Auburn Engineering received national visibility when faculty members Prabhakar Clement and Joel Hayworth in the Department of Civil Engineering were featured in National Geographic daily news to discuss finding traces of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the sands of Orange Beach, Ala., as recently as February. The researchers have been investigating the effects of the oil spill on Alabama’s Gulf coast since 2010. “We could have collected as many tar balls as we wanted, from less than one centimeter up to four centimeters — or .4 to 1.6 inches — in diameter,” Clement told National Geographic. “And these are really soft tar balls that are decaying, so there are probably also millions of tiny fragments that we can’t even see. I collected over 1,000 tar balls within [an area of] about 10 miles in five hours. What does that mean? I don’t know. What are the health ramifications? I don’t know. But this clearly demonstrates the magnitude of the [ongoing] problem attributable to Deepwater Horizon.”
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AUBURN ENGINEERING NEWS
- Students’ awesome research ideas celebrated at college’s second AUSome Science in 60 Seconds April 25, 2024AUSome Science in 60 Seconds, a research-based competition in its second year presented by the Council of Engineering Graduate Students, tasked students to create videos and explain their respective projects in a minute or less. Winners were announced during an awards ceremony on Thursday, April 25.
- ASME and CDCR assistant director honored by AU Involvement April 25, 2024This year’s Involvement Awards were a big hit for the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. Among those winning awards were The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Apryl Mullins, assistant director for corporate relations in the Auburn Engineering Office of Career Development and Corporate Relations (CDCR).
- New 3D printing course adding layers of hands-on experience April 25, 2024A new introductory course held in the state-of-the-art 11,000-square-foot makerspace on the ground floor of the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center is giving Auburn engineering students solid layers of experience with 3D printing.