Quoted: When I was a little girl, summer would mean fun - non-stop games with cousins and friends, riding bicycle in the sweltering heat, pulling out molten tar from the bottom of your slippers, cooking egg on the pavement, juicy mangoes and the smell of Vettiver. Grandmother used to hang up curtains made of dried vettiver, and pour water over it, so that

Quoted: We saw earlier at this blog a method to cool electronic components using a composite heat sink that utilizes a high heat conductive base material (such as aluminium) and a high latent heat storage phase change material (such as n-eicosane). Here we shall discuss in detail, an interesting idea to cool electronic components like computer chips shaped

Quoted: Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) convert chemical to electrical energy directly, much like the common battery, except that they can be constantly supplied with fuel for a continuous source of power. SOFCs are very attractive as a source of power as they can convert a wide variety of fuels with high efficiency (40-60% unassisted, up to 70% in pressurized

Quoted: Following our recent discussion on the Objectives of Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer today we shall heat a block and see how hot the understanding gets. Observe the figure below. But for the faces at x = 0 and x = L, the rest of the faces (four of them) are "insulated" such that energy cannot cross into or out of this block - our system of interest

Quoted: Today I received information from their marketing manager that Ideawicket is hosting a contest for the Best College Project in India. Students can upload a project proposal, abstract or summary and invite feedback from other users. The winner will be determined by user voting. I would request you to very kindly forward this message to your students

Quoted: At the end of a particularly enthusiastic, exhausting, sweat pouring, first hour lecture class by 8 AM on melting heat transfer today, I was greeted by a "Happy Teachers' Day Sir". I uttered a sheepish "Thank You" and left the class. Thrilled. India is one of the few countries that celebrate Teachers' Day. A list of other countries can be found in this

Quoted: Funny, quirky and interesting things abound the internet. As usual, we sample some related to science (mostly) with this third edition of Unfullpostables. Some of the long time readers here might remember the Open Laboratory 2006 a blook edited by Bora containing the best science writings for the year 2006 - in which the elephant post from this blog

Quoted: From Abi I hear this sad and infuriating news. Mridula confirms it. It seems, an investigation has been called for by the institute authorities. In short, a construction worker's boy got bitten by something poisonous and died because of possible denial of emergency treatment at the hospital inside the IIT Kanpur premise - on grounds that the boy doesn't

Quoted: The radiantly cooling Sun is dying to keep us as a species warm and thinking. The conduction cooling of the Earth from its center doesn’t seem to affect our daily lives, but the convection winds around it do. Living amidst all this natural energy interactions trying to generate as much power as we individually can we realize we cannot beat even the