Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As I write this, colourful leaves are falling from the trees, a familiar
New England scene as we approach the Holiday season. This also means we
are in the heart of the Fall semester at MIT; a particularly special
semester for our senior undergraduates who take 22.033, the capstone
design course. I personally love teaching design courses, they take you
to such unexpected places intellectually, plus provide to me the best
example of how we do education through research, and research through
education at MIT.
This year the 22.033 course is being taught by Zach Hartwig (John C.
Hardwick Assistant Professor) one of our newest NSE faculty members. The
new model is more hands-on and group/project focused. It addresses
issues such as how to identify an idea for a product need and how to
solve problems. It focuses on ideation, pitching, presentation,
communication skills, learning CAD, building skill sets for labs, how to
use tools, what facilities are available to build "things" needed, i.e.
the skill sets used in design teams in the real world. The semester
started off with one problem defined by Hartwig: “how to design a better
radiation check source?” Please see the MIT news article on this
here, and that exercise is now serving as the model on how to approach solving a problem from concept to production.
Zach is building on a new teaching model for the course that was
conceptualized and taught last year by Mike Short (Norman Rasmussen
Assistant Professor). A paper on a project from last year's 22.033
design class has been accepted for publication. Our undergraduate
students, with help from Dr. Patil and Prof. Buyukozturk in Civil &
Environmental Engineering, have designed a new type of concrete which
can accommodate waste plastic without losing its strength. This means we
can take plastic out of a landfill, and use it to backfill concrete.
Normally that causes the concrete to get weaker. However, our students
figured out that if one gamma irradiates the plastic chips before adding
to the concrete, the strength comes back! They also helped explain the
reason that this happens. Please see this fascinating multi-disciplinary
research
here.
Finally we are approaching an exciting event: the restart of the
Graphite Exponential Pile at the Nuclear Reactor Lab under the
supervision of Professors Kord Smith, Ben Forget and NRL staff. The last
fuel assembly will be reloaded at
December 2 at 3:25 Chicago time to celebrate to the minute the 75
th
anniversary of the first artificial sustained chain nuclear reaction at
Fermi’s CP-1. Beyond the nod to history, the Pile will becomes a
critical (or should I say sub-critical, sorry I couldn’t help myself)
part of our reactor physics education and research program.
I wish you all the very best for Thanksgiving.
Dennis Whyte
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