Popsicle stick bombs are chain reactions made from interweaving popsicle sticks in a specific pattern. A staple of YouTube videos and children's science classes, they demonstrate the basics of kinetic energy. But there are complex physics behind those cascading sticks, and thanks to award-winning research from an undergraduate student at Purdue, we know a lot more about them.

It's been (pardon the pun) an explosive year at the largest academic propulsion lab in the world, Zucrow Labs. Read all about it in our annual report.

PhD student Riley Barta has developed a turbomachine expander that helps harvest previously wasted energy used in the process of moving air from high to low pressure. The device can be used as a control agent within existing heat pumps. Purdue is world-renowned in research of refrigeration and compressors.

Smart thin films are just like stickers, but with embedded high-performance electronics and sensors that sense chemical changes, temperature, humidity, or harness solar energy. Chi Hwan Lee explains how sticktronics can turn any object into a smart object in the Internet-of-things.

Attention particle people! The top minds in pharma, agriculture, manufacturing, and academia are gathering at Purdue in August 2020 for the Material Characterization Forum.

Prof. Yan Chen studies how airborne viruses spread in enclosed environments like airplanes and cruise ships. Keeping coronavirus patients on board a cruise ship is the worst thing they could have done, because a cruise ship's HVAC system can't filter out the virus, and may end up spreading it even more.

Congratulations to Ariel (Turner) Gebhardt (BSME '13), just named to the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame! She was a two-time All-American volleyball player, as well as a two-time Academic All-American.

Two ME grads, both key in the space program, have been honored as Distinguished Engineering Alumni by Purdue University. Michael Kelly (BSME '78, MSME '83) served with the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and Scott Tingle (MSME '88) served as a NASA astronaut, spending 168 days on the International Space Station.

When containing a massive disaster like an oil spill, small microbes play a big role. Arezoo Ardekani, associate professor of mechanical engineering, has published research that describes the complex hydrodynamics of microorganisms at liquid-liquid and gas-liquid interfaces, showing that microbes may flock to areas where surfactant has been applied.

Last year, Venezuela's political situation became so volatile, they put physical barricades at their border with Colombia to keep people from leaving. But what if they turned their border into an opportunity? According to professor Luciano Castillo, taking advantage of abundant wind and solar energy would create both economic and ecological stability in the region.