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article Fall 2016

Grainger Foundation Commitment Funding Undergraduate Innovation

By Gabriela Betancourt The silence and relative calm of Engineering Mall were broken by the sounds of marching band music and palpable excitement during the early afternoon on September 17th as students and faculty awaited the “special announcement” that the College of Engineering had stated would be shared with the public that day. The crowd […]

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article Fall 2016

Your Next Flight is On-Track

By Chris Hanko While the United States consistently showcases their impressive engineering and advanced technology on the global stage, there seems to be a large void of progression in one of the most substantial fields: high-speed rail transportation. Sure we have cars, taxis, buses and airplanes, but it seems we are missing a key ingredient […]

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article Fall 2016

Moving Spacecraft with Microwaves

By Stephen Eick Designing methods of launching an object beyond the gripping claws of Earth’s gravity is one of the most challenging problems an engineer can expect to tackle. Even more challenging is creating new methods of propulsion that push physics beyond its edge while opening new doors for the future of humanity. Right now, […]

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article Fall 2016

Flush Forward

By Kelsey Bright The world is overflowing with waste. The trash we throw in our garbage cans piles up in landfills, taking up space that could otherwise be used for more productive purposes. But what about the waste we’re flushing down our toilets and rinsing down our sinks? Wastewater is treated and reused, but the […]

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article Fall 2016

Advice from a Freshman Engineer

By Krishna Patel It is back to square one for the one-time seniors of high school, now finding themselves amongst a pack of wolves called college freshmen. As an engineer, much of the college adaptation process sounds very scary; the workload is greater, classes are farther from each other, and you are away from loved […]

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article Fall 2016

Gridcoin and BOINC: ‘Crowdsourcing’ Scientific Discovery

By Brandon Grill Scientific advancement relies on numerous resources, many of which are hard to come by. Skilled faculty, equipment funding, and adequate research assistants are all needed in order to take a proposal and turn it into a discovery. Often overlooked, but increasing in demand, is the need for computational power. Whether in astronomy, […]

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article Fall 2016

California’s Drought

By Madison Knobloch Since 2011, a large area of high pressure over the pacific coast next to California, appropriately named the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge,” or RRR, has been diverting storm systems further north. High pressure ridges are not uncommon, however, the stability of this one specifically is unmatched in the record books. This ridge was […]

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article Fall 2016

Paper Tech

By Anastasia Montgomery Today, technology is so important to our existence that it is as if our smartphones were a unique organ. However, the metaphor breaks down once you look at how much e-waste (the informal name for any discarded electronic or electrical devices or their parts) we produce while compulsively upgrading the technologies we […]

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article Fall 2016

Badgerloop: The Future of Transportation

By Nathan Friar If you were to ask somebody to name a typical form of motorized transportation, the range of answers are somewhat limited. Over the last 100 years, the machines that we as humans use to power ourselves from place to place has remained pretty standard. Automobiles, boats, trains, and more recently, planes have made […]

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article Fall 2016

Concussions: A Difficult Diagnosis

By Alex Chay As a sports fan, not much is scarier than seeing a fan favorite lying on the turf, motionless, from the effects of a concussion. Not only are the causes of concussions especially gruesome, but the long-term effects can also be equally as terrifying. Numerous ex-football players have filed lawsuits against the NFL for […]