Even though solar-panel chargers have been around awhile, it still feels pretty futuristic to plug a phone into something drawing power from the sun. What feels even more futuristic is plugging it into a solar charger that actually works: the Solartab.Many solar-powered chargers are too puny to make much of a dent in refilling a phone or tablet’s battery life. Either their capacity is too low, their output is too weak, or both....
Justin MartinN. Ferrisburgh, VT.Age: 31Years on Job: 12 Justin Martin never planned to build boats for a living. After high school, he took a summer job working with his older brother constructing composite canoes. Twelve years later, Martin is a head builder at Adirondack Guideboat, which specializes in a rugged boat that’s light enough to be portaged but large enough to carry three men, two dogs and a hunting bounty. In addition to the company’s legendary custom-built wooden guideboats, Martin and his brothers churn out more than 200 Kevlar boats each year....
Media Platforms Design TeamBuilt to the specifications in our December 1927 issue, this electric floor scrubber could hold a quart of “hot soapsuds.“Seventy-nine years ago this month, PM featured amateur mechanic Arthur Capron’s plans for an electric floor scrubber. Making this homemade, plug-in scrubber would have been no small feat — Capron’s plans required two interlocking brushes, a small motor, a shaft of “cold-rolled steel,” a rubber splash guard and a casing made from a cast-iron kitchen saucepan....
From the front, the old brick mill in Middlebury, Vt., looks like any of the other quaint buildings lining the town’s main street. But inside, through yawning gaps in a patchwork floor of long, narrow planks, the gray-green waters of Otter Creek can be seen churning toward a 23-ft. waterfall. Anchored to a stone bridge above the river, the building once had a mill wheel that drove wool-processing equipment; later, a penstock carried water to a turbine, generating electricity for the town’s streetlights....
Media Platforms Design TeamMars owes its dry and dusty appearance to its wispy atmosphere, less than 1 percent of the thickness of the Earth’s. But it wasn’t always that way: The Red Planet formerly had a much thicker atmosphere that probably allowed for liquid water on the surface, an atmosphere that was depleted when the planet’s magnetic field faded away. What the heck happened? Planetary scientists have been wondering for years, but NASA is hoping to use tools aboard a new orbiting spacecraft called MAVEN to figure out what changed on Mars, and why it lost the water we now know it had as a younger planet....
Media Platforms Design TeamPrice: $18 to $22Price Difference Relative to Similar Products: Same as, or up to $9 more, depending on product specifics.Description: Look around someplace where people are building things and you’ll see a carpenter wearing a big sidesaddle tool belt. Those are great for construction projects, but they’re overkill for small jobs such as wiring a handful of light switches. For that you need a belt that’s compact, light, and tough....
Media Platforms Design TeamScience fiction lovers, rejoice. Isaac Asimov—one of the greatest and most prolific sci-fi writers of all time—is still publishing. His longtime friend, Arthur Obermayer, has just uncovered Asimov’s 55-year-old meditation on how to nurture creativity and published it.Asimov’s publication is an essay he wrote in 1959 for a group funded by DARPA (when it was called just ARPA) that sought his help in brainstorming creative ways to design ballistic missile defense systems....
PandoraMedia Platforms Design TeamUsers of this Java-based player enter a song or artist that they like. Then, Pandora creates a streaming “channel” based on the selection. For each new song, users can vote thumbs up or down–and such responses from the user refine future selections. Pandora has a library of more than 500,000 songs and adds up to 15,000 new songs every month. Basic service is free, but an adfree version costs $36 a year....
Media Platforms Design Team Monte Carlo, Monaco – Money may not necessarily buy you love, but on these diamond-plated streets, it’s crystal clear that it will get you just about anything else. Welcome to Monaco. The dinged and filthy Bugatti Veyron parked carelessly in front of a curbside store cements the point. Luckily, our 2010 Audi S5 Cabriolet exempts us from competition with the jealous eyes of the automotive Joneses–money can’t buy what doesn’t yet exist in dealerships....
Media Platforms Design Team NEW YORK — Imagine, if you will, a rear-drive sporty coupe powered by a 212-hp (223 hp on premium fuel) turbocharged 2.0-liter four-banger with 217 lb.-ft. of torque. Sounds like great fun. But then you realize it’s a Hyundai. What’s this? Hyundai is not exactly known for building fun-to-drive rides. And then you find that there’s a 306-hp (310 on premium) 3.8-liter V6 with 263 lb.-ft. of torque to be had as well....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: Mid-December 2012Price: $24,995 to $31,180Competitors: Acura ILX Hybrid, Ford C-Max, Honda Civic Hybrid, Honda Insight, Lexus CT200H, Toyota Prius, Toyota Prius VPowertrains: 1.4-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder, 150 hp, 184 lb. ft.; electric motor, 27 hp, 114 lb. ft.; combined system output: 170 hp, 184 lb. ft.EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 42/46 (est.)What’s New: The hybrid Jetta adds a fifth player to VW’s compact sedan roster. It’s VW’s second hybrid, after the Touareg crossover, but represents a much different engineering approach....
Media Platforms Design TeamWith the space shuttle program set for retirement, there’s no way for NASA to send astronauts into Earth orbit anytime soon other than booking rides with the Russians at tens of millions of dollars per seat. Congress allowed NASA to start to use the burgeoning private space industry for crew transport to the International Space Station, but it mandated that NASA develop its own heavy-lift rocket system capable of going there, to the moon or beyond to drive human spaceflight in the long term....
Media Platforms Design TeamIf you use your bike to commute to work in the late fall and winter, lights are essential. Light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs, have made riding at night more accessible for virtually every rider. The advantages of LED lights over comparable halogen lights—including less energy consumption, longer lifetime, smaller size, and relatively low cost—make them the perfect option for cyclists craving more time in the saddle.“You want to be seen, to put out a light bigger than you are,” says Scott Irons, owner of acclaimed local bike shop Indy Cycle Specialist in Indianapolis....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe day you look across the airplane aisle and see someone with VR goggles strapped to their head will come sooner than you expect. Today, Samsung is releasing the Gear VR headset, a $199 pair of virtual reality goggles. Unlike the Oculus Rift or Sony’s Project Morpheus headsets, you can really, truly buy one today.Samsung’s device was designed in collaboration with Oculus, which showed the world that virtual reality was finally good enough to be useful, and potentially really fun....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Shanghai Motor Show is just around the corner (which organizers claim will be the largest in the world by square footage) and Ford has announced a new engine debuting on their show stand. The 1.5-liter Ecoboost four-cylinder will be the fifth engine to wear the combination of technologies and branding efforts that fall under the Ecoboost label. From a technology standpoint, it pushes efficiency even further by reducing friction and pumping losses....
Media Platforms Design TeamGENEVA — If you were able to wander freely about the halls of the cavernous Palais des Expositions here this week, as we were, you would have seen a staggering array of automotive design from quirky to beautiful, powered by everything from tiny three-cylinder diesel engines and gas-electric hybrids right on up to the 620-hp Corvette ZR1. The Geneva show is always a special one because because it draws the smallest specialty builders along with the European, American and Japanese giants—not to mention the Big Two from Korea and the emerging Chinese and Indian carmakers....
Door DetailsMedia Platforms Design Team(Illustration by Merce Iglesias)The torsion spring, not the operator (or motor), does the heavy lifting. Aesthetics aside, the big changes in today’s 300-pound steel doors are in insulation. Tighter perimeter seals and sandwiched polyurethane panels get some doors’ U-factors, which measure resistance to heat flow and air infiltration, down as low as 0.2. A door under 0.3 qualifies for a 2010 tax credit of up to $1500....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: NowPrice: $349 for 16GB, $399 for 32GBI’m usually a decisive person. Over easy is better than scrambled. Hockey over basketball. Kirk over Picard. But not when it comes to smartphones. For five years, I’ve been planted in two ecosystems, Android and iOS. I have a Google Play and iTunes account, each filled with games, movies, and apps. It’s not smart, and definitely not cost effective....
On May 4, 2007, the town of Greensburg, Kan., disappeared. Scott Reinecke, a 45-year-old who ran an auto-repair shop in town, got home from work a few hours before it happened. According to the TV news, there were thunderstorms accompanied by small tornadoes 25 miles to the south. That was nothing unusual for rural Kansas in spring. Still, he had a funny feeling.Reinecke put on his work boots, collected flashlights, documents, food and water, and brought them all down to the basement....
Do you recall the eventual look of guilt and horror on Richard Attenborough’s face? In one look, the late great actor conveyed the weight of the guilt that John Hammond—the genius scientist, entrepreneur, and impresario at the center of 1993’s Jurassic Park—felt when he finally saw the result of his hubris. He should have left the dino DNA in amber. Unleashing it into the world, even if his intentions were mostly benign, was a grave error....
