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1500 questions
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How can large bridges be made resistant to earthquakes?

How can large bridges, with spans on the order of 1 km, be made resistant to earthquakes? I'm no expert on quakes, but there are at least two kinds of shaking: lateral and vertical. The vertical shaking in particular really worries me. I don't know…
DrZ214
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Foiling vortex traps around buildings

I have had three houses with right angles in the layout, and in each one that configuration causes vortices to form that suck in leaves, snow, and any debris blowing by and keep it in the nook of the building. Rough idea in the following sketch,…
feetwet
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Affixing a thermocouple to a surface

I'm looking for advice on how to attach a thermocouple to a metal surface in a fashion that's relatively temperature resistant (more-so than) glue. I've got some very fine gauge wire on hand to make the thermocouples and specialized spot welder…
Dan
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What causes the sound coming from electrical vehicles?

All the electrical vehicles I've ever ride make that humming sound (either cars or trains). What exactly causes that sound? Is it drag force in the gears? Is it a fan? Or is it because of the coils (see coil noise)?
cinico
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Why is using steam to rotate a turbine more efficient?

For example i have an exhaust pipe with very hot air from burning biofuel, and i have a turbine at the end of the exhaust that rotates and generates electricity. Why is it more efficient to use the heat to boil water then use the steam produced to…
Mohdak
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Can a magnetic lock be negated or overcome by a stronger electromagnet?

Magnetic locks seem to be fairly common on the doors of modern buildings, but I question their reliability when compared to a traditional, mechanical lock. I realize that the strength that it would take to actually pry a door away from a good…
Taylor Lopez
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What is the process of transferring an engineering license from the United States to Germany?

The United States have different rules about exactly how one obtains an engineering license, but the general process is the FE exam, a few years of work, and the PE exam. Suppose one then wishes to practice engineering in Germany. What are the legal…
Stephen Collings
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How thick is it reasonable for the walls of a steel gas pipeline to be?

The TurkStream project site claims the gas pipeline will use pipes made from 39 millimeters of high-quality carbon manganese steel with additional plastic coatings on both sides. Yes, they claim 39 millimeters (roughly 1,54 inches) of steel walls -…
sharptooth
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How do heat pumps output more heat kW than the electrical kW used to run the heat pump?

I understand that a 2 kW electric heater will use 2 kW of electricity and output 2 kW of heat (apart from small losses of energy as infra red, vibration etc.. but let's exclude those for this example as they are negligible). A 2 kW air source heat…
sam
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What is the difference between aeronautical and aerospace engineering?

Every time I search for "aeronautical engineering" on Google I see a few results about aerospace engineering. So they must be similar, but what is different about these careers?
Ethan
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What is the physical reasoning behind metal becoming stronger and harder if heat treated?

I was wondering that if a proper process of heat treatment (heating to a temperature above upper critical temperature, then soaking and then quenching) is applied to a metal like steel, then what happens within the metal itself on microscopic level…
Rameez Ul Haq
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How was this toy made?

This is a toy for infants. My son was playing with it, and I started wondering how you could manufacture this. I can't think of any reasonably cheap way it could be done. I believe it's made of plastic and not silicone. It's flexible, but not…
Drew
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Extending USB cable makes it not work

I have a camera that uses a USB cable to connect to my computer. I want to extend the cable from 3ft to about 6ft. Originally I just created my own cable, soldering 4 26AWG wires to a blank USB connector and connecting the other side to the correct…
Jack Campbell
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Defining the heap and stack size for an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller?

I have been working on and off on small embedded systems project on and off. Some of these projects used an ARM Cortex-M4 base processor. In the project folder there is a startup.s file. Inside that file I noted the following two command…
Mahendra Gunawardena
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How fast should I sample with a logic analyzer?

If I have a 10 MHz digital signal, how fast do I need to sample with a logic analyzer to avoid any bit errors? Does the minimum sample rate increase if I want to attach a protocol decoder (e.g. SPI)? I am aware of the Nyquist-Shannon sampling…
Patrick
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