For the fourth consecutive year, funding provided through Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) by the NNSA Next Generation Safeguards Initiative has allowed Georgia Tech students enrolled in the Nuclear Safeguards class to spend a week (over Spring Break) at ORNL taking the Nondestructive Assay (NDA) Applications for International Safeguards laboratory course. The students cover a variety of applications from uranium enrichment measurements to radioactive material holdup measurements.

Defects such as cracks in a material can be responsible for the failure of structures as big as the nuclear reactors to the smart phones in our pockets. Now researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburg, Sandia National Laboratories and Zhejiang University (China) have discovered a new type of atomic-scale defect, called stacking fault tetrahedron, that can critically affect the deformation and fracture of pressure vessels in nuclear reactors and interconnects in smart phones.

Are you interested in brushing up on your Statics skills?  Want to know what’s going on in the Woodruff School lately?  Consider taking a free massive open online course (MOOC) entitled “Introduction to Engineering Mechanics” taught by our very own Dr. Wayne Whiteman to begin on September 16. This MOOC will address the material covered in the 1^st half of the Statics course at George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

You’ve probably heard that Georgia Tech has a number of Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs) – but do you know much about them? Executive Director David McDowell answers questions about the newly launched Georgia Tech Institute for Materials (IMat).