Engineering
Lightning catchers
The lightning are highly potent electric shocks that occur in microseconds. Nevertheless, it is possible to catch them with a high speed camera, detect them by antennas, track them on trees or subsurface minerals, lead them to lightning rods, and reproduce its plasma in cutting steel machines, fluorescent or neon. Speakers Oscar Van der Velde, […]
Designing the Catalan keyboard
The program Quèquicom proposes to the linguistic engineer Lluís de Yzaguirre from the UPF, and to the member of Softcatalà Joan Montané, the design of a new keyboard adapted to the Catalan language. With this new keyboard would be possible to write faster and reduce injuries to hands and wrists. The QWERTY keyboard finally has […]
Copper, the electric metal
Associated with electricity, copper has helped change the world. Besides being a good conductor some of its compounds are superconductors. In living organisms acts as a transmitter of electrons in many biochemical reactions. Also is part of several blue and green pigments of gothic painting and sometimes can acquire an electric tone.
Charging the batteries
What do they have in common a battery, a tubercle or body fat? They are sistems of storing energy. The energy is stored for consumption when needed and to move autonomously. A crossing of the Pyrenees is an ideal situation to understand how and why energy is stored.
The engine wide
What makes a car “has nerve” as a Formula 1? ABS, ESP … What do these acronyms? When the first car was manufactured? What does an engine inside? The reporter Pere Renom rides a motor piece by piece, visits the SEAT testbed and get a practical lesson in safe driving circuit.
Robots: improving nature
A robotic scalpel made in the Politechnical University of Catalonia adapts to heartbeat and makes the surgeon to operate with greater precision because it has the feel of operating a stopped heart. A submarine robot that can rescue a black box at 500 meters depth, the Girona 500, and a small slave who cleans the […]
Three faces of the carbon
What do they have in common the coal, a motorcycle helmet and a diamond? Three sides of the carbon, a chemical element with properties remarkably different depending on how it is organized. Pere Renom built a stack for charcoal. Later attends the size of a diamond and understands why it is so bright. Finally, learns […]
Low cost satellits
The aerospace industry is a sector with so high investment that only large agencies like NASA or ESA, or the multinational companies can afford. An international team of students and engineers of UPC is developing a project to send a satellite into space for less than 1,200 euros. The challenge is part of the “N-Prize” […]
Profiting the sun
One of the alternative energy models to hydrocarbons is solar energy, on two fronts: photovoltaic and thermal. Solar panels are still relatively expensive. In large photovoltaic plants are tested other technologies to reduce costs, such as the so-called solar panels of concentration. Joan Ignasi Rosell, University of Lleida, explains what they are. 130 school children […]
Gaudí and the natural forms in the Sagrada Família
To better understand the relationship between the architecture of Gaudi and the nature, the biologist Pere Renom climbs the canopy of a beech forest over 40 meters high and compare the structure with that of the central nave of the Sagrada Família, designed like a forest of stone. The hyperboloid domes topping the nave are […]
