UPS Sizing - Rules of Thumb
It wasn't so long ago I was telling someone that I don't use rules of thumb as most things are easily calculated anyhow. As it turns out I last week...
Magicians of Engineering
The other day I was reading 'Night of the New Magicians' by Mary Pope Osborn with my son. The story is about a young boy and girl who travel back in time...
Meeting room of the future
The IET site has a video of a visit showing of a high tech meeting room developed at Napier University in Edinburgh. It a good demonstration of innovative...
Why is electricity so hard to understand?
It's been a busy few months on different projects or busy couple of decades depending on how I look at it. I can say that on the odd (frequent) occasion...
Understanding Circuit Breaker Markings
IEC 60947 is the circuit breaker standard and covers the marking of breakers in detail. Any manufacturer following this standard should comply with the...
Autonomous Vehicle Challenge
Two driverless and solar power vans have departed from Italy on their way to China via the silk road. During the 13,000 kM trip the vans will drive themselves...
Questions - Reputation and Privilege
Our question and answer system while letting you do exactly what it says, is much more. It is a dynamic user driven system, where our users not only ask...
Introduction to Cathodic Protection
If two dissimilar metals are touching and an external conducting path exists, corrosion of one the metals can take place. Moisture or other materials...
E-Ink
Before the technical, some general information. E-ink display are found in a lot of e-readers, some mobile phones and similar devices and the intent is...
Introduction to Lighting
When looking at the design of a lighting scheme it is useful to have an understanding on the nature of light itself and some of the basic theory associated...