The Economist is following Stanford researchers who are (literally) making some really cool stuff:
Fully 15% of the electricity used by buildings in the United States is devoted to [air conditioning]. If an idea dreamed up by Aaswath Raman of Stanford University and his colleagues comes to fruition, that may change. Dr Raman has […]
Nature celebrates more wonders – potential ones, from flexible armor to affordable fuel cells – that we can make from graphene:
Protons’ ability to travel through graphene suggests that the material could be used as a membrane to sieve hydrogen from air, and to help extract energy from that hydrogen in a fuel cell, says […]
Popular Mechanics gets all excited over PayPal/Tesla Motors/SpaceX magnate Elon Musk’s next set of high-tech tricks, including drones and rockets with unfolding wings (in a Star Wars-like configuration). if I had a billion dollars, I’d be doing this stuff too:
The SpaceX chief unveiled the new Falcon 9R rocket design, which includes four guiding […]
This mysterious water-driven machine is from a mysterious Arabic manuscript, somewhere between 200 and 500 years old. The whole document is full of mechanisms with scoops and gears and vats and water. It’s part of the Max Planck Digital Library collection but I found it on The Public Domain Review.
From The Principles and Practice and Explanation of the Machinery of Locomotive Engines in Operation, found on archive.org.
The book seems to be part of an 1850 re-printing of Thomas Tredgold’s 1827 masterwork… (deep breath)… The steam engine : comprising an account of its invention and progressive improvement; with an investigation […]
Translation: The Englishman Watt wanted to make a steam engine. He spent so much time on it that he upset his aunt. Finally, however, he was successful.
From Public Domain Review‘s collection of prints of Western inventors, artists and scholars produced by the Japanese Department of Education.
In part, to demonstrate […]
Investors are (quietly, says Scientific American) lining up support for companies figuring out the ins and outs of nuclear fusion:
…[T]he fragments of information that have filtered out make it clear that the building houses one of the largest fusion experiments now operating in the United States. It is also one of the most unconventional. […]
The Guardian has more on the power-station throwdown in which solar power is winning the race:
Last week, for the first time in memory, the wholesale price of electricity in Queensland fell into negative territory – in the middle of the day.
For several days the price, normally around $40-$50 a megawatt hour, hovered […]
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