Shakeel Avadhany, the Project Leader, is a senior student in Materials Science at MIT. He and his team have created a shock absorber that can generate electricity from driving over bumps. This enery created is enough to power the alternator in a truck, thereby decreasing the drain on the battery and increasing the fuel efficiency by up to 10%. They seem to have thought of most every angle, including what should happen if the system failed. If that is the case, the shock absorber would go back to being a normal shock.

Right now, the tests have proved all of this based on large vehicles. The first official production will be done for the military, to increase the efficiency of Hummers out in the field.

Shakeel has created his own company looking into this, called Levant Power Corp., and by this summer they will be releasing their first fine tuned version ready for release this summer. Talks will then begin with Wal-Mart, for starters, in which the estimates they could save Wal-Mart up to $13 million a year in fuel costs.

Product Info -MIT Shock Absorbers-
Retrieved from -OhGizmo!-

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The Chinese are constructing the world’s largest highest bridge called the Siduhe Grand Bridge. This bridge is over 2,100 ft. tall, which makes it higher than any skyscraper in the United States by about 360 ft. This bridge is not only tall, but it is also about 3/4 of a mile long, making the combination of construction over a valley with that long of a span creating some really interesting contructability issues.

Well, China has their solution…use rockets to launch the suspension cables across the valley to construct the main supports. Instead of normal methods such as helicopters, they actually launched the cable across. The weight of those cables alone had to make the rockets fly awkwardly, but they have successfully launched them.

Check out the pictures below to see their method!

Retrieved from -Dvice-

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

So, awhile back, I saw a new program that was started in Philadelphia to slow down cars without creating speed bumps called…and prepare to groan over this one…”Drive CarePhilly”. This lovely concept that was instituted in over 100 intersections involved using 3D decals on the ground to fake out drivers to thinking there was a speed bump there. Even if it worked for the first time, I would hope that humans are smart enough to tell next time that there really is no speed bump.

So China has decided to up the ante and show how they slow down travellers. I have to give them this, it definitely will slow down cars, no ifs ands or buts. They have placed a 100′ long x 2′ tall winding concrete block to slow people down on Jin Zhuang highway. That is what I call a no joke speed bump.

Retrieved from -Gizmodo-

Bookmark It

Hide Sites