Hi HVAC in Popular Movies: Did Hollywood Get It Right?

Hi HVAC in Popular Movies: Did Hollywood Get It Right?

HVAC Upcoming Movies: Die Hard. 

Aliens (1986):

Actress Sigourney Weaver poses with an egg prop from the movie “Aliens” Dec. 10, 2003, during a presentation ceremony at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. In addition to the egg, Weaver presented a film script and original movie poster to the museum for its collection. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images).

In this James Cameron-directed sequel to the 1979 science-fiction horror film “Alien,” Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) reluctantly returns to planet LV-426 with a unit of space marines to investigate the disappearance of a terraforming colony. The only colonist they find is a young girl, whom Ripley takes under her wing. When the Aliens inevitably attack, Ripley and the girl duck into a duct. The duct spills into what looks like a trash room, apparently ventilating the trash room into the building or the building into the trash room. Or perhaps the whole building is trash, considering the Aliens have made quite a mess of the place. Near the end of the film, it is everybody into the ductwork, as they have only 16 minutes until a reactor blows. This ductwork not only supports a half-dozen people, but a couple pretty gnarly auto-aiming machine guns that fire nearly a thousand armor-piercing rounds into the creatures without harming the duct in the least. The sequence ends with Ripley and the girl riding the centrifugal fan at the end of the duct.

Ocean's Eleven (2001):

Actors (from left) George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Andy Garcia attend the premiere of “Ocean's Eleven” Dec. 5, 2001, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images).

Although the laughs come easy in this cool caper flick, pulling off the heist of the century—simultaneously robbing three Las Vegas casinos—is no joke, especially when the casinos’ ruthless owner, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), is just waiting for his nemesis, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), paroled con man and ex-husband to Benedict’s girlfriend (Julia Roberts), to slip up. There are more lasers through the ventilation duct than strands in a spider web, but a well-timed blast from a stolen "pinch" device temporarily disrupts power to the casinos, allowing Ocean and cohort Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) to breach the vault undetected. Lucky for them, the duct is large, appearing about 8 ft in diameter. The duct looks designed to flow about 25,000 cfm, making this what has to be the best-ventilated vault in the world.

Community, Season 2, Episode 21, "Paradigms of Human Memory," and Season 3, Episode 1, "Biology 101," Episode 6, "Advanced Gay," Episode 21, "The First Chang Dynasty," and Episode 22, "Introduction to Finality" (2011-2012):

Actors (from left) Donald Glover, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong, and Yvette Nicole Brown and creator/Executive Producer Dan Harmon speak during the “Community” panel held during the NBC Universal portion of the Television Critics Association 2011 winter press tour at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 13, 2011. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images).

When Craig Pelton (Jim Rash), the dean of Greendale Community College, hears a mysterious thumping above the ceiling in Episode 1 (“Biology 101”) of the third season of this NBC (now Yahoo! Screen) sitcom, the study group explains it is student Troy Barnes’ (Donald Glover) pet monkey, which disappeared into an air-conditioning vent the previous season. But they know better. Soon, Ben Chang (Ken Jeong) bursts out of the ductwork in a terrycloth robe. Chang has been living in the ductwork since the college fired him for faking his credentials as a Spanish professor in Season 1. Young engineers looking for their first HVAC job should not consider this a viable housing alternative. In addition to being a bit dusty, ductwork is full of the nastiest sheet-metal screws (the sharp ends) imaginable. Perhaps someone should have informed Chang of this before he went into the duct after the monkey in Episode 21 of Season 2 (“Paradigms of Human Memory”).

24, Season 5, episodes 12 ("6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.") and 13 ("7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.") (2006):

Kiefer Sutherland attends the U.K. premiere of “24: Live Another Day” at Old Billingsgate Market in London May 6, 2014. (Photo by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images).

Winner of the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, Season (Day) 5 of “24” sees former Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), who faked his death 18 months earlier, pressed back into action when his friend, former U.S. President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), is assassinated and three former colleagues are targeted for death. Bauer soon discovers the president, Charles Logan (Gregory Itzin), is part of a plot involving 20 canisters of VX nerve gas, which fall into the hands of terrorists. In Episode 12, the terrorists break into CTU headquarters and release a canister in the electrical room. Oddly, the electrical room is being used as an air-supply plenum for the entire building. Only the rapid closure of multiple space-age, bullet-proof, explosion-proof, airtight doors saves those in the main control room (the series’ stars). The situation worsens in Episode 13, as a corrosive agent that had been added to the gas is slowly eating away at the space-age seals. The plucky group devises a daring plan: Bauer will enter the VX-saturated area and fix the seals. Lucky for Bauer, the gas eats space-age seals, not humans. He holds his breath, runs to the failing seals, opens his official CTU emergency seal pack, and pulls out … DUCT TAPE! He quickly sticks down the duct tape, and the room is purified with fresh air in about 30 seconds. (HVAC engineers, if you don’t have a roll of duct tape in your desk, get one immediately. Be prepared.)

All that is left to do is reset the balky energy-management system and restore ventilation to the building, and CTU will be back up and running. Whatever VX is unleashed on Los Angeles will, presumably, go unnoticed among all of the other pollutants and contribute its own spectrum to the city’s famous sunsets.

Below is the entire 24-hour season boiled down to a 7-minute fan-made trailer. Clips from the scenes described above are shown between the 2:24 and 2:58 marks.

TO BE CONTINUED.......,

HI HVAC in Popular Movies: Did Hollywood Get It Right?

HI HVAC in Popular Movies: Did Hollywood Get It Right?

HOLLYWOOD.

Hollywood long has been known for—ahem—taking liberties with the truth (just ask any composite character). 

In this video gallery, longtime HPAC Engineering Editorial Advisory Board member Ron Wilkinson, a professional engineer who moonlights as a film critic, takes a look at 13 movies and three TV series whose makers were not about to let HVAC fundamentals get in the way of a good story.

An engineer and film critic takes a look at 13 movies and three TV series whose makers were not about to let HVAC fundamentals get in the way of a good story.

Community, seasons 2 and 3 (2011-2012).	Aliens (1986).
24, Season 5, episodes 12 and 13 (2006).	Ocean's Eleven (2001).
The Asphalt Jungle (1950).	Dr. No (1962).
Mission: Impossible (1996).	Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977).
Die Hard (1988).	Die Hard 2 (1990).
Adventures of Superman, Season 3, Episode 7: "Olsen's Millions" (1955).	No Country for Old Men (2007).
The Poseidon Adventure (1972).	Entrapment (1999).

Jurassic Park (1993);

Vince Vaughn (back), Julianne Moore, Jeff Goldblum, and an unexpected guest in a scene from 1997's "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," the sequel to "Jurassic Park." (Photo by Getty Images).

In this Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bestselling science-fiction novel, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) secretly builds a THEME PARK featuring cloned dinosaurs on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. Following the death of an employee, he brings in three unsuspecting specialists—paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)—to endorse the park and calm nervous investors. Thanks to some corporate espionage, the park’s security FENCES are deactivated, and the scientists, along with Hammond’s grandchildren, "Lex" and "Tim" (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello), find themselves on the menu of the park’s main attractions in the middle of a tropical storm. Near the end of the film, our heroes make their way back to the park’s visitor center, where they think they are safe, but come under attack from twoVelociraptors. In this sequence, Lex, Tim, and Drs. Grant and Sattler take to the nether regions of the visitor center to escape the peckish raptors. Lucky for them, the SUSPEND CEILING is supported by a framework strong enough to support a herd of Dilophosaurus. Apparently constructed from 2-in. tool steel angle, the ceiling does not so much as flex under the weight of the thrashing refugees. The only obstacle that slows them down is the bane of all HVAC engineers: flex duct! There is yards of it, duct-taped together in a vain attempt to get makeup air to the T. rex omelette bar. It would not have been long before Hammond learned his lesson: The pressure drop of long lengths of flex duct makes air balancing harder than a Parasaurolophus pedicure.

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To Be Continued.....

Hi SCHOOL: Mean Does Not Mean Industry Lean! Hi Texas proposes rewriting school text books to deny manmade climate change.

Hi SCHOOL: Hi Mean Does Not Mean Industry Lean! Hi Texas proposes rewriting school text books to deny man made climate change.

*Analysis of proposed 6th grade texts show they falsely claim scientific disagreement about global warming:

A coal-fired power plant in Texas. A proposed Texan school text book wrongly says: ‘scientists…do not agree on what is causing the [climate] change’ Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP.

Texas has proposed re-writing school textbooks to incorporate passages denying the existence of climate change and promoting the discredited views of an ultra-conservative think tank.

The proposed text books – which come up for public hearing at the Texas state board of education on Tuesday – were already attracting criticism when it emerged that the science section had been altered to reflect the doctrine of the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by the Koch oil billionaires.

A report from the Texas Freedom Network and the National Centre for Science Education on Monday found a number of instances where the proposed texts rejected recognised science.

In the proposed 6th grade texts, students were introduced to global warming amid false claims that there was scientific disagreement about its causes.

“Scientists agree that Earth’s climate is changing. They do not agree on what is causing the change,” the passage reads.

It quotes two staffers at the Heartland Institute who are not scientists.

An entry in the Texas school texts making false claims about the driver of climate changePhotograph: Texas Freedom Network.

However, as the analysis noted, there is no scientific disagreement about the causes of climate change. The report said the entire section was misleading. “Scientists do not disagree about what is causing climate change, the vast majority (97%) of climate papers and actively publishing climatologists (again 97%) agree that human activity is responsible,” the report said.

The NCSE experts also took issue with the prominence given over to Heartland. The views of a fringe were given greater prominence than the findings from the thousands of scientists contributing to the United Nations’ blockbuster IPCC reports on climate change on the opposite page.

Minda Berbeco of the NCSE said that the disinformation was a disservice to a new generation of Texans who will have to deal with climate change. “Climate change will be a key issue that future citizens of Texas will need to understand and confront, and they deserve social studies textbooks that reinforce good science and prepare them for the challenges ahead,” she said in a statement.

Kathy Miller, the president of the Texas Freedom Network, suggested that the proposed text books had been deliberately aligned with the political ideology of the rightwing Tea Party. A majority of Republicans in Congress deny the existence of global warming or oppose action on climate change.

The NCSE reviewers also found disinformation on climate change in the proposed 5th grade text books. The passage reads: “Some scientists say it is natural for Earth’s temperature to be higher for a few years. They predict we’ll have some cooler years and things will even out.”

But the centre said that was incorrect. “We are not aware of any currently publishing climatologists who are predicting a cooling trend where ‘things will even out.’”

The reviewers said the proposed 6th and 8th grade texts also contained false statements on the causes for the thinning of the ozone layer.

Hi Chemically Engineered, Here You Will Find All That Is Interesting; A List Of Undoubtedly Famous Chemical Reactions.

Hi Chemically Engineered, Here You Will Find All That Is Interesting; A List Of Undoubtedly Famous Chemical Reactions.

"Blood meets hydrogen peroxide"

"Sodium acetate crystallization"

"Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction"

"Water bridge formed by electric current"

"Alpha particle trails from radioactive decay of Radon 220"

"Snake venom meets blood"

"A lightbulb burning out"

"Aluminum and iodine"

"Dehydration of sugar in sulfuric acid"

"Our Hi How Fun Box Bonus Awesome Chemistry Videos":

More Famous Chemical Reactions Detected; 

"Prince Rupert’s Drop suffers a fracture"

"White tin crumbling into grey tin after cooling to less than 13 degrees Celsius"

"Elephant’s toothpaste"

"Mercury reacting with aluminum"

"Burning ammonium dichromate"

"Hydrophobic sand"

"Catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide"

"Electrical treeing"

"Burning lithium"

"Burning mercury II thiocyanate"

THATS ALL FOLKS EXPERIMENTATION UP TO YOU IN TOTALIZING OUR Hi CHEMICAL ENGINEERS.

 THE TRUTH ENDING!!!>A BRANCH OF SCIENCE & CHEMICAL ENGINEERING>.

Hi Fun Ways to Teach Kids About Electricity.

Hi Fun Ways to Teach Kids About Electricity.

It can be difficult to keep thinking of entertaining ways to teach the important things. 

Science gets a particularly hard time amongst students. 

All kids will need to learn about electricity at some point, especially as it is something we use every day.

These are a few ideas for keeping the lessons fun without losing the important educational aspect.

Explaining Electrons;

Perhaps the most difficult part of teaching electricity is actually explaining what happens when a current flows. 

It can get confusing, especially when we are so used to using it every day. 

It's hard to think of electricity in a new way. So what is electricity? 

- "Why, it's the flow of electrons, of course."

Get the class stood up, they are your electrons, show how they flow through a circuit, you can use props to be switches and bulbs. 

Getting the students to be actively involved is a good way of introducing the topic to them, and will be a lot easier to remember when it comes to tests or exams.

Circuits;

Little team games can be the best ways to get kids to work together and games help the lesson material stick in their heads. . 

By doing something for themselves it will make more of a solid impression, so that they can remember the principles more easily and recognise them, should they need to in real life. 

With low voltage batteries and small bulbs, it is a good idea to get them having a go at making circuits and experimenting with what can make them brighter or weaker.

Give them a range of materials which they can put into the circuit and see what conducts electricity and what doesn't. 

They can record all of their findings and share the results amongst the rest of the class.

Static;

Static electricity is a particularly interesting one because there are so many experiments to show it. 

All you need is some balloons and a volunteer's hair to show it standing on end. 

If you want something a bit more attention-grabbing, you can create a jumping 'circus' using a plastic sheet and a few grains of rice.

You will need to put down a piece of plain paper and put the rice on top of it, then charge the plastic sheet with some wool or other fabric. 

Hover the plastic above the paper and the rice will jump, because the plastic now has a charge which transfers to the rice and the two will become attracted to one another.

Batteries;

You or rather, your students can make batteries using unexpected household materials like potatoes and silver plated cutlery. 

You will need some wire and a light emitting diode too, but the class can have a go at making their own batteries and seeing who has the best circuit. 

You could also link it up to something that makes a sound like a buzzer and have a little competition for the first successful circuit made by your pupils. 

You'll have to be able to put up with a bit of noise for that one though!

Get the class involved, let them have a go at different things to give them a better understanding and overcome that 'science is boring' stigma that discourages a lot of students. 

"What's your most fun lesson? Please share your thoughts in comments below."

Hi' CATS to help study pollution from space.

Hi' CATS to help study pollution from space.

NASA is preparing to launch new technology to improve the study of pollution in the Earth’s atmosphere from the International Space Station.

The fridge-sized Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) instrument will measure and characterise the tiny particles of dust, air pollutants and smoke in the atmosphere by rapidly firing lasers at them and analysing the reflected light with much greater accuracy and using much less energy than existing technology.

‘CATS is a groundbreaking science & technology pathfinder,’ said Colleen Hartman, deputy director for science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

‘Not only will it make critical measurements that will tell us more about the global impact of pollution, smoke and dust on Earth’s climate, it will demonstrate promising new technology and prove that inexpensive missions can make critical measurements needed by the modelers to predict future climate changes.’

CATS will be the first such technology to use a laser producing ultraviolet light (355nm) as well as visible (532nm) and infrared (1,064nm) wavelengths to measure volcanic particles and other aerosols from space.

It will also use detectors that can count individual photons, delivering better resolution and finer-scale details than the existing CALIPSO satellite -based system, and will fire 5,000 laser pulses and use only one millijoule of energy per second – compared to 20 pulses and 110 millijoules pulses per second.

‘We believe [the ultraviolet laser] will deliver more detailed information revealing whether the particles scientists see in the atmosphere are dust, smoke or pollution,’ said scientist Matt McGill, who led development of the technology.

The problem will be the risk of contamination of the ultraviolet system, he said. ‘If you get contamination on any of your outgoing optics, they can self-destruct, and then your system’s dead.

‘You end up with very limited lifetime. The way to find out is to fly a relatively inexpensive payload aboard an existing platform, like the International Space Station.’

The ISS is also well placed to study pollution, he added, because it passes over many of the primary aerosol-transport paths within the atmosphere, such as the route that carries particles from Southeast Asia towards the Arctic and then down the west coast of America.

‘Because smoke-darkened skies over cities and communities can pose health risks to populations, especially to the medically vulnerable, the ability to track those aerosols and deliver warnings is critical,’ said McGill said.

Long-term data also can reveal the shifts that are occurring in global climate — whether changes are occurring in cloud cover or whether the level of pollutants is increasing or decreasing — over geographic distances and time.

Hi Fun Fast Machinery Designers; US engineers build world's fastest electric motorbike!.

Hi Fun Fast Machinery Designers; US engineers build world's fastest electric motorbike!.

A home-made electric motorcycle has set four records the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials in the US.

With a top speed of 241.901 mph and a two-way average of 240.726 mph, Eva Håkansson drove Kill a Joule to beat the previous electric motorcycle speed record by 25 mph.

In addition to being a new electric motorcycle record, the speed is also an overall new record for any kind of side car motorcycles, including internal combustion-powered side car motorcycles.

‘This is a truly historic event,’ said Håkansson, a PhD student in mechanical engineering at the NSF Center for High Voltage/Temperature Materials and Structures at University of Denver. 

‘It is the first time in over a century that an electric vehicle beats internal combustion for a vehicle type. 

The last time this happened was in 1899 when the world’s fastest car was the electric car ‘La Jamais Contente’ driven by Camille Jenatzy at 65mph. Since then, internal combustion has dominated everything.’

The record runs at the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials on August 28 2014 give Eva and KillaJoule the titles:

• Fastest electric motorcycle in the world.
• Fastest side car motorcycle in the world (including internal combustion).
• Fastest speed of the event.
• Fastest woman on a motorcycle in the world.

KillaJoule took five years to build, with around 80 per cent carried out in Håkansson’s garage.  

She and her husband Bill Dube, who is also a mechanical engineer, said in a statement that they are ‘backyard racers with high-level engineering skills’.

A home-made electric motorcycle has set four records the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials in the US:

Techs specks:

Battery: Lithium Nano-Phosphate, 2 P 112 S configuration of 14 Ah pouch cells, 375 V and 10 kWh. 500+ HP

Motor: A FM-240 motor, 500 HP

Motor controllers: Two PM 100 controllers, 400 HP combined.

Weight: approximately 1540 lb. (700 kg) including the driver Eva Håkansson.

Dimensions: Length 19 ft (5.6 m), width 21 inches (0.53 m), height 38 inches (0.96 m), wheelbase 150 inches (3.8 m), track width with side car, 45 inches (1.14 m).

Frame and suspension: Chrome-Moly steel tubing with “Springer” style leading-link front suspension and classic stereo suspension for rear end.

Wheels and Tires: Hard rubber compound land speed tires on custom rims.

Brakes: Disc brakes front and back with two Kevlar ribbon brake parachutes actuated by air cylinders.

Body: Fibreglass composite nosecone, canopy, and side car wheel cover. Pre-painted aluminium body panels.

Hi' Much To Do! Twelve Potentially Economically Disruptive Technologies.

Hi' Much To Do! Twelve Potentially Economically Disruptive Technologies.

In a nutshell, McKinsey's team (conducting the research) has assessed various technologies currently being developed and presented information on the twelve that they believe meet the following criteria:

A. High rate of technology change.

B. Broad potential scope of impact.

C. Large economic value that could be affected (by 2025).

D. Substantial potential for disruptive economic impact (by 2025).

Mobile INTERNET:	Increasingly inexpensive and capable mobile computing devices and INTERNET connectivity.
Automation of Knowledge Work:	Intelligent software systems that can perform knowledge work tasks involving unstructured commands and subtle judgements.
Internet of Things:	Networks of low-cost sensors and actuators for DATA COLLECTION, monitoring, decision making and process optimization.
CLOUD TECHNOLOGY:	Use of computer hardware and software resources delivered over a network or the internet, often as a service.
Advanced Robotics:	Increasingly capable robots with enhanced senses, dexterity and intelligence used to automate tasks or augment humans.
Autonomous/Near Autonomous Vehicles:	Vehicles that can navigate and operate with reduced or no human intervention.
Next Generation Genomics:	Fast, low-cost gene sequencing, advanced big data analytic s and synthetic biology ("writing" DNA).
Energy Storage:	Devices or systems that store energy for later user, including batteries
3D Printing:	Additive manufacturing techniques to create objects by printing layers of material based on digital MODELS.
Advanced Materials:	Materials designed to have superior characteristics (strength, weight, conductivity) or functionality.
Advanced Oil & Gas Exploration/Recovery:	Exploration and recovery techniques that make extraction of unconventional oil/gas economical.
RENEWABLE ENERGY:	Generation of electricity from renewable sources with reduced harmful climate impact.

"Let it never be said that people in need cannot be served, that there are insufficient tools or that we lack enough opportunity. Go forth and make it a better world."

 For Further Insights & Publications;

Including McKinsey's pod cast, image gallery, eBook & .PDFs report visit the homepage by clicking the following website link here.