Media Platforms Design Teamfrank wouters/FlickrTo really impress the mothers in your life this Mother’s Day, tackle a few home DIY projects that have been lingering on the to-do list. Chances are you’ve been promising Mom you’d take care of them sometime. Well, here’s your chance to make it up to her with five easy fixes that shouldn’t take more than a Sunday to complete. And when you’re done, treat her to dinner, okay?...
Media Platforms Design TeamSites such as Craigslist and eBay make it easier than ever for buyers and sellers to find one another, and one of their most popular categories is tools. Everything from hand tools to shop tools is represented. But how can you be sure you’re not buying a tool that has only a week to live? There are a few telltale signs to be on the lookout for.Don’t judge based on appearance: A filthy tool might look off-putting at first, but the reason it’s dirty might be that it hasn’t been used much....
No other gardening device has been the subject of such intense observation and improvement, over such a long period of time, as the humble wheelbarrow or its cousin, the garden cart. Both trace their origins to the dawn of wheeled transport, and no less a mechanical authority than Thomas Jefferson made notes, comments and sketches regarding their design. We don’t mean to get too snooty about this, but the name wheelbarrow is not a corrupted form of “wheeled barrel” as is sometimes speculated....
Media Platforms Design TeamDragonflies are ideal hunting machines. More than 80 percent of their brain is used for processing visual information, and it is believed that some species can see objects up to 30 feet away and detect movement as far as 60 feet away.And how do they direct these tremendous talents? Dragonflies hunt, and eat, a lot: They consume 10 percent to 15 percent of their own weight per day on insects such as mosquitoes, termites, deerflies, blackflies, horseflies and midges....
Media Platforms Design TeamBesides personal flying vehicles, it looks like there’s a focus on medical devicesnanorobots, robotic prostheses and so onon your show. Is that because medicine is of particular interest to you, or is that where a lot of the innovation is happening these days?I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to tell you that I can have no bias, but I have tried not to make all the field trips to places that I personally have a passion for....
Media Platforms Design TeamContinuing its pursuit of total world domination, Volkswagen revealed its Cross Blue concept today. With sales in the mid-size SUV market projected to grow as much as 20 percent by 2018 (so long, minivans), VW decided it needed a 4WD, 7-passenger of its own. According to VW, the Cross Blue concept was designed around the same powertrain as the Cross Coupe TDI hybrid concept, which was introduced in Geneva last year....
A quarter-century ago, it seemed like the space shuttle suddenly got a new sibling. On Nov. 15, 1988, the Buran reusable orbiter, the crowning achievement of the Soviet space program, made its first flight. It would prove to be the Buran’s last. But looking back 25 years later, some space experts say the USSR might have built a better shuttle, one that would have laid the groundwork for a new generation of launch vehicles, had it been able to weather the economic storms of the 1990s and the breakup of the Soviet Union....
The Federal Aviation Administration really, really wants people to quit flying drones around the famous landmarks and sensitive areas of our nation’s capital, and now it’s going further than trying to keep them away from the Capitol or the White House. FAA is declaring the entire Washington, D.C. area, and the area around Reagan airport, a “no drone zone.“The existing regulations put in place after 9/11 make a big chunk of Capitol Hill a no-fly zone....
Consumer flamethrowers are all the rage right now, and it has at least one city considering whether they should be legal.According to Ars Technica, a Troy, Michigan bill that’s been proposed in the face of flamethrower popularity would classify “storage, use, and possession of flamethrowers in the city” as a misdemeanor, punishable by a $500 fine, up to 90 days in jail, or both. Oh, and the flamethrower would be confiscated, of course....
That clicking noise that your front-wheel-drive car makes as you accelerate around low-speed righthand corners has been getting a little louder for weeks. One afternoon, just as you pull out of the parking lot, there’s a loud banging noise and a series of crunches. Then all forward thrust drops off, punctuated by vibration and the occasional ping of tortured metal. Your CV joint has failed.THEY DON’T MAKE THEM LIKE THAT ANYMOREThe wheels of your front-drive vehicle are connected to the transaxle via axles that have constant-velocity-type universal joints at each end....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe market is flooded with wireless speakers that will sync with your mobile devices via Bluetooth and stream songs to all the rooms of your home. But you don’t have to spend a few hundred bucks to get wireless sound. Take this DIY project by Instructables user treyes4: a solar-powered Bluetooth speaker hacked together from old USB-powered desktop speakers.This bright yellow sound box is just one of the cool submissions to the Instructables Gadget Hacking & Accessories Contest, for which Popular Mechanics is a media sponsor....
It’s a frosty, bright November morning in rural Minnesota, and the 60-ton battle tank is rumbling heartily, like a big metal cat ready for the hunt. My head is poking out of the driver’s hatch, beneath the 22-foot-long cannon barrel. This beast, an ’80s British Chieftain, was designed to tear up the toughest, most advanced armor the Soviet Union could throw into battle. Opposing me, 30 feet away, sits a 15-year-old Ford Probe....
Media Platforms Design TeamI use the keyboard shortcuts for cut, paste, and copy all the time on my computer. They’re real timesavers, and I’d love to have a lot more of them. Is there any way to make my own shortcuts with my operating system? Windows makes the process a bit tricky. But, with some free software, it’s possible to give nearly any menu-item command in any program a keyboard shortcut....
Media Platforms Design TeamQ:About half the plants we put in the ground last year don’t look very healthy. Many of them appear dead or severely winter damaged. Some came with a warranty. Others didn’t. Looks like I’m out some cash and have to replant. Advice is welcome. A: It was a tough winter, but the good news is that correct care can help shrubs, trees and flowers bounce back and thrive in the growing season ahead....
Type in the driving directions. Tap “enter.” The code flies across the cosmos toward Mars. Minutes later, the signal arrives at the rover standing alert on the planet’s surface. The plucky bot decodes the instructions to drive a meter or two that-a-way, in the direction of an interesting-looking rock. Agreeably, it rolls. And then the robot sits just there, as if thinking “now what?” as it waits for the next signal from home base....
PORSCHE CAYENNE S - First ReportMedia Platforms Design TeamTo us it seemed sacrilege: a Porsche sport utility vehicle. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. Surely Dr. Porsche would be spinning in his grave. We mean, Porsches have to have only two doors, right? And they have to be available as coupe as well as convertible. They’re meant to race, to carve canyon roads, to destroy records at Le Mans and the Nurburgring....
Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeNot geniuses.Smartphones are in vogue and then forgotten, but vandalism never goes out of style.Perhaps it was the natural outgrowth of the freakout about “bendghazi,” but it seems that walking into an Apple Store and trying to bend the iPhone 6 Plus has now become a thing for teenagers and the generally immature. YouTube clips have surfaced; Business Insider ran a first-person account by someone who did this....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe sign at the entrance to the Mojave Air and Space Port says “imagination flies here.” The motto fits this collection of World War II–era hangars and outbuildings with two control towers and four airstrips in the middle of the California Desert.In 2004, the airport became a spaceport when a three-seat rocket-powered airplane built by a company called Scaled Composites and designed by its founder and CEO Burt Rutan became the first civilian-built craft to leave Earth’s atmosphere....
Scientists knew they could use solar energy to create hydrogen, which could then be used in fuel cells. But that’s a problem when you’re thinking about powering vehicles, because hydrogen power has been so slow to catch on. Now, Harvard researchers have found a way to convert solar power into liquid fuel. Essentially, an “artificial leaf” uses sunlight to break down water into its constituents hydrogen and oxygen. From there, bacteria in the leaf take over, pairing the hydrogen with carbon dioxide to create isopropanol liquid fuel....
Media Platforms Design TeamEven though the home-built “bearcat” roadster or other favorite model does not compare in every detail with the luxurious manufactured cars, it has an individuality that puts it in a class by itself. The amateur mechanic, or the ambitious boy who is fairly skilled with tools, can build at least the main parts for his own small car of the simple, practical design shown in the sketch and detailed in the working drawings....
