Posts

The new Master Ultra Thin Squelette by Jaeger-Lecoultre (a mouthful, I know) is not just a masterpiece of a mechanical watch, complete with jaw-dropping Swiss-made mechanisms that are so tiny as to be almost beyond belief. It is also the new thinnest mechanical watch in the world, with a nutso-thin profile of just 3.6 millimeters. The Master Ultra Thin Squelette (I just can’t get enough of that name) just narrowly eeks its way into the title, beating the previous champion, the Piaget Altiplano 900PPiaget Altiplano 900P, by just ....

The MachinistReader: Pat DelanyHometown: Palestine, TexasMaterials: $10,000Time: Four yearsResult: A junkyard creation that could help developing nations develop faster.* See Multimachine Runners Up* Submit Your Own DIY ProjectTalk about recycling: Pat Delany of Palestine, Texas, transformed two old car-engine blocks and a hodgepodge of other castaway auto and machine parts into a mini machine shop. The 1000-pound contraption serves as an end mill, horizontal mill, drill press, sander, grinder, sheetmetal spinner, and as a metal or wood lathe and saw....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Enterprise in its former home. Images: Smithsonian.The original USS Enterprise model from Star Trek is being restored in anticipation of its big move from the basement gift shop of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to the main entrance.The original model Enterprise was delivered to Desilu studios on December 29, 1964, for the filming of the original pilot episode, “The Cage.” It was donated to the museum in 1974....

Lawn tractors really take the work out of lawn care–and under the right conditions, they can last a generation or more. They do need regular maintenance, however. Mechanically, they’re just complicated enough to develop serious problems if you don’t take care of them. While it’s a good idea to have a tractor professionally serviced every few years, big gains in performance and longevity can be achieved at home with simple backyard tuneups....

Media Platforms Design TeamTransformers: Revenge of the Fallen Two-Disc Special Edition (2009)Media Platforms Design TeamBigger! Louder! Longer! All of these adjectives and more could be used to quite accurately describe Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay’s $200 million, 150-minute follow-up to his 2007 “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots” flick, Transformers. It’s no secret that Bay demands things to be awesome and T:RotF delivers more Baysplosions and CGI Bayhem than ever Bayfore....

If a spacecraft keeps chugging along for long enough, eventually it may find something startling. Ulysses, a satellite operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, has been observing solar wind–charged particles ejected by the sun’s upper atmosphere–since its launch in 1990. It’s been around long enough to see two solar minimums, when the sun’s radiation reaches the lowest point in an 11-year cycle, and a solar maximum, when the sun spouts sunspots and spews its highest level of radiation....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe future of wind energy is out to sea. For the United States to reach ambitious goals for tapping the energy—the Department of Energy estimates that wind could provide 20 percent of American energy by 2030—wind farms may need to go places where the wind blows steadily—and where there are no people to complain about turbines ruining the view from their veranda.Offshore wind farms are already popular in Europe, and they’re garnering major interest by U....

Media Platforms Design TeamCan you tell me a little about your team?The vast majority of our team comes from the Fire Protection Engineering Department. We heard about the competition a little over a year ago and decided to do a little bit of research and see if we could make something out of it. Fire Protection Engineering is a discipline that focuses on understanding firehow it starts, how it grows, and how it can be extinguishedwith the intention of better protecting lives and property from its damages....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou can count on PopChartLab for a good comprehensive diagram. We loved the company’s beautiful poster explaining every kind of hand tool, and they’ve done something similar for the kinds of beer and the buildings of New York City. Now there’s a new one out explaining 121 different kinds of American houses, a godsend for people who couldn’t tell organic from postmodern to save their lives—or who just like staring at lovely charts....

When the vinyl siding on your house starts getting all gross and mucky, there are a few ways to deal with it. You can go hunt down a power washer, or you can get in touch with your inner alchemist and whip up a homemade bleach or vinegar cleaning solution. But there’s another option too, as Chris Hayes demonstrates. Grab some Scrubbing Bubbles from underneath the bathroom sink and just go to town....

Media Platforms Design TeamQ: A friend of mine told me that I should always disconnect the positive terminal of the battery first to keep the electricity from spilling out of the battery. I can’t see how this would matter. I just unhook whichever terminal is closest first. I’ve never noticed any spilled electricity, and I think he’s just pulling my leg.A: Let me relate something that happened to a friend of mine, a dentist by trade who likes to work on his sports car occasionally....

With The Force Awakens shattering box office records, taking in over a half billion dollars in its opening weekend, the fashion world has also been turned upside down, thanks to these DIY BB-8 high heels.Instructables member mikeasaurus lays out the 25-step process for creating your own pair of BB-B heels. The main innovation? Drilling a bolt through the center of the heel, allowing the BB-8 droid to spin, like so:Media Platforms Design TeamFor those that are feeling a bit nostalgic (or just haven’t seen The Force Awakens yet, and don’t want to spoil the experience with new footwear), not to worry: mikeasaurus also has a set of DIY plans to creates R2-D2 heels....

Media Platforms Design TeamMAZDA ZOOMS AGAIN Does Mazda really need a third sports car in its lineup? Well, if that sports car looks anything like the Kabura Concept, we say yes. The Kabura is essentially a mix between the MX-5 Miata and the RX-8 under the sheetmetal. But, oh, what sheetmetal. This is one of the sexiest concepts at Detroit so far (the models aren’t bad either). The Miata’s inline Four provides the juice for this concept....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe average nightclub, with sound systems pumping and lights blazing three times a week, consumes 150 times more energy than a four-person family every year, according to Enviu, an environmental non-profit organization that’s bringing green design to the dance floor—literally. The Netherlands-based group’s research into sustainable partying has yielded plans for the world’s first eco-club, which will use some fancy physics footwork to pump its dancers’ energy back in to the house....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe story may sound familiar: primitive human survives, adapts, uses tools, makes fire, advanced human beings emerge. That’s evolution, right?Stephen Cunnane of Sherbrooke University has a different idea of how evolution works. In a presentation at the AAAS conference in St. Louis last week, Cunnane proposed that humans evolved through expatiation rather than adaptation—in other words, luck.Cunnane points to a “shoreline diet” as the reason for human evolution....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat is so special about the airplane? Solar Impulse is an airplane built from carbon fiber with the wingspan of a jumbo jet (210 feet), and it’s as light as a small car. It is so energy-efficient that it can fly day and night without any fuel, the sun giving enough energy to simultaneously run the four electrical engines and load the batteries during the day in order to be able to fly through the night to the next sunrise and to continue on to the next day....

Thanks to some fluid dynamics experts at Princeton and École Normale Superieure de Cachan, we now know the answer to one of life’s great mysteries: Why don’t beer spill as easily as water? Turns out, you can thank the foam Essentially, the foam acts as a buffer, grabbing on to the sides of the glass and making sure the liquids don’t spill over the rim. The same sort of action works on a foam latte and other such drinks....

Media Platforms Design TeamFederal investigators want to know why a 3-week-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire in Boston on Monday morning. It was the most recent in a spate of high-profile scares for the 787, and potentially another setback for Boeing’s most advanced—but heavily delayed—airliner.Passengers had just gotten off the Japan Airlines jet after arrival from Tokyo when a mechanic performing a post-flight walk-around noticed smoke inside the cabin and pouring out of a rear underbelly cargo door....

Media Platforms Design TeamHubble Goes High Def to Revisit the Iconic ‘Pillars of Creation’ (Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))The Hubble Space Telescope has revisited one of the most iconic space images ever made, and oh, what a difference 20 years makes.A new Hubble image of the Eagle Nebula shows changes in the so-called Pillars of Creation that have occurred as the dense gases shifted around since Hubble captured the stunning original image in 1995....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom theSteve Jobs keynotecompetitor fearsfanboy prognosticationsmartphone reviewSamsung Instinctyellow screen business to the and the , Apple’s new 3G iPhone has promised to be more powerful, faster and better than its first-gen predecessor in every way. But is it really? And how does the new mobile powerhouse compare with alternatives to the iPhone 3G? We’ve now spent hours in the PM lab running the super gadget through our rigorous gamut, matching it up against the original iPhone and the touchscreen (Sprint’s best-selling 3G device)....