Tag: Engineering

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life-and-everything:

mekapaedia:

LET ME TELL YOU ‘BOUT THE MOTHER FUCKING MERCEDES-BENZ T80

Back in the 1930’s, Germany was all about racing and setting records. Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz were so much faster than everyone else that it had just really become a competition between themselves – and besides just Grand Prix racing, they loved to do world record attempts.

On public roads.

Yep, on the Autobahn.

In 1938, Auto Union and Mercedes got together to fuck with the land speed record – because fuck you, that’s why – and Rudolf Caracciola managed 268 mph on the Autobahn (the A5). Bernd Rosemeyer was killed trying the same for Auto Union as a result of a crosswind.

Already in development though, was the Mercedes-Benz T80 (which the great Dr. Ferdinand Porsche was brought on board to work on!).

And hold shit christ fuck balls.

To start off, they used a specially modified derivative of the famous Mercedes-Benz inverted V12 used in the BF 109 – however instead of the 1350 horsepower available from the aircraft derivative (in 1939 F form) it made 3000 horsepower. Yes, 3000. There were still no seat belts. Fuck you, that’s why.

The power increases came from a mixture of a special fuel, capacity increase over the DB 601 in the fighter, and methanol-water injection.

But not only is the engine impressive – the chassis is a 6-wheeled, middled engined and four wheel drive! The drum brakes on all 6 wheels are enormous – and the chassis uses oval tubes like on the W125 Grand Prix car, which was very advanced for it’s time.

Even more advanced were the aerodynamics – with a drag coefficient of just 0.18 – which is even lower than any of the famous Alfa Romeo BAT cars, and astounding for 1939 (though another Mercedes-Benz test car of the same era apparently managed a Cd of less than .15) – which allowed it’s top speed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 470 miles per hour. Yes, 470 miles an hour. In a car with drum brakes and no seat belts. On a public road (between Halle and Leipzig, now the A9).

BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY.

Everyone needs to see this German badassery because engineering that’s why.

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systlin:

systlin:

tamedvenus:

systlin:

systlin:

systlin:

So my little brother works at Sandia Labs, which he loves; he’s a physicist and engineer, and good at it. He just got hired a few months ago, and is like bottom of the clearance level totem pole, but. 

Apparently the lab loaned a seismometer to a missile test site, who broke it. 

So they gave it back to the lab with an apology, and the lab went “welp fuck guess we’ll buy a new one”

“Wait a minute,” my brother says. “I think I got this.”

He proceeded to google up the user manual for the model, take it apart, clean it, and put it back together. 

It now works flawlessly and his bosses think he’s a goddamned genius because he just saved them 20k with four minutes of google searching. 

He specifically works as an engineer in their super-computing research division; he did his master’s on quantum computing technology. 

What I’m saying is that he LITERALLY works in an office full of nuclear physicists, engineers, and rocket scientists and he impressed them by knowing how to google a product number. 

I’m dying, as a mechanical engineering intern this is entirely my life. I fixed a machine worth 175k by sitting down, actually reading the manual, and disconnecting and reconnecting two wires that were in the wrong place. Smart people can be dumb.

He even told them what he did. 

“I googled up the user manual.”

“You can DO that???? YOU ARE BRILLIANT.”

“….you know what, yes. You are correct. I am. Raise my pay grade please.” 

The moral of this story is that don’t sell your own skills short, kids, knowing how to google shit is a marketable skill.