AppSnaps - Sensors
Search

AppSnaps

Feeling the Earth Move

Jul 1, 2007

People have been trying to predict earthquakes for centuries—using animal behavior, weather, and seismic monitoring—but have had less than stellar success. As the human population shifts from a mostly rural existence to a mostly urban one, earthquakes exact a higher price, both in property damage and in lives lost.

High-Tech Road Repair

Jul 1, 2007

In April 2007, a gasoline tanker crashed and burned while negotiating the MacArthur Maze, a network of interstate connections around the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge in California. The resulting blaze was so intense that it caused parts of the I-580 overpass to crash onto the interstate below.

Building Better Tractors

Jun 1, 2007

If you haven't spent much time around agricultural equipment, you may not know that modern tractors are very large, very powerful, and increasingly sophisticated to handle the rough terrain and other conditions they deal with every day.

Battling the Fumes

Jun 1, 2007

One of the worst parts of being stuck in traffic (besides the frustration and the need to watch the cars around you lest one of them do something stupid and dangerous) is the smell. The fumes you can smell are bad enough, but the real nasties are, too often, chemicals that have no scent at all, such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and a slew of volatile organic compounds.

Staying Connected

May 1, 2007

Electric trains draw power from overhead lines, using a device called a pantograph to maintain connection between the train and the load-carrying wire overhead (known as overhead track equipment (OHTE)).

Keeping Cool

May 1, 2007

If you've ever worked while resting a laptop computer on your lap, you know that computers emit heat, and the more powerful the computer, the greater the heat produced. This is a problem because electronics really don't enjoy elevated temperatures. A hot computer is a slow computer or, worse, a computer that will cease functioning.

Modern-Day Canaries

Mar 28, 2007

When garbage in landfills decays, it produces methane. This is handy if you're interested in tapping it and using it to generate electricity, but it's not so great if it builds up in the areas where people work.

How Fast Is That Ship?

Mar 28, 2007

While GPS can tell ocean-going vessels where they are, the ships rely on propeller speed to figure out how fast they're going. For vessels with fixed propellers, the best way to determine this is to measure the speed of the propeller shaft, which is coupled to the engine.

Corrosion in Real Time

Mar 28, 2007

Installations such as refineries, chemical plants, and other such beasts are peculiarly blessed with intricate networks of pipes, pressure vessels, or other structures that can suffer from corrosion. Normally, unplanned outages are avoided by dispatching personnel to visit the sites and take readings on the relative health of the parts in question.

Catch the Waste

Mar 1, 2006

Municipalities typically generate a large amount of compostable material as a byproduct of their wastewater treatment operations. The "green" cities turn this unappealing substance into something of benefit to everyone, but the transformation doesn't happen all on its own.

E-NEWSLETTERS

Subscribe Now!

  
Sensors Weekly
  
Product Picks
  
What's New at Sensors
ADVERTISEMENT

RSS FEED



Get free delivery of new articles! Click here for more information.

Click here