Blowing up the Hindenburg again. For good.
San Antonio Express-News finds the greatest way to spend a weekend, figuring out what went wrong in the worst explosion in history: Most historians and […]
engineering
Turn your milk jugs into… whatever. At home. With 3D printing.
Great idea, if it works. Laboratory Equipment looks at the possibility of slicing up plastic trash to use as “ink” for 3D printers: Using free […]
Not solar panels – solar *cones*. That spin to keep cool.
Grist gives hope for affordable renewable energy from the engineers who’ve discovered that cones can make solar power cheaper than coal: The company is called […]
Lasers on jets. That’s where we are now.
The Slashgear blog reveals DARPA’s new plan to convert decent, respectable fighter jets into pew-pew videogame laser gunships: One of the laser projects is called […]
Science Art: “One Today,” by Richard Blanco
Miami-raised poet and engineer Richard Blanco was selected to write a poem for today’s presidential inauguration. It begins and ends with the sky. Here’s what […]
Panasonic builds a power loader
It’s a robot exoskeleton, Aliens-style. And it really works.
Science Art: Pneumatische Fundation (Senkkasten Caisson), from Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1889
A caisson is a machine for working under water. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon is a German encyclopedia. Rise, German engineers. Rise. Dive, German engineers. Dive. Image found […]
Science Art: Fig. 100 (Outside-Spring Indicator) from Steam-engine Theory and Practice by William Ripper, 1922
This, the text tells me, is an “outside-spring indicator, by Messrs. Elliott Bros.” The spring is not exposed to high temperature, which makes it better […]
Climbing cukes clinch kinky springs.
Say that five times fast. Harvard Gazette wraps its tendrils around a new way to build springs based on the coiling shoots of cucumber vines: […]
Bill Gates to build a better toilet.
Mac fans should have a *field day* coming up with headlines for this ABC.net.au piece on Bill Gates’ noble new quest – to reinvent the […]
Spider web glass protects birds on the Holy Island
I can’t outdo the BBC’s headline on this story about a beautiful application for a strange, new material: A lookout tower at Lindisfarne has installed […]
Olympics 2016: powered by waterfall.
The Creators Project is already turning attention from London to Rio, where Swiss engineers are planning to erect a giant, power-generating waterfall: Designed by Swiss […]
Science Art: Giant Excavator, Wills’ Cigarettes.
Click to embiggen About 100 years ago, cigarette companies like Wills put collectible cards in their packs of cigarettes just like bubblegum companies did. Only […]
They built a living jellyfish out of a rat’s heart.
Nature voyages to the Island of Dr. Moreau… or at least in the same region… to speak with a scientist who enthusiastically made a living […]
Spray-on battery turns *anything* into a power source.
Scientific American takes a page from the Acme corporation and introduces the world’s first battery in an aerosol can: The paint-on battery, like all lithium […]