This homemade toy saves lives.
Nature shows how one of the simplest toys out there – a loop of string with a spinning bit of paper in the middle – […]
engineering
You can now 3D-print a sonic tractor beam.
Science Daily brings us one step closer to a sci-fi tomorrow with researchers publishing open-source directions on making a tractor beam at home: Last year […]
World Power: How Africa can leapfrog the world with renewable energy.
Nature looks into the future of Africa and sees a sunny outlook – at least as far as solar and wind power generation go: Africa’s […]
Science Art: Aneroiddose für die Luftdruckkompensation des Pendels, by Sigmund Riefler
Click to embiggen Sigmund Riefler was a physicist and precision clockmaker. He also created this, a precision barometer, or, rather, a barometer connected to a […]
There’s a tunnel-bus driving the streets of China.
The Verge has some photos of – and the story behind – the new, tunnel-like city bus that cars can drive under in traffic: According […]
Drinking the ocean.
Scientific American (and notable author Rowan Jacobsen) reports on the dry, dry nation of Israel creating a water surplus by making the sea drinkable: Desal […]
Bacteria movement could power tiny machines.
Wired is thinking big about something much, much smaller than a hamster in a wheel – powering microscopic machines with “bacterial windfarms”: The natural movement […]
Science Art: (The Wyttenbach Steam Steriliser) The book of fruit bottling, 1907.
Click to embiggen Mmm. Jelly. Jam. Apple butter. This is labeled “THE WYTTENBACH STEAM STERILISER” on on Wikimedia Commons, with some garbled dimensions. But you […]
3D printers make a methane-eating plastic… that excretes fuel.
Science Daily has more on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers who have 3D-printed a polymer that turns methane to methanol: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory […]
Science Art: Philips H7 headlamp . Mo-cover filament polycrystals, by Ivan.V.Nemtsev
This is the filament of a headlight – a halogen bulb you put in the front end of your car, one of these – as […]
No foolin’: this pen “writes” in stem cells. It can draw new body parts.
Science Daily shows off a new medical device that grows new human parts in whatever shape you can draw them: In a landmark proof-of-concept experiment, […]
Science Art: LEAF Sound Horn, by ESA – A. Le Floc’h
Click to embiggen This is a big horn for making big noise. It’s the way the European Space Agency tests how satellites stand up to […]
Chinese tokamak makes fusion happen – for more than a minute.
Wired reports on the successful ignition of a fire three times hotter than the sun: The march to sustainable nuclear fusion appears to have made […]
Science Art: The “Johnson” Bucket Excavator, from American journal of railway appliances, 1886.
Click to embiggen A triumph of engineering. It moves earth! Using “the bucket principle”! As found in The Linda Hall Library.
NASA’s making low-pollution hybrid jets.
Popular Science reminds us that NASA’s first “A” is for “Aeronautics” – which is why they’re trying to make ultra-efficient hybrid jet engines: Researchers at […]