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LUBRICANTS

Julian H. Dancy in "Mark´s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers-Tenth Edition".

Avellone/BAUMEISTER. New York, p. 6.177 

Lubricants can be liquids, solids, or even gases, and they are most often oils or greases.
Liquid lubricants often provide many functions in addtion to controlling friction and
wear, such as scavenging heat, dirt and wear debris; preventing rust and corrosion;
transferring force; and acting as a sealing medium.

Engineers are called upon to select and evaluate lubricants, to follow their performance
in service, and to use them to best advantage in the design of equipment. Lubricant
manufacturers and distributors may have hundreds of lubricants in their product line,
each decribed separately in the product literature as to intended applications, properties,
and benefits, as well as performance in the selected standard tests. Lubricants are
selected according to the needs of the particular application. Careful lubricant selection
helps obtain improved performance, lower operating cost, and longer service life, for
both the lubricant and the equipment involved. Industry´s demands for efficient,
competitive equipment and operations, which meet the latest enviromental regulations,
create continued demand for new and improved lubricants. Equipment manufacturers
and suppliers specify lubricants that suit their particular equipment and its intended
operating condition, and their recommendations should be followed.

Liquid Lubricants

A liquid lubricant consists of (1) a mixture of selected base oils and additives, (2)
blended to a specific viscosity, with (3) the blend designed to meet the performance
needs of a particular type of service. A lubricant may contain several base oils of
different viscosities and types, blended to meet viscosity requirements, or to minimize
cost.

 
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WHY BOTHER?

David Crystal in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" -Second Edition.CUP, p. 153.

We are so used to hearing human voices from robots and computers in science fiction
that the desirability of human-machine speech interaction is often taken for granted.
However, this field of research has not been without its critic. The arguments have been
based on several theoretical and commmercial considerations.

- The research (into speech recognition, in particular) is necessary to social needs, and
the money would be better spent elsewhere.

- Speech interaction may be more expensive in running costs than using written or
coded text. It is unclear and the whether these costs are outweighed by the advantages.

- The commercial demand for quick results has led to some poor-quality research and
development

- The ability to produce hardware is now far ahead of the relevant theoretical research
fields, especially in speech perception and acoustics.

- Speech input  to machines will be unreliable for the foreseeable future because of
interference from other speech in the environment.

- Routine speech input to machines leaves no permanent  record, whereas written or

coded output does.

The concern to make machines sound human is unnecessary. Sometimes mechanical

voices are more easily understood, especially in noisy work conditions. And "friendly"
voice systems may persuade non-expert users that machines are capable of more than
they really are.

Many poeple do not like talking to machines because this suggest they have intelligence
(a currently controversial issue, in its own right).

 
 

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THE CASE FOR WIND POWER

Darrell M. Dodge, Littlrton, Colorado

http://telosnet.com/wind/#The Case for Wind Power

For human development to continue, we will ultimately need to find sources of

renewable or virtually inexhaustible energy. It's difficult to imagine this, but even if we
find several hundred or even thousand years of coal and natural gas supplies, what will
humans do for the next 250,000 years or so after they are depleted? Even the most
apparently "inexhaustible" sources like fusion involve the generation of large amounts
of waste heat -- enough to place damaging stress on even a robust ecosystem like
Earth's, at least for the organisms that depend upon stability of the system to survive.

We are engaged in a sort of world-wide biological experiment, with our descendents as

the subjects. Our present habits of energy use are shaping an entirely different earth than
the one with which we are familiar. When these changes begin to be expressed, there
will be no one to preserve the familiar and there's no guarantee that things will turn out
the best for our particular species. Some have looked ahead and seen this. But they
usually don't get much support from societies that are too busy trying to "make do" and
that are rushing backwards into the future -- in other words, every society on earth.

One of the areas that suffers because of this backward thinking is the development of
renewable energy sources -- and the topic of this section: Wind Energy Conversion.

 
  

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PREFERRED NUMBERS

C.H Berry in Mark´s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers-Tenth Edition".

Avellone/BAUMEISTER. New York, p. 8.215

Many manufactured articles are made in several sizes which may be designated by some
dimension, speed, capacity, or other feature. Each such series of products may be
paralleled by a series of numbers.

It is generally agreed that such number series should be geometric progressions; i.e.,
each term should be a fixed percentage larger than the preceding. A geometric series
provides small steps for small numbers, large steps for large numbers, and this best
meets most requirements. The small steps in the diameter of the numbered twist drills
would be absurd in drills of 1 in diameter and larger.

In the case of sized objects that are used principally as raw material, .e.g., steel rod, an
arithmetic progression may be preferred because it tends to reduce the cost of
machining. It is desirable to be able to  buy  raw material a fixed amount (rather than a
fixed percentage) larger than the finished article.

Preferred numbers  is the name given to various series proposed to general use. These
are either geometric progressions or approximation thereto. A geometric series is
defined by one term and the ratio of each term to the preceding one. On the choice of
these elements for a preferred number series, there is as yet no general agreement. The
same value would hardly be satisfactory for all cases. The idea of preferred numbers is
to provide a master series from which terms can be chosen to suit any needs.

 
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A fantasy spaceflight

Make a wish and you can go anywhere. That is the reality for a new computer invention, Chris Partridge
says.

Computers are about to take people to places they have never been able to visit before,
including the surface of other planets. Such a trip will be an illusion, but one that comes
closer to real life than anything on stage or screen. Artificial worlds are being built up in
a computer memory so that people can walk through at will, look around, and even
touch objects.

The system is called virtual reality, so called from the mathematical concept of an
image that has the virtues of a real object without substance.

Virtual reality systems are being developed throughout the world for a range of uses
including enabling people to walk “inside” nuclear power stations, while controlling a
robot that actually goes into an area in which no human could live, and conducting
architects through a computer-generated building before it is constructed.

British scientists have a world lead in virtual reality, despite the fortunes being poured
into research by Japanese and American companies, which see it as a technology for the
next century.

In Britain, Robert Stone, of the National Advanced Robotics Research centre at

Manchester University, is developing systems that could put men on Mars without
shooting them into space.