Mechanical engineering

Surprisingly, there has been no good science explaining why shoelaces spontaneously come untied. A team of graduate students at UC Berkeley set out to solve this everyday mystery and their results shed light on the mysterious mechanics of knots.

Computer-controlled artificial legs have aided in improving amputees' freedom of movement by mimicking the natural motion of their missing limbs. Now, a new robotic ankle promises to make this motion even more precise by dynamically adjusting to the terrain underfoot.

Armed with plywood, a glass tube and some empty chip packets, mechanical engineering students have developed a low-cost water purification system designed to deliver clean drinking water to remote communities in Papua New Guinea.

Purdue University's Professor Mark French and his graduate students, Craig Zehrung and Jim Stratton, have built an air gun that fires a ping-pong ball at over Mach 1.2 (900 mph or 1,448 km/h).

A newly-created nanocomposite material gets stiffer when subjected to repeated mechanical stress.

Recently developed at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford a $20 prosthetic knee joint, dubbed the JaipurKnee, promises to bring relief to amputees in the developing world.