Silly Putty Polymers with Engineering Ambassadors

Most materials are either a solid, liquid or gas but what happens if it is none of these or more than one of these? You likely are dealing with a viscoelastic material. Learn about the properties of viscoelastic materials and how engineers use these special polymers in the medical field. Become a chemical engineer yourself as you create and analyze your own viscoelastic polymer also known as silly putty!  

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Rocketry with Engineering Ambassadors

Learn about rocketry from early age China and Greece to the modern astronauts we know today. Explore the physics behind rockets. Follow along as the Engineering Ambassadors take you through time as technology changed to improve rocketry. Then we invite you to make your own straw-rocket as you investigate the effect that weight has on rocket flight! 

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Virtual Tour of Bridges

It’s the annual Bridge Tour! This year – no need to walk!
We have stationed bridge engineers at several bridges in the Boston area and, will “transport” you bridge to bridge. The bridge experts will cover the history, the physics and other great stories about the bridges. You will also have an activity to do that will help you learn about different types of bridges.

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Modeling Disease Outside the Body

The Whittington Research Group is making models of human disease outside of the body. You can view an overview of the work, and see students in the lab. Work is described using a LEGO analogy, because we know a lot people are familiar with building models with Legos or blocks.

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Harnessing Wind Power with Engineering Ambassadors

Wind is one of the most plentiful sources of renewable energy. But not all wind is created equal. Measuring the speed of the wind is very important in the process. Explore with the WPI Engineering Ambassadors the ways that wind power can be harnessed to create energy and then build your very own device to measure the speed of wind.

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Gordon Library and Space Exploration

The Gordon Library Team created a research guide that includes information & resources about WPI research on space exploration and related topics, fun activities, and an “Archives Corner” highlighting the timeline of WPI’s space exploration.

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Hair Raising Science: Static Electricity

It might come as a shock, but you don’t need a wall outlet to create electricity. Discover an invisible force that will zap your hands, restyle your hair and even levitate small objects as if by magic!

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Egg-cellent Science

Nature abhors a vacuum– but we love them! Create a vacuum of your own, and squeeze an egg into a bottle using the amazing power of hot and cold air.

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Making Travel Safer by Getting Vehicles to Communicate

“You can’t have autonomy without connectivity.” That’s the contention of Alexander Wyglinski, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and an internationally recognized expert in wireless communications. One of Wyglinski’s interests is the wireless technology that will be needed to connect vehicles as they share the road. Wireless connections will enable them to exchange information about road conditions, traffic and so on, thus increasing their situational awareness well beyond the range the cameras and sensors that give autonomous vehicles a view of the environment around them. In Wyglinski’ s view, vehicle connectivity, which may involve cutting-edge technologies like cognitive radio, is an enabling technology for autonomous vehicles, as it will be essential to their safe operation.

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Unit Operations: Inside a 3-Story Pilot Scale Chemical Engineering Lab

Learn about Chemical Engineering and take a guided of our unit operations laboratory with all its pilot-scale equipment that chemical engineers use to make the fuels and chemicals we use each day. See 3-story packed towers, fluidized bed reactors, heat exchangers, and more. For an interactive twist, take control of any of the nine high definition pan-tilt-zoom cameras located around the actual lab and see what’s happening live!

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