ChrisZach.com

You know the cliche, often cited when one has a near-death experinece: “I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
Well, when you skydive from 22.7 miles above the earth, it turns out you have time for 6 minutes of life flashing before your eyes.
I’ve got a lot of living left to do; I’m not sure [...]

Need power generation plants always exist as hulking industrial behemoths? Wind and solar power growth is already shifting the generation of electricity from an eyesore to a new and necessary component of our 21st century landscape.
Now a British architectural design firm is giving the more conventional combustion power plant a much-needed makeover. Of course, this [...]

Thanks to NPR for bringing some mainstream attention to the lack of dynamic range in pop music today.
Have you ever heard a pianissimo on the radio? Nope. How can a song build to a rewarding musical climax without crescendo?

As we come to the end of the decade, we turn to one of the more dramatic [...]

With my engineering roots, I can’t resist occasionally lobbing some props to fellow engineers (or Imagineers) who produce undeniable displays of creativity, even when I share none of the motivation that inspired their innovative adventures.
Take Christmas lights. As a teenager, I had no intrinsic motivation to hang the family Christmas lights. In my mind, hanging [...]

Whenever I start to feel like the challenge of preventing climate change might just be insurmountable — this happens often as I read reports at work on the scale of carbon reduction needed — it’s a welcome news to hear that some hair-brained scientist/engineer has broken assumed technical barriers by employing a completely novel method.
Well, [...]

Technology for automating the bore of highway driving may actually encourage drivers to eat in the car, apply makeup, shave, read a book, surf the ‘net, paint, or yoga-cize.
This sounds like a significant technical challenge. If one desires to take advantage of aerodynamic gains, as the article suggests, the vehicles will need to be driving [...]

As an energy analyst, I often see in my own work the drastic effect of scope on analysis results.
For example, take a simple-sounding question like, “How much energy is required to produce a ton of iron?”
This is a relatively straightforward analysis if the scope of energy usage includes only the iron plant. You count the [...]

Good news for the future of cap and trade — and our climate — from a couple researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) probably won’t cost as much as previously thought, which will keep the overall price of carbon credits lower because the carbon dioxide emitted from coal power [...]

Say you’re an ambitious young engineer and you want to tackle some seriously challenging problems. The automotive industry has no money to hire you, and their work on battery-powered cars is mundane and rote anyway.  You could work in aerospace, designing the next satellite or Mars rover, but even those challenges are no longer brand [...]

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is denying climate change and opposing the cap and trade bill with “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality,” according to PG&E Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee. PG&E recently pulled its membership from the Chamber, and now Exelon Corp. has done the same today.
Why is the Chamber so opposed [...]