Eight Amazing Engineering Stories: Using the Elements to Create Extraordinary Technologies

Eight Amazing Engineering Stories reveals the stories behind how engineers use specific elements to create the material world around us. In eight chapters, the EngineerGuy team exposes the magnificence of the innovation and engineering of digital camera imagers, tiny accelerometers, atomic clocks, enriched uranium, batteries, microwave ovens, lasers, and anodized metals. In addition, short primers cover the scientific principles underlying the engineering, including waves, nuclear structure, and electronic transitions. "In Depth" sections cover entropy, semiconductors, and the mathematics of capacitors. Eight Amazing Engineering Stories forms the basis of the fourth series of EngineerGuy videos found on-line.

Make magazine's blog called the EngineerGuy video team "brilliant science and technology documentarian[s]", whose "videos should be held up as models of how to present complex technical information visually." Wired called the videos "dazzling." The team, consisting of Bill Hammack Patrick Ryan, & Nick Ziech, created the stunning series that includes masterful explanations of the engineering underlying LCD monitors, fiber optic communications, and hard disc drives. Ryan and Ziech earned B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois; Hammack, who is currently a Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Illinois, earned a M.S. and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at Illinois. Hammack's work has been recognized by an extraordinarily broad range of scientific, engineering, and journalistic professional societies. From journalists he has won the trifecta of the top science and engineering journalism awards: The National Association of Science Writer's Science in Society Award; the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Medal, and the American Institute of Physics' Science Writing Award. From his engineering peers he's been recognized with the ASME's Church Medal, IEEE's Distinguished Literary Contributions Award, ASEE's President's Medal, and the AIChE's Service to Society Award.