purdue

Purdue set for supercomputer 'barn-raising'

Purdue University on Monday plans to install a new supercomputer on its campus in a single day, in an effort it's calling an "electronic barn-raising."

Approximately 200 employees will help build the machine, which will be the size of a semi trailer and is expected to have a peak performance of more than 60 teraflops, which means it would be able to perform more than 60 trillion operations in one second, according to a Purdue press release.

Once it's completed, Purdue's supercomputer still won't top the list of the 500 fastest supercomputers, though the … Read more

Purdue pursues smarter tires

Your car may already be able to tell you if the tire pressure is too low. Now researchers at Purdue University say they can make a tire into one big sensor that will also tell you things like how the treads are wearing, whether the tires are balanced, and where that little nail has slipped into the rubber. It works because of the materials used throughout the tire, as well as a chip that monitors the status and relays the information to the driver. But before you go looking for this at your local Sears auto center, you might first … Read more

Scientists reconstruct still-horrifying 9-11 images

A computer simulation of the attack on the World Trade Center is now showing at YouTube. While the images are designed to help engineers and scientists study how a large structure behaves when smashed into by an airliner, they are still horrifying.

Flight 11 crashed into the WTC's North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. A team of researchers from Purdue University used scientific principles, state-of-the-art simulation code and animation computer system to recreate the three-quarters of a second following impact.

Over and over again, wreckage from the Boeing 767 careens towards the viewer. Sometimes the simulation includes only the … Read more

Eureka! Purdue scientists turn water into hydrogen

In what looks like an example of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have come up with a way of turning water in hydrogen using an aluminum alloy. If the process is replicable on a large scale, it could have a massive impact on the market for hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars, which could use the technology as a source of onboard hydrogen generation.

The process relies on the use of aluminum pellets, which are mixed into liquid gallium (a metal that liquefies at just over room temperature) to produce a liquid aluminum-gallium. When water is added to the … Read more