Subscribe (for free) to get my articles each Sunday morning. Thanks for reading! Walking through the doors of Dr. Habib Dagher’s Wonder Lab at the University of Maine (more accurately known as the Advanced Structures & Composites Center) feels a bit like peeking behind the closed-off walls of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Over here is the technology for offshore wind turbines that float, over there is a bridge in a backpack (almost literally). In the next room there is work being done to help NASA land spacecrafts more smoothly on Mars. Adjacent to that, University of Maine undergrads and graduate students are doing cutting edge research on one of the most pressing issues our time: the elimination of potholes. Can they build a better road? These students seem to think so. They have been invited to Chicago, Paris, and beyond to make their case. And there is Dr. Dagher himself, joyfully showing off his latest inventions and earth-altering ingenuities. The only thing missing is a chocolate river.
My question is, how long does one last? Does it have the lifespan of, say, a mobile home?