In the news recently have been some interesting futuristic engineering solutions to building homes and harnessing energy. Notice the common theme- water!
Amphibious houses, or "floating eco-homes," as the BBC article terms them, are already in use in the Netherlands, where rising water and real estate shortage have birthed the invention of a home that can float on water. If you're not a young Dutch couple desperate to move out of the tiny apartment you share with in-laws, this is still an interesting technology to follow. Amphibious houses can withstand flooding (accommodating a water rise up to 13 feet) and are promising alternatives to coastal housing in flood zones. People with their eyes on a future drowned by global warming can also imagine these houses as models for "floating cities" of the future.
Sea snakes are being used by Scottish engineers to harvest wave farms off the coast of Scotland and Portugal (read the BBC article on sea snakes). Sea snakes are actually enormous metal tubes called a Pelamis wave energy converter. In very simple terms, the rocking of the waves rocks the metal tube. The pulsing motion of the tube pushes hydraulic fluid through a generator to produce electricity. An interesting problem of wave farming is that engineers purposely build them to be inefficient. Wikipedia says that's because a storm at sea could cause a power surge that would put Marvel Comic's Electro to shame (they didn't say it exactly like that, but you get the point). I love the concept of tapping into the unfathomable power of the ocean, and the fact that the biggest challenge in harnessing it is how to tone that power down.
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