boggling as each module had to be dry fitted on Earth so that astronauts in space suits could easily assemble them in the vacuum of space. This might possibly be the greatest achievement in human history to this point.

• Petronas Towers

  

  The Petronas Towers are the tallest twin towers in the world. Located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the towers stand 1,242 feet tall and consist of 88 floors. The sky bridge located between the 41st and 42nd floors is the highest two-story bridge in the world. Most buildings of extreme height are built with steel skeletons but the cost to import steel into Malaysia made this impractical so the towers were built from concrete (making them twice as heavy and resulting in the need for a double sized base) making them the tallest concrete structures ever built. For more on the construction details see "The Petronas Twin Towers: Construction & How Tall Are They?"

• Palm Tree Island

  

  One of the most ambitious engineering goals of the past century was the construction and development of artificial islands off the coast of Dubai. The palm tree island was created by dredging over 1.1 billion cubic meters of sand and rock from the nearby ocean bottom to create the palm fronds and circular barrier islands. If this proves cost effective, Dubai may build another artificial archipelago, a scale model of the continents of the world. See, "Palm Islands, Dubia: Eight Wonder of the World" for more.

• Burj-Al-Arab Hotel

  

  Although not the tallest or most expensive hotel in the world, the Burj-Al-Arab Hotel in Dubai is an engineering marvel none-the-less. The sail shaped hotel was inspired by the curves of the Sydney Opera House and was meant to be an icon for the country. The interior of the hotel features a grand gallery that stretches up a breathtaking 590 feet. For more on this amazing hotel see "Building the Tallest Hotel."

• Lake Mead and Hoover Dam

  

  Lake Mead is the largest man-made resevior in the world. The construction of Hoover dam occurred between 1931 and 1936, the height of the American great depression. It was the crowning achievement of the era consisting of 2,480,000 cubic meters of concrete and holding back the flow of the mighty Colorado River. In addition to being both a hydroelectric power source and water reservoir, Lake Mead serves a third purpose as well- as a recreational lake. See "Five Interesting Facts about the Hoover Dam" for more information.

• Oasis of the Seas

  

  Called a city on the ocean, the Oasis of the Seas is one of two Oasis Class vessels in the world. With a displacement of 100,000 tons it comes in at the same weight as a American Nimitz aircraft carrier. It can handle over 6,000 passages and cruises in the Caribbean from a launch point in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It features a "living" park onboard that contains over 12,000 plants and over 50 trees as well as an entire boardwalk including a mini golf course and hand crafted carousel. If you're interested what the fuel consumption of these ships is like- and why it may not matter as much as one might guess- you might want to also see "Cruise Ship Gas Mileage" here at Bright Hub Engineering