Bike helmets save lives. Bike helmet *laws* hurt people.
Outside has an interesting look at unintended consequences, examining a University of Colorado study into why bike-helmet laws increase injuries: Studies show that the laws […]
engineering
Science Art: New invented Machine, for deepning and cleansing Docks, &c., 1775.
Click to embiggen In 1775, Pennsylvania Magazine wanted its readers to be up to date on the very latest in technological advances, including this machine […]
Science Art: Five of Spades, from Playing Cards: Engineering
This is one of a whole deck of… well, they’re practically a technological tarot, really. They’re playing cards illustrating concepts in engineering. (The two of […]
3D barcodes ensure pills (or microchips) are genuine.
Popular Science reveals a new way to check if a little thing really is what it’s labeled as: Researchers from the University of Bradford and […]
Self-driving trucks – no humans *at all* – on Florida’s roads this year.
Popular Science warns us to slow down by construction sites and watch for self-driving trucks on Florida roads by year’s end: The rigs, which are […]
There’s an all-electric big rig out on the road today….
Manufacturing.net explains how BMW put a pollution-free semi to work on the autobahn: The BMW Group began using an all-electric semi-truck to transport vehicle components […]
Science Art: Fig. XLIII. Hydromylos, sive aquaria mola, 1662.
This is a waterwheel, from a book written by architect and engineer Georg Andreas Boeckler, under the title Theatrum machinarum novum : exhibens opera molaria […]
The sports car that reads your mind.
Auto Guide (and a few other places) have been looking at… well, is the step before a driverless car or the step beyond? Anyway, it’s […]
Science Art: Las Cascadas Slide (Section 6) from AB Nichols Notebook Vol. 38, 1910
Click to embiggen This is a handmade map from the construction of the Panama Canal, one of history’s greatest feats of engineering. Culebra Cut is […]
Science Art: Firing in the Fog, 1995
Click to embiggen vastly In which NASA tests a Space Shuttle engine in Mississippi, on a cool and humid day. Found on GRIN.
Science Art: Plate XII. An engine of great service to bore elms or other trees to make pipes to conveigh water, and for other uses, 1701
Click to embiggen An illustration from New and rare inventions of water-works; shewing the easiest ways to raise water higher than the spring. By which […]
Here’s a hydrogen-fueled train.
Science Alert reports on a new train in China – not a design, an actual vehicle – that runs on hydrogen and leaves water for […]
Science Art: B.T. Babbit’s Low Pressure Canal Boat Steam Enterprise, 1876
Click to embiggen A big, useful boat, from Industrial America: Manufacturers and Inventors of the United States, 1876. [via New York Public Library Digital Collections]
Driverless cars in less than a decade
That’s what Nature is expecting to see, in its overview of the world of autonomous vehicles: This summer, people will cruise through the streets of […]
New materials are really cool. Like, make-your-own-unplugged-AC cool.
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 […]