Engineering Technology

Some of engineering's mightiest achievements are small in scale, even hidden—and yet, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the lens, the magnet, the string, and the pump. From the physics behind both Roman nails and modern skyscrapers to rudimentary springs that inspired lithium batteries, Agrawal shows us how even the most sophisticated items are built on the foundations of these ancient and fundamental breakthroughs in engineering.

In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the century's most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a global celebrity by confirming his dramatic prediction that the path of light rays would be bent by gravity. Today, Einstein's theory is scientific fact. Yet the effort to "weigh light" by measuring the gravitational deflection of starlight during the May 29, 1919, solar eclipse has been clouded by myth and skepticism.

An irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of the affectionately named Trauma Farm, with numerous side trips into the natural history of farming. Beginning naked in darkness, Brian Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical farm field.

A powerful defense of intellectual freedom told through the ordeals of contemporary scientists attacked for exploring controversial ideas, by a noted science historian and medical activist.

Take advantage of today's sky-high demand for data engineers. With this in-depth book, current and aspiring engineers will learn powerful real-world best practices for managing data big and small. Contributors from notable companies including Twitter, Google, Stitch Fix, Microsoft, Capital One, and LinkedIn share their experiences and lessons learned for overcoming a variety of specific and often nagging challenges. Edited by Tobias Macey, this book presents ninety-seven concise and useful tips for cleaning, prepping, wrangling, storing, processing, and ingesting data.

Mastering Professional Scrum is for anyone who wants to deliver increased value by using Scrum more effectively. Leading Scrum practitioners Stephanie Ockerman and Simon Reindl draw on years of Scrum training and coaching to help you return to first principles and apply Scrum with the professionalism required to achieve its transformative potential. The authors aim to help you focus on proven Scrum approaches for improving quality, getting and using fast feedback, and becoming more adaptable, instead of “going through the motions” and settling for only modest improvements.

James Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were lost to a fire in the Smithsonian Castle. His scientific legacy was further written off as insignificant in an 1879 essay published through the Smithsonian 50 years after his death - a claim that author Steven Turner demonstrates is far from the truth.

In this fascinating and illuminating work, Leonard Mlodinow guides us through the critical eras and events in the development of science, all of which, he demonstrates, were propelled forward by humankind's collective struggle to know. From the birth of reasoning and culture to the formation of the studies of physics, chemistry, biology, and modern-day quantum physics, we come to see that much of our progress can be attributed to simple questions - why? how? - bravely asked.

The name of Charles Darwin is known to nearly all who have had the benefit of a Western-style education. It is synonymous with the theory of evolution and due to his perspective of man as an animal, his worked ushered in a new paradigm of understanding of the physical and mental behavior of man. However, because of the immense impact of his best known theory, most know only of his work through reviews and historical reports.

There has been a lot of ink devoted to discussions of how robots will replace us and take our jobs. But MIT Media Lab researcher and technology policy expert Kate Darling argues just the opposite, and that treating robots with a bit of humanity, more like the way we treat animals, will actually serve us better.

"I am hopelessly and forever a mountaineer," John Muir wrote. "Civilization and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not dimmed my glacial eye, and I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. My own special self is nothing". In Donald Worster's magisterial biography, John Muir's "special self" is fully explored as is his extraordinary ability, then and now, to get others to see the sacred beauty of the natural world.

Self-driving cars sound fantastical and futuristic, and yet they'll soon be on every street in America. Whether it's Tesla's Autopilot, Google's Waymo, Mercedes' Distronic, or Uber's modified Volvos, companies around the world are developing autonomous cars. But why? And what will they mean for the auto industry and humanity at large? In Robot, Take the Wheel, famed automotive expert Jason Torchinsky gives a colorful account of the development of autonomous vehicles and their likely implications.

In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing.

In September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural selection" among competing individuals would lead to wondrous adaptations and species diversity. Twenty-one years passed between that epiphany and publication of On the Origin of Species. The human drama and scientific controversy of that time constitute a fascinating, tangled tale that illuminates this cautious naturalist who sparked an intellectual revolution.

Humanity's first reusable spacecraft and the most complex machine ever built, NASA's space shuttle debuted with great promise and as a dependable source of wonder and national pride. But with the Challenger catastrophe in 1986, the whole space shuttle program came into question, as did NASA itself, so long an institution that was seemingly above reproach. Wheels Stop tells the stirring story of how, after the Challenger disaster, the space shuttle not only recovered but went on to perform its greatest missions.

In his first memoir, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. This is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist and how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the 20th century.

David K. Stumpf demystifies the intercontinental ballistic missile program that was conceived at the end of the Eisenhower administration as a key component of the US nuclear strategy of massive retaliation. Although its nuclear warhead may have lacked power relative to that of the Titan II, the Minuteman more than made up for this in terms of numbers and readiness to launch - making it the ultimate ICBM.

In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything - at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project, and a less-than-ideal father and husband who nevertheless remained one of history's greatest mentors.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has emerged on Heisenberg’s role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing questions of a scientist’s personal responsibility and guilt when serving an abhorrent military regime.

In the Forest of No Joy captures in vivid detail the experiences of the men, women, and children who toiled on the railroad, and forces a reassessment of the moral relationship between modern industrialized empires and what could be called global humanitarian impulses - the desire to improve the lives of people outside of Europe. Drawing on exhaustive research in French and Congolese archives, a chilling documentary record, J.P. Daughton tells the epic story of the Congo-Océan railroad and in doing so reveals the human costs and contradictions of modern empire.