Terahertz Scanner Lets Smartphones See Through Objects
UT Dallas electrical engineers have designed an imaging chip that could let mobile phones peer through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects.
Researchers led by Kenneth O, director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and an electrical engineering professor, are using new microchip technology to see into the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum, wavelengths that fall between microwave and infrared.
A university announcement says the technology could be used to find studs in walls, to authenticate important documents and money, and for medical imaging and environmental monitoring.
Top Image: Smartphone via Shutterstock.
Engineering majors vs. others.
I honestly never thought that I would ever admit this, but I hate being in classes with non engineering majors.
Let me get this said right out of the gate, I’m not implying that non engineering majors are any less intelligent or degrading them in any way.
I’m saying is that there is a big difference in the way that other science and technical majors think compared to engineers. There’s this thing that we learn freshman year, its called not being allowed to memorize things.
Today, my Chem teacher told the class that we had to have this table memorized. She then asked the class a question pertaining to the table, and everyone just knew the answer off of the top of their head. I looked to my friend, who is also an engineering major, to see that he was just as confused as I was. We then came to find that we were sitting in a class full of health science, chemistry, and biology majors, who had already memorized the table without being told to do so. I’m not saying that these people are any less smart than I am, because obviously all of them just outsmarted me. I’m saying that we have two completely different ways of thinking and solving problems. These majors are taught from the first moment they step into a college classroom, maybe even sooner, that they need to know all of this information off of the top of their head, without fault, or they’re going to end up bums or hookers walking on Central. We’re told that we should never, and I mean never, memorize anything.
Dr. Fields, my physics professor was talking about problem solving today, and he told us that if he wanted to just have numbers plugged into an equations, he would just go hand them to someone at Intel or the Albuquerque Zoo (lol). We’re in school to learn how to solve real world problems. To see a situation and think, okay this is what’s wrong and this is how I need to be and then apply concepts to the problems that will provide a desirable output.
I think that parts of the scientific community have forgotten that the actual process of solving the problem, not the answer, is most important. This is where they’re going wrong, because science is about innovation, not copy and paste.
There’s also the small fact that these other majors look at you like you have the west nile virus when you don’t know something right off of the top of your head, or you start to draw a diagram. They think that if you don’t know something off of automatic recall that you’re stupid, and they’re always really obnoxious about it when they “know” more than you.
If there’s one thing they can do, its memorize. And they’re lucky. But there are things we can do better. The only reason why any of us can do pretty much any math out of our head whether its balancing an equation, knowing that when you integrate sin^2(x)dx, you always get tan(x), or if its finding the force of someone who commits suicide by jumping off of the roof of a building is because we were forced to learn them from repetitiveness. We only know things off of the top of our head simply because we have done countless problems with a pencil and paper before we were allowed to even think about doing something in our head. We didn’t memorize it, we practiced it.
We can solve problems. So when these people are sitting in a hospital cleaning up people’s problems, I’ll be sitting in a lab coming up with ways to do every single thing that they do more efficiently. Someone has to be the innovative one, and that’s why my degree matters.
Nikola Tesla (A Pigeon Lover)
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Blah blah blah… let’s get to the good stuff shall we?!
“Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory. Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration.”
” He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by visions. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word (SHAZZAM!) or idea he might have come across, (PIGEONS!) at other times they would provide the solution to a particular problem he had been encountering.”
”Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; these began during his childhood.” Hmmm… sounds peculiar already!
”Nikola Tesla was a polyglot, and along with his native tongue he also spoke Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.” Damn how many tongues he got up in there?! Multilingual, you don’t say?!
”Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three.” Totes OCD!
“Tesla was physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. (Safe to say he didn’t love “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” Mmmkay!)
He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts mysophobic, having a pathological fear of germs.” Germaphobe down!!!
“Tesla was obsessed with PIGEONS, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing injured ones into his hotel room to nurse them back to health.” Pigeons, you say?!
“These Are My Friends” is focused on the curious relationship Tesla shared with the pigeons in the parks that surrounded his home in New York. Later in life, particularly in his mid-sixties and on, he could be found frequently alone on walks feeding the pigeons and spending time near them. Under his care, pigeons recovered from diseased wings, broken legs, and supposedly at least one of gangrene. When he encountered pigeons he could not treat himself, he would enlist the help of a physician. If for some reason he was unable to visit the park where he most often fed the birds, he would hire a Western Union messenger to take care of the task for him.” Pigeon lover!!!!
“Tesla never married. He was celibate and claimed that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities. Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for Tesla’s affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic sense.” Erm dude was so gay!
“The great love story of his life was with a mysterious white pigeon, (AGAIN WITH THE PIGEONS!) which would find him almost anywhere he went and come when he called her. He told a pair of journalists, according to an early biographer, that he loved her as a man loves a woman. When the pigeon eventually became very ill, he stayed with it, refusing to leave his hotel room in order to care for it. It recovered, but lived only another year. It flew into his bedroom through an open window one night, according to Tesla, and landed on his desk. He knew instantly that she was dying. When the bird passed, Tesla said that powerful beams of light came forth from her eyes to him… he knew something had gone out of his life, and that his life’s work was finished.” What a tragic loss! Lol!
”Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of him calling him a ‘a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink.’” A man after my own heart!
“Nevertheless, Tesla could be harsh at times; he openly expressed his disgust for OVERWEIGHT people, (WHAT A FATIST!) once firing a secretary because of her weight. He was quick to CRITICIZE others’ CLOTHING as well, (FASHION POLICE!) on several occasions directing a subordinate to go home and change her dress.” Wahahaha! Me?! Why I’d never!
”In middle age, Tesla became close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and ‘elsewhere’.” Mmmhmm like IN THE BEDROOM! Need I say more???!!!
”In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity’s future would be run by “Queen Bees”. He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future.” Mmmmkay! Werq it mama!!!
”In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: “It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit.” Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was “superior to meat in regard to both mechanical and mental performance”. He also argued that animal slaughter was “wanton and cruel.” Sacred Cow! Sacred Cow!
”Tesla lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life, Tesla showed signs of encroaching senility, claiming to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. (WHOA SHAZZAMITY!) Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a “final blow” to himself and his work.” Lord help me now!!!
This concludes the Nikola Tesla Shazzamity Hour. I hope you may now concur that being a pigeon fancier is no more insane that say being an electrical engineer or a famous inventor. As you can see they go hand in hand. Therefore, I am not crazy! Just intuitively creative! Thank you very much!
For further reading please refer your progeny to the following reading material:
Bakit nga ba 220V ang gamit dito sa Pilipinas imbis na 110V?
Tutal maraming na-curios kung bakit 220V ang ginagamit na boltahe ng Pilipinas, ipopost ko na rin. :)
Voltage - Boltahe
Current - Kuryente
Ganito kasi yan, mahirap ang Pilipinas yan ang simpleng sagot. Mahaba kasi ang proseso bago umabot sa atin ang boltahe na 220V sa ating mga bahay. Maraming pagsalin salin ng mga boltahe at kuryente. Galing sa mga producers ng kuryente, na nagge-generate ng halos 20,000V eh gumagamit sila transformer para mapababa at mapataas ang boltahe hanggang sa mapunta na sa meralco. Oo napapababa o napapataas ang boltahe o kuryente gamit ang transformer pero parehas parin ang power na binibigay nito (Power = Voltage X Current) dahil sa principle na ito, kung patataasin ang voltage liliit ang current, at kung maliit ang current liliit din ang mga wires na gagamitin, mas maliit na area ng wire mas mura ang wire na bibilhin.
Kaya kung mapapansin mo, mas mataba ang wire na gamit ng mga appliances na may 110V kaysa sa 220V na appliances.
Sana naintindihan niyo ang explanation ko. HAHA!
