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Media Platforms Design TeamAs a defensive end and linebacker in the NFL, Terry Crews spent every Sunday slamming into 350-pound football players without fear. But when he signed on to play Hale Caesar in , directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone, he was intimidated—and not just by the all-star cast of action heroes. “With Sly movies, there are cases of things that kill people, and it’s like, ‘Dude, I don’t wanna touch that!...

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile you won’t see any flashy iPads or high-definition monitors on the sidelines of Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, those types of devices have started to make their marks in the locker rooms and training centers across the National Football League. And a wee bit of technological experimentation will even take place on the sidelines at the Super Bowl.For the first time ever, this past season the NFL allowed two teams, the Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to use 64 GB iPad 2s as their official playbooks....

Along with the 23 guns that police officers found in Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s Mandalay Bay hotel room, officials also found at least two “bump stocks.” These devices, which are legal, use a semi-automatic weapon’s recoil to allow it to fire repeatedly at a rate closer to that of a fully-automatic weapon.Bump stocks are simple pieces of equipment that replace the stock of a rifle and add a small “support step” in front of the trigger....

Media Platforms Design TeamROSAMOND, Calif. — According to Dodge aerodynamics engineer Mike Shinedling, that giant wing on the back of the new Viper ACR provides 1000 pounds of downforce at 150 mph. That’s 10 times as much as you get on the standard Viper. And that’s serious business. We’re on the long track at Willow Springs Raceway, and even if 150 mph might be a little out of reach here, we’re appreciating every bit of grip that big honkin’ wing provides....

On-Sale Date: NowPrice: $12,995 to $15,795Competitors: Scion iQ, Fiat 500, Smart ForTwoPowertrains: 1.25-liter I-4, 84 hp, 83 lb-ftEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 32/38 (manual), 28/37 (auto)What’s New: Chevy’s sprightly minicar, the Spark, is a big seller around the globe, but it wasn’t developed with North America in mind. The “old” GM might have shipped the Korean-made tyke over to our shores and hoped for the best. Thankfully for us, the GM of today unleashed a squadron of homeland Detroit engineers onto the Spark to modify and improve the little machine for the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamPOPULAR MECHANICS: How’d you like the DRC? Did you attend both days?DEAN KAMEN: We attended only the second day. I thought the DRC was very exciting on many different fronts. First, countless people in different stages of their careers, from high schoolers to graduate students to post-doctorates, were affiliated with FIRST. Second, it was exciting to see the difficult problems presented to the participants. Then, to see the participants grapple with the reality of completing the challenging tasks....

Try to think of a vehicle, any consumer product, from the early 1990s that still looks good. The Land Rover Defender and The Simpsons still hold up, maybe. The Plymouth Prowler and frosted tips, never again.No matter the era, it’s a feat to create something that has as much visual impact now as it did 20 years ago. The Ducati Monster motorcycle still has that effect. It proves that, however clichéd, less is more, even when the industry and society is wildly different from the environment in which it was created....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen you’re trying to create realistic-looking, computer-generated food, the first step is making a mess–at least that’s what animators at Sony Imageworks found during their work on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, out Sept. 18. “We’ve got a nice, three-story-tall building here, and lots of places where you can get hamburgers,” says Rob Bredow, visual effects supervisor on Cloudy. So right off the bat “we were dropping hamburgers off the roof to see how it looked,” Bredow says....

In a sneaky toast to St. Patrick, about 1 mL of pure grain alcohol escapes through the lungs for every pint of shamrock-green lager in the stomach. It’s why troopers needn’t bother with syringes–if it’s in your blood, it’s in your breath.But alcohol is just one of thousands of volatile compounds that end their trip through the body’s circulatory system in the lungs. Since Hippocrates, physicians have tried to connect subtle changes in the breath with problems in the body, and now researchers are getting funded for Breathalyzer-like medical devices faster than ever....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamWe may never know how many half-thought-out, off-the-cuff mobile e-mail messages were either delayed or lost in the ether last night as Research In Motion’s BlackBerry service went unexpectedly dead for most users in the Western Hemisphere. The service outage began around 8 p.m. and lasted until around 10 a.m. this morning. Although RIM is still researching the cause of the incident, it seems certain that the failure was with the company’s own servers....

Media Platforms Design TeamDEATH VALLEY, Calif. — BMW’s 7 series wasn’t the only vehicle undergoing hot-weather here recently. Some even more important detective work shows this “X6,” a model that will fit nicely at the top of BMW’s range of SUVs. This prototype carries extensive cladding to hide its true shape and body lines, but that won’t stop us from examining these parts in detail.The X6, like the Mercedes-Benz R-Class, is more of a grand touring wagon than a full-fledged SUV meant for flinging dirt....

Elon Musk may want to terraform Mars with nukes, but that has nothing on the plans from the world’s greatest mind: Jose Canseco. The six time All-Star, one time MVP, former Rookie of the Year, and disgraced steroids user seems to be spending his retirement years doing more than challenging people to fights and shooting himself on accident. He has his eyes on terraforming Mars, and literally moving entire worlds to do it....

The French are already known for leading the world in nuclear power, and now they are venturing into a new and particularly French method of energy production: generating power from cheese. The renewable energy company Valbio has built a power plant in the French Alps that uses whey, a byproduct of cheese production, to generate enough energy to support a community of 1,500. That’s not quite enough energy to power the entire 18,000-person town of Albertville where the cheese plant is located, but it’s an impressive use of organic waste as an energy source....

On Wednesday, we’ll be in the future—well, the future that was imagined by Back to the Future Part II, the follow-up to the 1985 blockbuster, which sent Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) to October 21, 2015 to see what happened to Marty’s kids. A new Blu-ray and DVD Back to the Future trilogy box set came out Tuesday to commemorate the occasion, and there already has been months of online buzz about how accurate Part II was at depicting the world of 2015....

What’s the best engine for your boat? To answer this age-old question, we arranged with Steve Fleming at Mercury Marine and Chuck Thompson at Trophy to borrow three identical 2003 22-ft. Trophy Walkarounds, each powered by a different Mercury Marine engine/drive setup of roughly 135 hp and 200 ft.-lb. of torque.Media Platforms Design TeamGas SterndriveTrophy’s standard setup for its 2052 Walkaround is the MerCruiser 3.0L. This is an overhead-valve inline Four of 3....

It’s hot. Really hot. A wave of shimmering, sauna-hot air hits your face and takes your breath away as you open the door and settle into the car. Too bad there wasn’t a tree anywhere near this steamy, black asphalt parking lot. Who would think a car’s interior could get this hot?You immediately thumb the a/c controls and wait patiently for relief. A brief moment of warm air from those vents turns the sweat beading on your forehead into crunchy little salt tattoos....

Tell us about your project. Back in December 2013 I started tinkering with some time-lapse equipmentspecifically, the Dynamic Perception Stage One dolly and eMotimo TB3 motion controllerand modified the designs and code for optimized performance in remote shooting locations. I made a customized motion-controlled dolly system that moves a camera in three different axes. So it can tilt, it can pan, and it can dolly left or right on a track....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you stare into the azure waters of Lake Como long enough, you might believe anything is possible– and if you’re a automaker with a concept car, one of the most perfect places to share your fantastical train of thought is the Villa d’Este Concourso D’Eleganza, one of the world’s most exclusive classic car shows.Concepts and prototypes are one of Villa d’Este’s signature calling cards, and this year’s weekend event kicked off with MINI’s Superleggera Vision Concept pulling up to a small crowd under its own electric power....

Media Platforms Design TeamMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, commonly used to examine our brains, are now being used to study our batteries. Battery technology is increasingly important as engineers try to devise better ones to power our cars, phones, and pretty much everything else. That’s why Clare Grey, a professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, teamed up with NYU chemist Alexej Jerschow to develop a way of imaging batteries through MRI....

Shaped like a giant baseball bat, the 700-ton FLIP, or Floating Instrument Platform, is a Navy barge operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Once towed to a site, the vessel flips to vertical. “It was built in 1962 to refine acoustic targeting for submarine rockets, but scientists quickly realized that it would be useful for all kinds of research,” says Bill Gaines, FLIP’s program director. “So 45 years later, FLIP still serves the oceanographic community....