Engineering

Reporter's Notes for Energy Storage: The Holy Grail

Reporter's Notes for Energy Storage: The Holy Grail

Energy storage (through batteries) is something we use everyday in our cell phones and computers. So it may be a little surprising that when it comes to the electric grid, storing energy is something that's rarely done.

 
Computer Memory Poised to Get Shock Therapy?

Computer Memory Poised to Get Shock Therapy?

In recent years, scientists have been playing around with more exotic forms of data storage. It turns out that some very specialized materials are not only like to be magnetically ordered, but are also naturally charged.

 
Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf Star at San Jose Electric Car Convention

Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf Star at San Jose Electric Car Convention

After years of stops and starts, electric cars and plug-in hybrids are on the cusp of a new era of mainstream acceptance, starting this year.

 
Homegrown Particle Accelerators

Homegrown Particle Accelerators

QUEST journeys back to find out how physicists on the UC Berkeley campus in the 1930s, and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the 1970s, created "atom smashers" that led to key discoveries about the tiny constituents of the atom and paved the way for the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

 
Producer's Notes: Homegrown Particle Accelerators

Producer's Notes: Homegrown Particle Accelerators

If you’re enthralled by the Large Hadron Collider, you’ll want to watch QUEST’s story on atom smashers.

 
Video Games for Women?

Video Games for Women?

What video games are appealing to women?

 
Solar Heats Up in S.F.

Solar Heats Up in S.F.

The solar industry has descended on the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco this week. QUEST Senior Radio Editor Andrea Kissack reports from the Intersolar North America Conference and Expo.

 
Slowing Down PACE

Slowing Down PACE

The Property Assessed Clean Energy Program (PACE) is being blocked for the time being by, of all things, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, holders of about half of the home mortgages in the country and a major player in the financial crisis that we are still recovering from.

 
California On the Green Cutting Edge Again

California On the Green Cutting Edge Again

The eyes of the nation are once again upon California for making bold steps in the water efficiency, energy efficiency, and global climate change arenas.

 
Finding a Home for Big Solar – Part One

Finding a Home for Big Solar – Part One

California has set ambitious goals for a transition to clean, renewable energy: 33 percent by 2020. Some are skeptical that the goal is within reach.QUEST and Climate Watch continue to examine the promise and pitfalls of this historic transformation. Craig Miller reports on one Silicon Valley company's controversial proposal for Panoche Valley.

 
Web Extra: Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight Slideshow

Web Extra: Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight Slideshow

Check out behind-the-scenes photos from Science on the SPOT's "Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight" story.

 
Science on the SPOT: Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight

Science on the SPOT: Marine Sanctuary Patrol Flight

The Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine sanctuaries cover more than 9,500 square miles of ocean habitat. Patrolling such an immense area by boat would take days, but now sanctuary managers are taking to the air in a rugged de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter bush plane to get a bird's eye view.

 
A Realistic Look at Geothermal Heat Pumps

A Realistic Look at Geothermal Heat Pumps

You can do just fine with a medium-efficiency furnace and burn much less fuel than you would with a high-end system—like a geothermal system—and a leaky house.

 
Dancing Within White Noise

Dancing Within White Noise

Last week, I traveled to Los Angeles to attend the American Association of Museum Annual Meeting and Museum Expo. This year’s theme was Museums without Borders and the pulse of many of the workshops focused on exploring the connections between cultures and genres.

 
Who's Responsible?

Who's Responsible?

It could have been many things that caused the greatest oil spill ever.

 
Has the Hydrogen Highway Become a Good Idea Again?

Has the Hydrogen Highway Become a Good Idea Again?

Now, after an exciting discovery at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the hydrogen highway is a good idea whose time may have come around.

 
Field Notes From New Orleans

Field Notes From New Orleans

Historians will one day come to view the post-Katrina rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as the first major example of green design and technologies.

 
Smog Checks Made Easy

Smog Checks Made Easy

This month Governor Schwarzenegger faces a stack of proposed legislation awaiting his signature. One of those bills has to do with the car you may be sitting in this very moment. It's a proposed change to California's annual smog check program which, as Amy Standen reports in this holiday rebroadcast, is due for a tune up.

 
The New Bay Bridge: Earthquake Makeover

The New Bay Bridge: Earthquake Makeover

The new self-anchored suspension bridge being built to replace the vulnerable eastern span of the Bay Bridge is scheduled to open in 2013 and will be seismically and aesthetically revolutionary in its design. QUEST explores the engineering features that will give the new bridge the strength and flexibility to withstand the next "big one."

 
Behind the Scenes with the Mythbusters

Behind the Scenes with the Mythbusters

Guest blogger Michael Kadel chronicles our behind-the-scenes visit to our explosive San Francisco neighbors, the Mythbusters.