Z Hulett

Mechanical Engineer
Bentonville, AR, USA

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  • 18 Comments
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  • "From Wikipedia:The design of the Jersey barrier was specifically intended to minimize damage in incidental accidents and reduce the likelihood of a car crossing into oncoming lanes in the event of a collision. In common shallow-angle hits, sheet-metal damage is minimized by allowing the vehicle tires to ride up on the lower sloped face. Head-on vehicle collisions are minimized by gradually lifting the vehicle and pivoting it away from oncoming vehicles and back into traffic heading in its original direction.---This holds true with what I've always suspected. The slope allows a car to impact the wall with tires first and not damage the car body, which would be more expensive to fix. I bet it also limits the person jerking the wheel away from the wall as severely and them potentially losing control. It probably also aides in the stability of the barrier. If the weight of the car is on the barrier, then its more difficult to knock the barrier over. "
    on: Observing Cars Crashing Into K-Rails, to Debunk a Theory
  • "While I do agree that eggs are great packaging, the fact that it splits right down the axis has more to do with basic physics than design. It's the same as why hotdogs always split long way rather than break in the middle when they swell. The freezing causes an equal pressure inside the shell at every point. The force applied by the pressure is related to the surface area of the plane it's being acted on. The bigger the surface area, the greater the total force. If you imagine the egg as a rectangular prism for simplicity's sake, which each end of the egg being smaller squares. The force applied to the ends is less than the force applied to the sides, since the sides have a larger surface area. The egg shell will split at its weakest point first, and from there the crack will propagate along the greatest force gradient, which will be straight along the axis.2"
    on: The Perfection of Eggs as Packaging
  • "You could probably make a concrete barrier at the bottom that would prevent impact with cars, and have it slanted to channel more air up towards the turbines. As an additional revenue source, you could paint advertisements on the blades. They'd be visible to both sides of the traffic. If no advertisements, there could be important traffic communications like exit number, speed limit, etc.  "
    on: Using Vertical Turbines to Capture Energy From Passing Vehicles
  • "That guy is going to lose a finger. "
    on: Batch Production Shots of Small, Useful Objects, and a Very Unusual Japanese Door Lock
  • "I agree, the rails do have finger joints that run vertically. Also, a couple of the pictures show some horizontal joints as well. It looks like on the 7th picture down that the lower portion of the rail had a vertical joint, and a long piece was joined to that on top.1"
    on: How to Make Solid Wood Bed Frames Affordable: Use Cut-Offs from Other Furniture Businesses
  • "I'm not convinced this solves any real problems. I like the design, but framing this project "so you won't have to worry about selling your furniture, or throwing it away, and having to buy a new one after you move." seems misplaced. Just because it folds doesn't mean you won't try to sell it or throw it away, and owning a folding chair has nothing to do with buying habits of furniture when moving into a new space. Also, felt and glue doesn't seem like materials of construction that are chosen for long life, so I suspect that these chairs will be thrown away pretty often regardless of what they are billed as. "
    on: Möbel: A Foldable Chair Designed to Ease the Moving Experience for Students<font></font>
  • "How do you think they made the winning entry? Really soak some kind of fabric with quikrete and sort of slop it over a small table until it set? 1"
    on: Design/Build Competition: Make Something Out of One Bag of Quikrete
  • "I hope they put more time into studying the technology in this flower pot than they did proofreading their article. I also doubt that this pot has a significant effect on the number of bacteria/viruses floating in a house at any given time. Just because an item does something on a small scale doesn't mean it creates a noticeable effect in the grand scheme of things. You could advertise a small bucket that is useful for bailing water, but I doubt it would make a difference if a cruise ship is going down. 1"
    on: NATEDE: An Air Purifier that Amplifies a Plant's Natural Ability to Purify Air
  • "Why couldn't they just put the ramp straight out onto the street and use a second smaller ramp specially designed to fit onto a curb?Or, they could have the sides of the truck open up, so there would be three doors, one on each face of the truck. If the truck is loaded properly, the heaviest items should be closest to the cab. That means the items that would block the side doors should be fairly lightweight and can be unloaded through the traditional backdoor into the street and then lifted onto the curb easily. Once those items have been untied from the sides and offloaded, the side doors could be opened and the ramp moved to the side to allow offloading directly onto the street. "
    on: Urban Design Observations: Improvised Moving-Van-to-Sidewalk Interface
  • "Cups with a built-in straw down the side that you could blow bubbles through. The bubbles are more agitating than swirling and break through the density gradients since they are rushing upwards.  "
    on: A $345 Automatic Coffee Stirring Device, Yea or Nay?
  • "That Chuckie doll that appeared toward the end was the best part "
    on: Watch Joseph Herscher's Latest Rube Goldberg Machine, Which Took Three Months to Design
  • "It gives you a space to bang on if the crank gets in a bind somehow. Also, it might help in keeping the female threads from binding onto the shaft. If the crank were straight and the shaft was hard to turn, there might be some torsional forces transferred to the shaft, making the threads bind up. The curved handle means the transferred force is not in the same axis as the force applied to the handle, which could prevent binding.2"
    on: Tools &amp; Craft # 96: Plumier, Crankshaft Design, And How We Waste Time at TFWW
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