Engineers

Enjoy hands-on science and engineering activities at Drexel University on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. during Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day. Learn about materials science, expressed in laymen's terms as "the study of stuff," and learn what everyday things we use are made of and how they work. The event is free and presented by the departments of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.   Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Bossone Research Enterprise Center on Market Street between 31st and 32d. Event is free.

Someone threw a rock through the front window of a moving SEPTA train in Philadelphia on Saturday, striking and injuring the engineer. The injuries were minor, SEPTA spokesman Andrew Busch said. He said the incident occurred just before 6 p.m. as the Trenton line train was passing 33d and Girard Avenue. The train stopped at 30th Street Station, and Busch said the engineer was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. There was no word late Saturday on whether he had been released.

NEW YORK - Every day, throngs of riders stand on the edge of danger in the nation's busiest subway system, waiting on platforms with nothing between them and the tracks. Dozens of subway and light rail systems around the world have safety barriers with sliding doors on their platforms, but the idea hasn't gotten traction in New York. Transit officials there are giving it a new look after three people were killed on the tracks - two were pushed, a third fell - since early December.

Paul Michael Parchinski was a chemical engineer who over a 34-year career worked his way up the echelons of the petroleum industry, retiring from Citgo in 2001 as senior environmental adviser. It was then that he decided to take a job with an employer even mightier than the oil giants. Mr. Parchinski became Deacon Parchinski, serving his home parish, Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church in Woodbury. Instead of hazmat emergencies and executive meetings, he was called to assist priests; perform weddings, baptisms, and funerals; tend to the sick; and console the bereft.

BEHIND every good TV broadcast is a dedicated technician who helps to make it happen. In the case of Comcast SportsNet, the man behind the scenes was Victor L. Hamrick, a bearded free spirit who might just as easily have been found playing a guitar, camping in the wilds or wandering the earth. He died Dec. 28 of smoke inhalation from a fire the previous day at his home in Claymont, Del. He was 57. "He was a good friend and mentor to many, had a great sense of humor and was always willing to lend a hand," said Dave Finocchiaro, senior director of engineering for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

Walter Joseph Lufkin Jr., 95, a longtime Abington resident and an Atlantic Richfield Co. employee for three decades, died Wednesday, Dec. 19, of cerebrovascular disease at Rydal Park in Jenkintown. Mr. Lufkin joined the Atlantic Refining Co. in 1945. His responsibilities included the field of industrial engineering, which was new at the time, and later, implementation of information technology. In the 1970s, he retired from Atlantic Richfield Co., now part of British Petroleum, with the title systems implementation manager.

After a 4½-week binge of laser-cutting, wiring, soldering, programming, and debugging, it all came down to the moment when a tall man in a dark gray suit took the stage. "It's time to plaaayyyy some HOCKEY!" he shouted. Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" blared from the sound system. The crowd, many of them zonked from pulling repeated all-nighters, was in a state of near-delirium. This was Robockey 2012 - hockey played by wheeled robots. It is the culmination of a notoriously tough engineering course at the University of Pennsylvania - taught every fall by Jonathan Fiene, the man in the gray suit - and it is a wild scene.

John D. Silva, 92, the Los Angeles television engineer who won Emmy Awards for creating helicopter news coverage in 1958 has died in Southern California. Mr. Silva's family told the Los Angeles Times that he died Nov. 27 of pneumonia complications in Camarillo. Mr. Silva was the chief engineer for KTLA-TV when he outfitted a rented Bell helicopter with a TV camera to create a flying TV studio. The station broadcast live aerial coverage of major news events, including earthquakes, fires, and freeway calamities.

Jack J. Rudnick, 86, of Devon, a science and math whiz who worked as an aerospace engineer for more than 30 years, died of congestive heart failure at his home Sunday, Nov. 18. Born in Philadelphia and raised in the Wynnefield section, Mr. Rudnick graduated in 1942 from Overbrook High School and earned a bachelor's degree in science from the University of Pennsylvania by age 19. In 1946, Mr. Rudnick completed a master's degree in science and engineering...