The fracture mechanics of sweet corn

“Sweet corn was our family’s weakness. We were prepared to resist atheistic communism, immoral Hollywood, hard liquor, gambling and dancing, smoking, fornication, but if Satan had come around with sweet corn we at least would have listened to what he had to sell.” ~ Garrison Keillor

In my opinion, one of the best parts of summer is enjoying a plate full of fresh sweet corn. My obsession with sweet corn may come as a result of genetics, as I come from a long line of sweet corn aficionados, or maybe it’s because I’m a Midwestern girl through and through. Either way, sweet corn season is in full swing, and with that comes a vague lesson in fracture mechanics.

Here you can see that a crack at or exceeding a critical length is created with a knife.

When stresses of a sufficient magnitude are applied to each end of the ear, the crack propagates and voila! You have ears of corn that will fit into your pot of boiling water.

Perhaps you’d rather be crunching numbers than munching on sweet corn. Here’s a lovely little equation to get you started:

I’m not too sure of the shape factor (Y) of sweet corn. Maybe one of the MSE professors can help us out with this?

You’ll have to excuse me — I have some sweet corn to eat.

MSE Co-op at Oshkosh

I received an email today from Joel, a third-year MSE student who is doing a summer/autumn co-op with Oshkosh Corporation in Wisconsin.

Joel writes:
Work is pretty sweet!! plain and simple. I cannot send many pictures unfortunately, government contract… so “if I told you I’d have to kill you” haha

In the materials group, there are 8 of us, so we’re pretty small, and VERY busy. There’s probably 9 or 10 projects spread out across the big table right behind me that are currently being worked on. There are 4 materials and process engineers, 1 castings expert, and 2 intern spots. Its like we’re elite and prestigious. It’s pretty cool. How I got hired into this group is beyond me, but I ain’t complaining haha. Technically my job title is Materials and Process Engineer Intern.

I jump from job to job daily so its hard to keep track of my time sheet, cause we have to charge each job to the tenth of the hour. I’ve only had like 2 projects so far. I’m finishing up my 7th week already I can’t believe it it’s flying by.

My first project was a JLG Scissor Pin, and I just finished up my first failure analysis report on a hitch off this truck … see the photo gallery. My report was 27 pages (44 figures).

Joel and the summer interns also had to do a presentation for the senior management about their experiences at Oshkosh.  Here is his presentation.

Thanks for the update, Joel.