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While Evelyn Wang (SB '00), an associate professor of mechanical engineering, attended MIT as an undergraduate, her connection to the Institute goes back much further than that: This is where her...
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Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers at MIT.
The researchers evaluated an emerging...
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MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. Depending on the field’s orientation, the microhairs can...
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Paper wrinkles, tape tears, cables kink, columns buckle, eggshells break. Pedro M. Reis hopes to transform today’s annoyances into tomorrow’s technology.
Reis, who holds a dual appointment in...
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Researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia have developed a new way of making surfaces that can actively control how fluids or particles move across them. The work might enable new kinds of biomedical or...
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Several years ago, as a graduate student at MIT, Amos Winter spent a summer in Tanzania surveying wheelchair technology. What he found was a disconnect between products and the lives of their...
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Twisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand...
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Alberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and incoming graduate student Nikhil Chavan-Dafle presented their work on robotic extrinsic dexterity — which they began at...
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The fields of data communication, fabrication, and ultrasound imaging share a common challenge when it comes to improving speed and efficiency: light’s diffraction limit. Nicholas Fang thinks his...
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There is a story about how the modern golf ball, with its dimpled surface, came to be: In the mid-1800s, it is said, new golf balls were smooth, but became dimpled over time as impacts left permanent...
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What’s the difference between the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument?
Both structures soar to impressive heights, and each was the world’s tallest building when completed. But the Washington...
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The Case of the Welcome “Hairball”
by Alissa Mallinson
PhD student Folkers Rojas (SB ‘09, SM ‘11, PhD ‘14)Photo credit: Tony Pulsone
What do a bathtub hairball and a MechE-developed blowout ...
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Engineering and the Ocean Environment: Challenge and Opportunity
by Alissa Mallinson
Vast and seemingly impenetrable, the ocean inspires endless fascination. It is the topic of countless tales...
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You can quickly run out of fingers and toes counting the many ways we waste energy. Take our sewage systems, for example: The energetic content of wastewater is about 10 times the amount of energy it...
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Graphene’s promise as a material for new kinds of electronic devices, among other uses, has led researchers around the world to study the material in search of new applications. But one of the...
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Researchers at MIT's School of Engineering, working with colleagues at the Pontificial University of Chile in Santiago, are harvesting potable water from the coastal fog that forms on the edge of one...
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This year’s arena for the annual robotics competition that caps the mechanical engineering class called 2.007 (Learning by Design) was based on a Winter Olympics theme, with dauntingly steep slopes...
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The Atlantic razor clam uses very little energy to burrow into undersea soil at high speed. Now a detailed insight into how the animal digs has led to the development of a robotic clam that can...
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Photo Credit: Tony Pulsone
For Professor Emeritus Woodie Flowers (SM ’68, MEng ’71, PhD ’73), engineering is all about having fun. But it wasn’t always that way.
As a high school student from a...
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Droplets Break a Theoretical Time Barrier on Bouncing
By David Chandler, MIT News Office
Those who study hydrophobic materials — water-shedding surfaces such as those found in nature and created...