Blog #15

A "self-healing" asphalt, Erik Schlangen, TEDxDelft, October 2012

Summary:

   The TED talk was about a specially made asphalt that is capable of "healing itself". The way that it works starts with the way the asphalt is made. By this I mean that instead of just making the asphalt a solid layer it is instead made so there are pores in it. This allows for filtration of rain water and also silences most noise from the road. What makes the asphalt self healing is what holds it together. Between all the pores there are small connections made of some material that is mostly steel because steel is a great conductor of heat. Using steel as a conductor makes it so that in hot or warm weather, those steel bonds melt a bit to hold the asphalt back in place.

   I would recommend this to people that are interested in engineering, infrastructure, or even chemistry. I personally thought this was quite intriguing since it makes roads last at least twice as long and stay in better shape.

Blog #14

Internship update


There hasn't been too much that I've been able to do at my internship due to the constant rain and bad weather. Along with the weather a lot of people at work have gotten sick so I haven't been able to do much. On the bright side, I've gotten really good at working on projects in Planswift and learned how to do landscape takeoff. I haven't really learned anything about myself other than that I don't mind working in the office as long as I can visit a job site every once in a while. I hope the weather can be sunny more often because Bruce wants me to see more job sites to help with my understanding of what it is that I'm working on.
 There's nothing new that I can really think of that I want to do in particular. I don't have any questions about my internship or field of study. I can't really think of anything to get the most out of my experience aside from visiting job sites.