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Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: Spring 2013Price: $445,300Competitors: Audi R8 V10 Spyder, Ferrari 458 Italia Spider, McLaren MP4-12C SpiderPowertrains: 6.5-liter V-12, 691 hp, 509 lb-ft; seven-speed automated manual, AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 11/18What’s New: Unlike Lamborghini’s wedge-shaped Murcielago ragtop, which wore a cloth toupee that limited its top speed to a piddling 100 mph, the Aventador takes the techy route to open-air motoring. Two removable carbon-fiber panels stow in the front compartment, and a power-operated window now separates the cabin from the engine bay....

Roughen the hammer’s striking face with sandpaper—it’ll help prevent glancing blows that bend nails and often find your thumb.2. Chisel-shaped nail points tend to split the wood. To avoid the problem, blunt the sharp tip with your hammer. This way, the nail crushes the wood fibers and pushes them ahead rather than splitting them apart.3. You can set a common nail’s head below the surface without smashing the surrounding wood with your hammer—just use another nail....

I’m convinced some cars spew pheromones out their tailpipes that turn normal guys into morons—quick shifting, redline-running, speed addicted morons. The new 420-hp Audi RS 4 must pack heaping quantities of the most potent stuff around because we couldn’t keep our foot from planting the accelerator flat to the floor every time we slid behind the wheel of this sport sedan. Stoplight after stoplight and corner after corner, this car makes you do naughty things....

Media Platforms Design TeamStanford, which won the 2005 Grand Challenge with a self-driving Touareg, hasn’t revealed its new design.The rules of the DARPA Grand Challenge have changed. This November, 89 unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) will be unleashed on a peaceful mock city inhabited by mannequins and drone traffic. Unlike the 2005 contest’s desert racers, the driverless cars will now have to stay under the speed limit and obey traffic signals while merging, passing and parking....

Media Platforms Design TeamElon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), has always said that he wants his rockets and spacecraft to be fully reusable. That’s why it stoked our interest to see Musk tweet this recently: “Design completed for bringing rocket back to launchpad using only thrusters. Yay. Wings r just dead weight in space.“In a press release a few months ago, SpaceX had shown an animated simulation of a Falcon 9 that returned both its first and second stages all the way to land vertically at a recovery site....

Media Platforms Design TeamTalk about your architectural background, and how you came to be designing virtual buildings for games.When I was a kid I really loved to draw. I started drawing when I was 2 years old. When I went to school, I took architecture because it was one of the majors I could pick to utilize my drawing skill and passion, and also build something. I graduated and worked as an architect for 12 years....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/sP3BaiigImg?version=3&hl=en_US[/youtube]It looks like a UFO, flies without a pilot, and has ignited a debate over whether robots are the future of military aviation. Now the X-47B demonstrator drone is about to get some serious real-world testing.Yesterday the U.S. Navy released footage of its crews hoisting an X-47B, covered up like a Camaro going into storage for the winter, onto the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe have a crack in our foundation wall. Do we need to be concerned about it structurally? And could termites enter through it?Put it this way: A crack doesn’t have to create structural troubles for it to be a problem. Cracks are ugly, suspicious things that aren’t easy to fix, and even one that’s no more than a hairline could grow and create all kinds of difficulties. I would say any crack wider than 1/16 inch is a problem, especially if it admits water or increases in width or length, or if its faces grind against each other with changes in temperature and humidity....

Something funny happened on the way to the mass-produced, homogeneous future: Everything became customized, from pick-your-chip laptops to cheap, made-to-measure chinos. Handcrafted machinery, in particular, became all the rage, winning popularity, the respect of rich guys–even its own TV shows. In other words, the culture caught up to Popular Mechanics, where we’ve always appreciated the craft of metalworking. Jesse James isn’t just one of the country’s best-known bike builders, he’s one of the best....

Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: Flickr / Chris Drumm.Jonathan Nolan, fresh off writing Interstellar, will soon be manning another big sci-fi travel epic: a film adaptation of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov.Jonathan, the brother and collaborator of Christopher Nolan on Interstellar, the Dark Knight movies, and The Prestige, will adapt Asimov’s sprawling tale of interstellar empires, predictive mathematics, and the downfall of civilization. In the series, a group of mathematicians use expansive algorithms to predict the oncoming collapse of the Galactic Empire and work to prevent the worst effects of the collapse....

Media Platforms Design TeamEarlier today, Motorola launched the followup to its slow-selling Moto X: a cheaper sibling, the Moto G. Almost three months after launch of the Moto X, Motorola hopes to reach the untapped lower and midrange markets where its first Google-powered handset couldn’t reach. Although this is officially the “cheap” version of the Moto X, the Moto G isn’t a device to be taken lightly. The smartphone comes stock with Android 4....

Now, for baby boomers who have enough bucks, the Brunswick Boat Group has launched a new line of yachts. Named Meridian, the new line will consist of seven vessels, ranging in length from 35 to 60 ft., and will be introduced in the 2003 model year. We took a close look at two of the new boats–the 411 Sedan and the company’s flagship, the 580 Pilothouse–when we had the opportunity to motor in them around the island of Manhattan....

Media Platforms Design Team(Illustration courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)After months of meticulous planning and testing on earth, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory finally tried to drive the Mars Rover, Spirit, out of the sand trap in which it was mired. In a day, they buried it deeper.While this situation may present a conundrum for NASA engineers and scientists, getting stuck is old-hat for professional off-road racers like Ryan Arciero and Mark Miller, owners of Arciero-Miller Racing....

Media Platforms Design TeamSix years ago, The Onion ran a story called “United Airlines Exploring Viability Of Stacking Them Like Cordwood,” with “them” being a humorous refusal to even say the word “passenger.” Now Zodiac Seats France has actually come up with something that’s arguably worse, a seating configuration that looks like a covert way to get people to demand high speed trains, more Amtrak lines, more steam ships—whatever it takes to never, ever fly again....

The forecasters in mid-October of 2003 were worried. For more than a week, they had watched plumes of material arcing out over our star’s southeastern limb. Something on the far side of the Sun was venting vast plumes of plasma into space. Soon, the Sun’s rotation spun the culprit into view: It was a region of sunspots more than 13 times the diameter of the Earth, bubbling with volatile magnetic fields....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen you mix cornstarch with water, it forms a sticky goop with weird properties. When vibrated, the goop forms . You can and the hole won’t close immediately. And if you punch it the starchy liquid, instead of splashing like water, turns into a solid that’s —provided you don’t stop in the middle. writhing, fingerlike projectionspoke a hole in itstrong enough to walk onThis classic science-fair demo shows the power of a non-Newtonian fluid—a fluid that doesn’t obey the simple, logical laws described by Sir Isaac Newton....

Media Platforms Design TeamEver rub a balloon and stick it to a wall? If only larger objects could defy gravity the same way. Later this week, researchers from the non-profit group SRI International will unveil the design of a wall-climbing robot at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Pasadena, Calif. It can clamber up all common building materials, the scientists told Popular Mechanics—and proved it to us with this exclusive video:The as-yet-unnamed robot uses electro-adhesion to cling to the wall, generating electrostatic charges between the wall substrate and itself to keep from falling....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: Winter 2011Cost: $27,995–$38,995Competitors: Cadillac STS, Ford Taurus, Buick Lacrosse, Toyota AvalonPowertrains: 3.6-liter V6, 292 hp, 260 lb-ft; 5.7-liter V8, 363 hp, 394 lb-ft; 5-speed auto EPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): V6, 18/27; V8, 16/25; V8 AWD, 15/23 What’s New: With ambitious refinement targets (the Lexus LS460 among them), the new Chrysler 300 required all-new sheet metal and suspension components. In response to customer feedback, considerable attention was also paid to the interior materials and fit....

Scuderi Split-Cycle EngineMedia Platforms Design TeamThis seemingly conventional piston engine hides a radical operating cycle. A pair of pistons split the duties of a normal four-stroke engine. One piston compresses air while the other provides the power stroke. The compressed air travels through a transfer port to the power piston and the fuel is injected just after the piston crosses top dead center. After the fuel is injected, the dual spark plugs fire, and the resulting combustion pushes the piston through its stroke....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe PlayStation 4 launches this Friday, Nov. 15, but PopMech took the next-gen console for a brief test drive late last night. Let’s get this out of the way: The graphics are vivid, the performance is speedy, and the new controller is utterly impressive. The PS4 can go toe-to-toe with the best PC gaming rigs. If you’re thinking about ordering it on Black Friday but haven’t been convinced to drop $400, we can help make that choice....