Researchers at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, along with researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used 3-D printers to create the world's smallest battery. These batteries could easily become the new power source for micro and nano-electronics. Imagine radio trackers on insects, or centimeter sized robots that could perform surgery. While the technology of the battery has been around for a long time, this new application for the amazing world of 3-D printing opens up a whole new array of possibilities in the engineering world. Now the problem won't just be to find the batteries that aren't dead, it will be to find the batteries! Way Cool! And as long as we are talking about the world's smallest battery... I suppose we should say something about the world's largest battery (complex). This football field sized battery array from China can store 36 Megawatts of electricity and cost some $500 million dollars. It's goal is to store electricity from the solar and wind power-generating facilities and be able to make it available as needed. So it could store enough electricity to power 20,000 homes for 1 day here in Maine. While this is still an expensive solution, we can expect, as with all technologies, that the price will likely come down as the systems become more standardized, rather than one-of-a-kind constructions.
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This year's FIRST LEGO League challenge is "Nature's Fury" and a great way to learn about one of those furies is to attend the webinar on Hurricanes. The hurricane The webinar will take place Wednesday, June 26, 2013, at 4:30pm EDT. During this free, 1-hour webinar, James Brinkley, a member of the Storm Surge Unit at the National Hurricane Center (NHC), will discuss the impact of storm surge, how it is observed, measured, and modeled, with a focus on events surrounding Hurricane Sandy. The NHC’s Storm Surge Unit produces official storm surge forecasts when a tropical cyclone threatens the United States, supports the Nation’s hurricane warning program, and facilitates post-storm response and recovery efforts. In addition this discussion on storm surge, Robert Thompson, a National Weather Service (NWS) Meteorologist in charge of the Taunton, Massachusetts office, will review historical hurricanes that have impacted the Northeast Atlantic coast. In the aftermath of hurricanes Sandy and Irene, there is great interest to learn about other tropical systems that have impacted the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. Informal science educators (e.g. personnel at museums and science centers), instructors of middle and high school level classes, instructors of undergraduate level courses, other educators, EMA personnel, and other interested parities are encouraged to participate. All participants must register in advance of the webinar. Registration links and other webinar information can be found on the HSS website: http://www.hurricanescience.org/resources/webinar2013/. If you have any questions about these webinars, or the HSS project, please contact Holly Morin ([email protected]). The 2013 Hurricanes: Science and Society (HSS) Webinar Series for Educators is presented by The University of Rhode Island, Graduate School of Oceanography in partnership with the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE). Special thanks to our panelists from the National Hurricane Center (NHC), National Weather Service (NWS), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Maine Robotics is pleased to announce that we have two new board members. At this weeks Board Meeting we added Jim Smith, the CIO for the State of Maine and Adam Sherwood, the Manager of Network Applications at Eastern Maine Healthcare.
Welcome to both of our new members! Here is a great article from the OregonLive.com website. It talks about Tesca, a young women who went off to college at the age of 12 and is now heading off to start her Ph.D. studies at Georgia Tech, at age 16. She was a programmer on her local FIRST LEGO League team and won at the World Festivals! You can read the whole article <here>, way to go Tesca! It hasn't even been a week since the last summer robotic camp update but things are moving fast! We've had 24 more registrations this week (since the 6th) and 3 more camps are full. So 16 of our 30 weeks of camp are completely full and most of the others are either filling up fast or almost full. Our camp staff will be gathering next week for our pre-season staff training and we know it will be a great year! |
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