We’ve had two Baldwin handle sets fail on our new front door in the past six months, and I finally figured out why the manfacturer included a second landing plate with the set. Basically they must have known it would fail prematurely. The thumb latch is a lever that…
The Boston Globe reports that manslaughter charges have been dropped against the company that supplied the epoxy with poor creep resistance implicated in Boston’s Big Dig roof panel collapse that killed one person in 2006, in exchange for a $16M payment to the state and an agreement to stop…
In a test of airport security– oops make that airport stupidity — at the Narita Airport in Japan, an unwitting passenger exited baggage claim with a little something extra in his luggage reports the BBC in Cannabis Blunder at Tokyo Airport. “A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance…
When it comes to structural integrity, plastic parts often get a bad rap. But when they fail, often the result of metal fatigue, metal parts can fail catastrophically as forensic engineer Ken Russell relates in his Calamities Column in Design News. In the Case of the Acrobatic Airplane, he describes…
View crack detail. My husband is known for his creative special effects, usually involving food, like the time he grilled eggplant slices and formed them into stacks vaguely reminiscent of that famous leaning tower in Italy. Just as he sliced into his own architectural wonder, a live beetle scuttled out…
The winter sports season is upon us, along with the usual spate of bruised buns and broken bones.. But while most skiers who run into trouble will do so on their way down the slopes, for the really unlucky there’s the occasional freak accident going the other way. The…
Prized by design engineers for its enviable strength-to-weight ratio and high modulus, titanium has made its way in recent years into all sorts of high-tech products from turbine engines to bicycle frames. Now, a new toothbrush with a titanium dioxide core in its handle has hit the…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1791574/posts The story of Napoleon’s buttons is one of those great cautionary tales about the potentially dire consequences of ignoring the chemical properties of substances. Most engineering students probably first heard about this historical wardrobe malfunction (apologies to Janet!) in an…