LabTV
About this original series
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# Episodes
15 episodes -
Rating
TV-UN
Episodes of LabTV
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Robots Connect Students to an Engineering Future
The Air Force recently experienced a robot invasion -- Lego robots, that is -- as hosts of the FIRST LEGO League US Open Championship. This year's competition in Dayton, Ohio, assembled 60 of the best teams of kids ages 9 to 14, who designed, built, and programmed their robots to tackle a real-world problem. Combining science and math know-how with a little hard work and a lot of creativity, these students came from all over the United States to showcase their robots. Although they're focused ...
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Release date
Apr 13, 2010
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Runtime
04:30
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Navy Scientists Help Sailors Keep the Ocean Blue
For centuries -- until about 30 years ago! -- sailors tossed their trash overboard into the sea. Now Navy ships focus on protecting the environment as scientists at NAVSEA Carderock in Bethesda, Md., develop and evaluate ways to treat waste. Every ship is like a small city, with 100 to 5,000 people aboard. They produce refuse ranging from garbage to water waste, sewage to shower water and eventually must dispose of it all. Dishwater, for example, could pollute the ocean if it's dumped, so the ...
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Release date
Apr 13, 2010
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Runtime
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Army Develops Super Structures to Safeguard Troops
Shelters protect people from the sun and wind and help them stay warm. Army shelters must do more -- they shield soldiers from chemical and biological agents and the fragments from enemy mortar. Engineers at an Army research lab in Natick, Mass., design shelters with even better capability. Their portable homes are energy-efficient, thanks to LED lighting and solar panels; easy to assemble with the use of inflatable tubes called air beams; and are invisible at night! It's wonderful to develop ...
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Release date
Apr 13, 2010
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Runtime
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Just Add Water: New Fuel from Aluminum Nanoparti...
Scientists at an Air Force Research Lab in Dayton Ohio have developed an amazing new way to harness the hydrogen energy stored in ordinary tap water. The secret is aluminum nanoparticles. By adding water to their specially-coated nanoparticles, the scientists can produce over a thousand liters of hydrogen gas from a single liter of water. This new fuel is being designed to provide power in emergency situations -- but it could also be used in rocket engines or airplanes. According to research c...
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Release date
Mar 16, 2010
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Runtime
04:35
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Wafer Power: Building Circuits
In one of the world's cleanest environments -- scientists and engineers at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass. turn sand into tomorrow's semiconductors. It's an amazing process that takes silicon crystals, called boules, slices them into thin wafers and then builds millions of circuits -- that can run everything from computers to cell phones. Engineer Jeremy Muldavin and his team also create even smaller components on these wafers -- called microelectromechanical systems or MEMS. ME...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
04:46
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Wafer Power: Mighty Silicon
This Abundant Element Is a Gem in the Lab Microelectronics is the creation of very tiny electrical circuits -- finer than a human hair. These circuits run everything, from computers to phones. Most are made out of silicon, a very strong and rigid crystal which can be sliced as thin as a wafer. By adding impurities to silicon -- they can turn an insulating material into a semi-conducting one and make semiconductors. Scientists at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass., are finding ways ...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
04:29
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Tracking the Flu: Lifesaving Research Works on K...
Influenza is a formidable enemy. A leading cause of death in the United States, the disease kills more than 36,000 people each year. It's also tricky -- though the flu virus itself is a simple organism, it is able to fool our cells into making new viruses -- which makes us sick. But Air Force Research Lab scientists in San Antonio are battling back. Every day they take in thousands of samples from all over the world and analyze the specimens for influenza, unraveling the genetic code to compar...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
04:41
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Printing New Skin: Saving Lives with Ink Jet Pri...
By modifying an ink jet printer and growing skin cells from a patient's body, a U.S. Army research lab has developed an amazing treatment for severe burns: printing new skin. Once the patient's skin cells are in a sterile ink cartridge, a computer uses a three dimensional map of the wound to guide the printing. The bio-printer drops each type of cell precisely where it needs to go, explains Kyle Binder, a biomedical scientist at the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine's Wake Forest...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
04:10
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Computer Vision: Teaching Machines to Recognize ...
Shown two photos of a person taken from different angles, most people will immediately recognize them as the same person. But it's not that easy for a computer because their brains are not as flexible as human brains. Teaching computers to see more like humans is the job of Alan VanNevel and his team of scientists at a Navy Research Lab in Chino Lake. They've created some amazing pattern recognition programs - using math. If we had an image of your face we'd have some numbers that represent yo...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
03:54
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Brainwaves: Reading Brain Waves to Keep Pilots S...
Flying is second nature for today's highly skilled Air Force pilots. But when challenges arise, these aviators need to stay focused. Helping out are researchers at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. By placing pilots in flight simulators and monitoring their brain waves, the scientists are designing systems that can assist in crunch time. Once we've detected that someone's getting overloaded, getting stressed, and likely to make a mistake, what we try to do is make the computer, make the aut...
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Release date
Feb 3, 2010
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Runtime
04:11
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