Oh, hydrology.
This is a device to measure the speed of water flow, as described in A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering: relating to the hydrology, hydrodynamics,… Read the rest “Science Art: Woltmann’s Tachometer, 1882”
SONG: “They Can Make It Rain Bombs” . (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: This isn’t based on any recent research. It’s a penitential cover for being late… Read the rest “SONG: They Can Make It Rain Bombs (a penitential Camper Van Chadbourne cover)”
This image came from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force with the less-easy-to-understand name (or “designation”) “210921-F-AU145-2009.” But it’s… Read the rest “Science Art: Cockpit view of the Macchi MC.200 Saetta, 2009”
Heatmap reports on some SpaceX alums — that is, former employees of the space corporation — who gave up on astronauting in favor of making some things work better down here/ … Read the rest “Using rocket science to make “carbon-negative” energy.”
Need a lift? These are hooks designed for lifting … well, whatever you need picked up.
I found them in (deep breath): The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices,… Read the rest “Science Art: Hooks, Swivels, &c. ”
This is a Popular Mechanics illustration from 102 years ago that sounds like it could have been written today. Warnings about industrial pollution increasing air temperature are nothing… Read the rest “Science Art: The Furnaces of the World…., 1912”
This is a device from Cotton Card-Room Machinery, a catalog published by Whitlin Machine Works.
I can’t say much about how it works because I’ve never been in a cotton card-room.… Read the rest “Science Art: Detaching Roll Mechanism, 1912.”
They do look a little like meerkats, these big African satellite dishes. This is a photo from the Square Kilometre Array Organisation (SKAO) / South African Radio Astronomy Observatory… Read the rest “Science Art: MeerKAT telescopes, 2018”
A valve to prevent backflow… so the river doesn’t wind up in the reservoir, or the effluent in the shower pipes.
From A practical treatise on hydraulic and water-supply engineering:… Read the rest “Science Art: Check Valve, 1882.”
Ars Technica recently reported on a new front in the “right to repair” war. A group of hackers broke into a Polish train system in order to overcome software that kept anyone … Read the rest “Hacking the train.”
This is a solar-powered generator. A funnel with sides angled at 90 degrees is pointed at the sun to catch its radiation, and those rays are bounced by the funnel’s mirrored walls toward… Read the rest “Science Art: Mouchot’s solar thermal collector from 1860, from Nordisk Familjebok, 1917.”
Forbes covers a climate-change story about global trade and supply chains (something the pandemic taught the world about), focused on that thin isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific… Read the rest “Dry canal costs billions.”
Wired reveals a very strange insect-monitoring device called DAS, or “distributed acoustic sensing,” normally used to track vibrations made by seismic shifts and volcanic… Read the rest “Cicadas are so loud, they cause fiberoptic-cable interference.”
How high?
This device will tell you.
It’s from The great Centennial exhibition critically described and illustrated, by Phillip T. Sandhurst, which you can read on archive.org… Read the rest “Science Art: Altitude and azimuth instrument, 1876.”
I hate to read it, but NPR reported on a Stanford study that found gas stoves increase levels of benzene in the home – a chemical that brings with it a noticeable increase in risk of cancer… Read the rest “Cooking with gas increases cancer risk.”
Copyright © 2025 | WordPress Theme by MH Themes
