S-STEM Scholar Jeremiah Toller's Blog

       May I interest you in a 1 millimeter bubble with the heat of the surface of our sun and 100 MPa of pressure? Too bad, because that’s what I’m blogging about today, and it’s not as far out as it may sound. Sonochemistry is today’s topic, and I’ll tell you right now that I’m nerding out on this so hard I can feel it in my bones. Well, I also just brushed my teeth with my ultrasonic toothbrush which would explain feeling it in my bones, but I digress. Point being, I think ultrasonic stuff is super cool and I’ve daydreamed about its potential for over half my life, so reading this compendium of research in ultrasonic technology is immensely exciting to me. Hopefully some of that excitement will rub off on you as well.        The article I’m reviewing today is entitled Sonochemistry: Science and Engineering and was written by Nimesh Pokhrel, Phani Kiran Vabbina, and Nezih Pala for the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry in 2016. Here’s the ...

  Resilience is a term that has grown in popularity over the past decade, having found its way into the sociological lexicon of those promoting human development, mostly due to the “Great Recession” having done so much damage to so many people. But this article isn’t based on people, this is how concepts of resilience can be applied to mechanical engineering, specifically in regards to load bearing structures in this case. But, wait...what is resilience? Figure 1. Definition of Resilience from Dictionary.com To paraphrase Dictionary.com, resilience is being able to recover after trauma, change or adversity. When it comes to load bearing structures, this could pertain to physical onslaught such as elemental or man related factors, product failure due to manufacturing flaws or degradation with age and myriad other factors.  So how is this done? By factoring in issues of uncertainty within design, and increasing resilience by “adjusting the system state via monitoring, respondin...

  Academics and video games go together about as well as oil and water in most cases; gaming takes up valuable time that should be dedicated to studying, or as gamers may view it, studying takes up valuable time that should be dedicated to gaming. Throw “digital addiction” into the mix, and study time shares plummet like wounded pterodactyl. But like everything engineering revolves around, this is just another problem that needs to be solved, or in this case, a solution waiting for a problem to discover it. Northern Illinois University (NIU) students rated their traditional numerical methods course  “as one of the least important classes in the curriculum,”  according to Coller and Scott, (2009) who also indicated that very numerical methods course consists of “the fundamentals that undergird most of the modern engineering and scientific computational tools that have become indispensable in contemporary practice.” So there it is: the problem. Students were placing low imp...

       Activated carbon is excellent for absorbing unwanted matter from various sources from home applications, to industrial pollutant absorption. Carbon filters are used for air and water purification and can be found in home reverse-osmosis water filtration systems, as well as pre-filters in air purifiers and respirators. Activated carbon can even be found in many medicine cabinets since it can be taken orally to help treat diarrhea and certain instances of poisoning. It’s even used to decaffeinate coffee, coincidentally enough. On an industrial level, it plays a huge role in cleaning pollutants from the environment, and is regarded as somewhat inexpensive in relation to other methods of pollution cleanup. Activated carbon is a beneficial substance which has widespread applications, and is in high demand. One substance that is in high supply is spent coffee grounds. I don’t have to go into detail about the massive amount of coffee consumed worldwide for you to i...