Learn what environmental cardiology has taught us about how we should live, with help from Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar. Then, you’ll learn about the world’s first 3D-printed nuclear reactor core; and why spaghetti always breaks in three.
Learn what environmental cardiology has taught us about how we should live, with help from Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar. Then, you’ll learn about the world’s first 3D-printed nuclear reactor core; and why spaghetti always breaks in three.
Environmental cardiology resources from Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar:
3D printing a nuclear reactor core could revolutionize energy, and scientists just figured out how to do it by Grant Currin
Here's Why Spaghetti Always Breaks in Three by Trevor English
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/building-healthier-cities-w-dr-aruni-bhatnagar-3d-printing-a-nuclear-reactor-core-and-why-spaghetti-breaks-in-three
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn what environmental cardiology has taught us about how we should live, with help from Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar. Then, you’ll learn about the world’s first 3D-printed nuclear reactor core; and why spaghetti always breaks in three.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You might be surprised to learn how quickly — and how much — your immediate environment can affect your health. For instance: did you know that the California wildfires in recent years may have led to as much as a 70 percent spike in heart attacks? I mean, we all know pollution is bad, but that’s pretty huge. To learn more, we got in touch with Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, Professor of Medicine and Director of Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville. He’s a pioneering researcher in the field of environmental cardiology. And he’s here with the scoop on some of the surprising ways our environment can affect our health.
[CLIP 2:54]
Can you imagine living in a city designed to keep you healthy? If we can get civil engineers to work more closely with environmental cardiologists, who knows what our cities might look like in the future? Again, that was Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar. And in case you want to learn more about his work, we’ve linked to some super interesting articles about environmental cardiology in today’s show notes.
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee have been working on something pretty cool: the world’s first nuclear reactor with a 3D-printed core. It’s called the Transformational Challenge Reactor, and it should go online in 2023.
The researchers didn’t use 3D printing just to show off their manufacturing prowess. See, most nuclear power plants are still using technology that was developed in the 1950s and 60s. Because any mistakes can have disastrous consequences, the whole industry has been really slow to innovate.
The team at Oak Ridge hopes to change that. Their approach has a bunch of advantages over conventional manufacturing. Building one continuous piece, laid down one thin layer at a time, sidesteps a lot of the problems and limitations that come with conventional machining, where each part is built separately and then put together.
For one, you can use different materials. This team built the reactor’s core out of silicon carbide, which is a tough material that’s especially attractive for a reactor core because of its high melting point.
3D printing also allowed for complex networks of channels that will use helium gas to cool the reactor. The gas allows the reactor to get a lot hotter than conventional ones that use water. That makes it more efficient. The assemblies that hold the uranium fuel also have a complex design: they’re formed out of irregular nine-sided polygons called nonagons. No conventional machining techniques could create such an intricate structure.
Because it’s so efficient, the reactor can afford to be small: the core itself is about the height of a bowling pin, and the reactor will be about the size of a small beer keg. This small size also helps avert the kinds of disasters that make big nuclear plants so infamous. One of the scientists compared it to caging an animal: big nuclear reactors put a dragon in a cage within a cage within a cage, because if it got out it would be incredibly destructive. This one puts a small bunny in a small cage. It’s not as risky. But it still produces a lot of power: One of these units will generate about three megawatts — enough to satisfy about a thousand homes.
The new design also offers a lot of data. Tiny cameras mounted on the printer’s nozzle can send up a red flag if there’s a manufacturing error, and sensors embedded in the device itself will allow operators to keep an eye on what’s happening inside the reactor while it’s running.
The scientists and engineers involved in the project hope these improvements will dramatically reduce the amount of time and money it takes to get a nuclear system online. Here’s to the future!
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo. KiwiCo creates super cool hands-on projects designed to expose kids to concepts in STEAM. That’s one of our favorite acronyms, which stands for science, technology, engineering, art and design, and math.
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If you take an uncooked spaghetti noodle and try to break it, it doesn't just snap in half. It practically shatters. If you do this with a handful of uncooked spaghetti noodles, you’ll end up spraying shards of pasta all over your kitchen. The reason this happens puzzled scientists for decades — which, yeah, I know. Sounds pretty pre-pasta-rous. Well don’t worry, because 15 years ago, a pair of French scientists finally figured out why this happens.
These scientists evaluated spaghetti noodles by simply treating them as “thin brittle rods" — maybe because their research extends to other rod-shaped materials, maybe because they didn’t want to write “spaghetti” a million times. We may never know. Anyway, they found that when you bend a rod like a spaghetti noodle by applying equal force to each end, it snaps in two — at first. But then something weird happens: After this first break, the pieces flex backward, creating a series of bending waves. These waves then break the spaghetti into more pieces.
This discovery of spaghetti physics — also known as "thin rod physics" — made headlines in 2005.
So, knowing why spaghetti breaks into several pieces is one thing. But can we stop it from happening? Luckily more recent research has that answer, too. A group of MIT scientists thought it would be possible to break a spaghetti noodle into two pieces exactly. That is: by gently twisting the noodle to counteract the bending waves that cause noodles to shatter.
The team tested this in two ways: with a virtual model, and by actually building a machine that would hold a spaghetti noodle and allow them to apply precise forces to each end. They eventually discovered if you twisted the uncooked noodle 270 degrees then bent the ends at 3 millimeters per second, the spaghetti would break into two even pieces. Pasta la vista, baby!
This new understanding might help materials scientists keep certain materials from cracking or snapping under pressure. As for what it means for you, the spaghetti consumer? Well, with a little bit of practice, you might be able to perfect a nifty dinner party trick. After all, life is about exploring pasta-bilities.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Grant Currin and Trevor English, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!