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The ballooning strategy Carl uses in UP, called cluster ballooning, first started in 1937 and is gaining popularity today. (The MythBusters even devoted a segment to it.) Balloonists sit in a harness that is connected to a bouquet of helium-filled balloons and take off, sometimes reaching altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet and traveling farther than 100 miles. The aviator ascends by adding more balloons and descends by releasing or popping balloons with darts, BB guns or other projectiles....

Media Platforms Design TeamPlumbers can be grumpy, your home center’s plumbing aisle can be totally confusing and sometimes projects in the bathroom or around the kitchen can just be downright grimy. Here’s how to fix those creaks and drips without breaking a sweat. —Roy Berendsohn1. Drip, Take 2 There’s still hope if, after making a repair to a creaky old valve, you get a small drip around its handle stem. Wind a little graphite or Teflon stem packing material around the stem....

Media Platforms Design TeamAmerican teenagers want to invent the solutions that power our future, but feel unprepared by science education—and their newest test scores are backing up that sad state of affairs. All of which has MythBuster and Popular Mechanics contributing editor Adam Savage pretty fired up.Somewhere between tackling lunar conspiracy theories on TV and proposing how to make science classrooms more hands-on for PM last week, then balancing a gagged MythBusters episode on RFID security and a new episode on viral video at 9 p....

Media Platforms Design TeamLOS ANGELES — Mazda is using its booth here to show off the winner of the Mazda Design Challenge, a contest with Facebook that enables a regular Joe (or Josephine) to design and execute the construction of a 2018 Mazda3 concept. The twist here is that winner Mallory McMorrow, an industrial design student at the University of Notre Dame, gets to see her vehicle take shape throughout the duration of the L....

Q: What do you think about the need to perform buffing of alloy wheels, at $25.00/wheel to stop slow leaks from tires? The tires on my 1998 Honda Accord are about 17 months old, and have been driven about 10K miles. The two rear tires developed slow leaks that required reinflating to normal pressure about once a month, so I took the car in to my tire dealer. He advised me that they only did free repairs for a tire problem, and if it was a wheel problem they charge for buffing the wheel bead contact area to remove corrosion....

Media Platforms Design TeamI started by tacking one side of the frame together. Notice the framing square next to the tubing to make sure it all goes together straight. Media Platforms Design TeamThen I welded the two halves completely.Media Platforms Design TeamWith the two frame halves welded, I added the crossbars.Media Platforms Design TeamThe completed frame.Media Platforms Design TeamThe box got its ends welded on first to minimize distortion.Media Platforms Design TeamI cleaned up the slag the flux-cored wire feed welder left behind with a 4" angle grinder....

Checking up on your coolant is easy to forget, but an engine’s coolant is just as important as oil when it comes to your car. Coolant does raises the boiling point of the cooling system in summer, lowers the freezing point in winter, and protects the engine and cooling system from corrosion. These functions keep the engine from overheating or freezing when driving in extreme climates.Coolant needs changing because chemicals in the coolant break down and become less effective over time....

Google researchers have developed an algorithm that fills in gaps between images and stitches together stills from Google Street View to create fluid video. Called DeepStereo, the deep learning tool overcomes a common difficulty in image rendering: not being able to predict what’s hidden from view in an existing frame. This algorithm is able to analyze each pixel of the previous and subsequent frames to make an educated guess, all while blurring detail in order to synthesize new scenes that flow just like actual footage....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Damp Crawlspace Dry-OutCobwebbed and claustrophobic, crawlspaces are awful places to work–yet they may hold the key to improving your home’s indoor environment. Many dirt-floored crawlspaces lack a vapor barrier (polyethylene sheeting at least 6 mils thick), allowing moisture to seep into the insulation and wood overhead. Hello, mold and mildew. The fix: Unroll the sheet inside the crawlspace and cut it to fit, leaving an extra 6 inches at each wall....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Corrado Cimarelli and Ulrich Kueppers were working on their experimental volcano, they weren’t expecting the plume to contain lightning. But they managed to capture their experiment creating its own electrical discharges, the first time that phenomenon has ever been seen in a lab.Their jet of highly pressurized gas and ash mimics the behavior of a natural volcanic plume, albeit on a much smaller and more contained scale....

Media Platforms Design TeamPut away those night-vision goggles. FLIR, a leading manufacturer of infrared sensors, has married a smartphone to its state-of-the-art thermal camera in a concept it displayed at last week’s in Washington, D.C. Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) expoThe idea behind the eye-catching device, CEO Andrew Teich says, is to demonstrate the company’s new line of miniature Quark camera cores. But he does not rule out the possibility of turning the prototype into a real consumer gadget and giving consumers the chance to take IR pictures with their phones....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: TIGHAR)You’re looking a piece of one of the biggest mysteries in aviations history. Aviation investigators now say they are near-certain this chunk of metal came from Amelia Earhart’s plane.The scrap of aluminum was first found by the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) in 1991. It didn’t seem to fit in with the missing plane, though, as it didn’t match the materials from her Model 10 Electra....

Media Platforms Design TeamTweaky Fire AlarmsThe International Space Station crew has been plagued by false alarms. An investigation discovered the cause of several false fire alarms on the ISS, citing dust contamination as the likely cause. “Dust contamination in a smoke detector was the likely cause of the smoke detectors sensing a false fire,” the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) states. “Without ventilation, these false indications will not clear, so in the event of a false alarm, smoke detectors will be inhibited until ventilation is restored....

Media Platforms Design TeamCINEMA SCOPE: Behind the lens of this Panavision Genesis camera is an image sensor. It captures 12.4 megapixels of image and color information and turns it into movie magic. (Photograph by Kyle Christy)* PM Special: Digital Hollywood* Top 10 F/X Scenes in Movie History* Bringing the Theater Home* The Digital Movie Pipeline* Digital Hollywood Trailers: Watch the Story* PODCAST: Film is Dead, Long Live the MoviesChris Watts has never worked with a wolf before....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: NASA Langley Research Center)A Bespin-like Cloud City could be coming to Venus. NASA researchers Dale Arney and Chris Jones are busy on a proposal for the next steps for human space flight, and they think that the next step should be the second planet from the sun.Venus is typically viewed as a sulfurous hellscape that would boil us all alive. And on the surface, at least, that’s true....

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence claims they have a bot that can pass the SAT math test. This includes those dreaded word problems. The upside: with a score of 500 out of 800, GeoS is not exactly headed to MIT or off to a job at JPL. The machine was able to interpret diagrams and geometric shapes, as well as use natural language processing to read over the question. From there, it processes something of an answer, then has to compare it to the available answers in order to produce a final response....

Friday was a proud day for all of us here at PopMech, as the magazine received two gold medals from the Society for Publication Designers (SPD): one for the November 2012 issue of our iPad app for best general interest app and another for our June 2012 feature “Fixing the World’s Most Complicated Plane,” which won for best designed feature in a tablet (here’s the web version of that story).PM was also proud of our four other nominations....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowBase Price: $105,700Competitors: BMW M6 Gran Coupe, Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG, Porsche Panamera Turbo, Jaguar XFR-SPowertrain: 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, 560 hp, 516 lb-ft, eight-speedFuel Economy (city/hwy): 16/27What’s New: The new RS7 signals that Audi has finally joined the club of the power-mad sport sedans. In fact, this car could be club president: Under the hood of the RS7 is a twin-turbo V-8 pumped up to obscene levels of power and torque....

Media Platforms Design TeamQ: How do I remove the valve cover on the driver side of my 1996 Chevy pickup truck 5.7 engine?A: From the shop manual: 1. Disconnect the battery negative cable assembly from the battery negative terminal. 2. Remove the spark plug wires. 3. Disconnect the wiring harness from the clips, and move aside. 4. Remove the following components for access to the right valve rocker arm cover: o The crankcase vent hose....

Media Platforms Design TeamChimps are just like us. They hate drones as much as we do. But without a gun to shoot them out of the air, they’ll have to make due with what they have. In April, a chimp knocked a drone out of the air. This shows that chimps are great and totally related to us, more or less tidily summing up that Darwin was right and we share a common ancestor....