Mechanical Engineering podcasts

Melissa and Jam explain how evaporating water can cool a building and why the same approach works much better in dry climates than humid ones. They connect swamp coolers to older cooling techniques and examine newer ideas, including ice-based systems intended to reduce pressure on electricity grids.

Hosted by Melissa, Jam

Melissa and Jam unpack the chemistry inside an air conditioner. They explain how refrigerants, pressure changes and transitions between liquid and gas move heat out of a room, why the outdoor unit releases warmth, and what frozen coils reveal about the cooling process.

Hosted by Melissa, Jam

Laura Leay interviews MIT’s Carlos Portela about a computational design framework for deformable woven metamaterials. Graphs describe the periodic architecture and how struts interweave at nodes; user-defined helix geometry controls the woven beams. The framework produces files for finite-element analysis and 3D printing, enabling predictions of large-deformation behavior and fabrication of previously inaccessible architectures. The freely available approach connects textile-inspired design with tunable elastic response.

Hosted by Laura Leay

Sophia Chen interviews Matt Dickerson of the Air Force Research Laboratory about manufacturing nanofibrous ceramics with additive methods. The discussion explains how block copolymers direct preceramic polymers into fibers, followed by heating that removes the block polymer and converts the precursor to ceramic. Compared with electrospun mats, printing offers control over component geometry. Ceramic springs illustrate repeated deformation without degrading their mechanical properties, with possible applications in catalysts, batteries and high-temperature components.

Hosted by Sophia Chen

John Dabiri explains how swimming jellyfish reveal efficient ways to manipulate fluid flow. The discussion connects their movement with engineering questions ranging from submarine propulsion and wind-turbine placement to circulation in the human heart, showing how biological observation can inform fluid mechanics.

Hosted by Steven Strogatz

Heinrich Jaeger explains how granular jamming can turn a soft bag of particles into a rigid gripper capable of grasping objects with different shapes. The discussion connects the physics of interacting grains with the design of compliant robots and a universal gripper developed by an interdisciplinary research team. Andrzej Grzesiak then describes a bio-inspired manipulator developed with Festo: additive manufacturing, an elephant-trunk-like arm and a fish-fin-inspired gripping mechanism provide alternatives to conventional rigid industrial manipulators.