Posts

Media Platforms Design TeamWASHINGTON— It’s a well-known rule of thumb in military circles: protection from the things that scare the Pentagon receive R&D money. So early next year, when the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Office of Transition releases requests for proposals to fund its programs, the information will highlight the things that spook the Navy. The office’s programs have a shelf life of five years, with an expectation that deliverable products will reach the fleet by the end of that time....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a question many drivers face on their way to work every day: to swerve or not to swerve? Should you veer out of a giant pothole’s way and play chicken with oncoming traffic, or stay the course and risk a flat tire, a bent rim or steering misalignment? Those of us who don’t possess the driving finesse to align those craters between our wheels could end up paying hundreds of dollars per year in damages caused by potholes....

border=“0” cellpadding=“0” cellspacing=“0”>Media Platforms Design TeamDyson DC-24 Vacuum ($400) purports to bring effortless zigzagging. In tests, we maneuvered it around furniture and accessed tight spaces that had previously required a DustBuster. And while the ball has popped up in previous Dysons, none has been this compact (it has a closet-friendly footprint and its 11.6 pounds are easy to lug up stairs). No, it’s not cheap, but if it actually entices you to clean your house, it could very well pay for itself....

After all the build-up and speculation, Apple will make its first foray into an iTunes store sans DRM (digital rights management) in May. Now that Steve Jobs has made two wishes come true—the “interoperability” of online music without the chokehold of the recording industry, and the “leapfrog” capabilities of cellphones with, well, everything (though those iPhone plans making the rounds are apparently an April Fools Joke)—how far away can the Leopard operating system be?...

Media Platforms Design Team(Credit: All Photos By NASA/JPL)One hundred and fifty miles outside San Francisco, a reprieve to the city’s crippling water crisis could be falling from the sky right now: snow. When it eventually melts in the spring, the snowpack that piles up in the Tuolumne River Basin in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains will collect in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir before being doled out in San Francisco, directly determining just how much water will be available for every shower, lawn, and carbon-neutral backyard chicken coop in the city....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’ve had a hectic day so far here in Las Vegas, preparing our 2006 Editor’s Choice Awards. These are some of the best and brightest products at CES. Unfortunately, this takes up gobs of time. Until this is ready, we’ll give you a taste of what we’ve been seeing.Wish we could be more excited about some of the product launches we heard about yesterday. Not that it wasn’t impressive technology, but there was a kind of sameness to the offerings....

Some of us were lucky enough to have a swing or a tree house growing up, but definitely not a roller coaster. That’s what Will Pemble, a father of two, built for his kids in the backyard of his San Francisco home.Although it doesn’t climb hundreds of feet into the air, it’s thrilling enough for his young children, aged 10 and 12. Pemble built the backyard coaster using PVC, wood, and steel....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis weekend 66 high school teams from the tri-state area, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, and the U.K. came together to compete in the New York City . PopMech stopped by the Javits Center in Manhattan to check out the competition and see what approaches the students took to meet the challenge.FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics CompetitionThe 2014 edition of the high school robotic Olympics asked kids to build machines that could compete in a hybrid hockey/volleyball game....

Read Davin Coburn’s flying blog and listen to him discuss his adventure.Listen to Davin Coburn adventure as he describes it on the Popular Mechanics Show (podcast).powered by ODEOSubscribe:Media Platforms Design Team Media Platforms Design Team Download MP3. We’re off the ground early, seven ultralight kite wings climbing from an airstrip outside Tucson, Ariz., and banking into the sunrise. There are no canopies on our aircraft, which are basically just go-karts bolted to hang gliders–with engines in the back....

Media Platforms Design TeamTIKRIT, Iraq — It never even hits the radar screen. For the troops on the front lines and the colonels in the rear—and just about everyone in between—the big news in Iraq every day is that they’re still alive and healthy. When it comes to Senate votes on the U.S. presence in Iraq, Sunday talk shows thrashing out length of deployment and stateside pundits talking to themselves, nearly every grunt, airman, sailor, soldier and Marine I speak with just doesn’t care....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by stevendepolo via Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons license)Flour-flinging bands of hoodlums roamed the streets of Washington, D.C., on Halloween in 1894, casting so much flour on personal property that “some of the streets looked as if there had been a fall of snow, and the pedestrian who reached home with his garments uninjured considered himself fortunate,” the New York Times reported. Such incidents of “rowdyism” still occur every year on Halloween, although the authorities have stepped up the enforcement game a bit–police in Charleston, W....

Media Platforms Design TeamA. Engine CoolingA 26-inch mechanically driven fan can move as much as 10,000 cubic feet of air per minute (CFM). The 1500 uses a 19-inch electric fan that flows only 3,905 CFM.B. TransmissionThe Aisin AS69RC transmission is unique to the High-Output Cummins models. Its gear ratios are extra wide, because with 850 lb-ft of torque you can get away with less frequent shifting.C. DriveshaftThe 3500’s driveshaft weighs 78 pounds, which is more than three times as heavy as a Ram 1500’s....

Rain. Incessant rain. This morning I skied in Southern Vermont at Okemo, part of a press trip organized by the Vermont Ski Areas Association. It was supposed to be a three-day trip, but after 90-minutes of slushing around in the pouring, 40-degree rain, it turned into a 90-minute trip. If this is global warming, the northeast ski industry has plenty of reason to worry. Depending on the resort, business at Vermont resorts is down 20-30% this season....

Media Platforms Design TeamAnti-tank trenches have an obvious purpose, and one that they can usually pull off. But some tanks—like the Leopard 2 here—can make short work of a trench like it’s no more than a drainage ditch. There’s not a whole ton of available info as to what exactly is going on in this clip Foxtrot Alpha dug up, but the video mostly speaks for itself. If it gets caught in a trench, the Leopard 2 can just plow its way right out....

Super Bowl Power Outage, 2013With the world watching, half of the lights in the Superdome went dark in New Orleans during Super Bowl XLVII. Early in the third quarter, with the Baltimore Ravens dominating the San Francisco 49ers 28-6, a power surge into the 73,000-seat Superdome knocked out the power and delayed the game 34 minutes. During the break players meandered around, not allowed to leave the field.As of Sunday evening, “stadium authorities are investigating the cause of the power outage,” according to a statement from the NFL....

Media Platforms Design TeamMediated Matters, MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and MIT’s Glass Lab have teamed up to create something quite cool, even if it runs at 1,900°F.Using the foundations of 3D printing and applying them to the ancient art of glass production, the team at MIT has created a glass printing machine called G3DP. The machine works like this: the upper part is essentially a kiln, where glass is loaded in and heated up to 1,900°F....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy retire as director now?The impetus was this really disastrous last year where we had to put the telescopes in hibernation for a number of months until we could find a new partner to operate the array. This just highlighted how fragile the funding for the Allen Telescope Array and SETI research really is. It’s time for me to deliver on a promise, which is by the end of my career to establish a stable funding source for SETI research....

Most cars on the road today use a specific type of engine: a four-stroke piston engine. These engines can get somewhat complicated, and because they’re usually built out of metal it can be tough to see what’s going on. The folks over at Warped Perception have come up with a clever solution to this problem by building an engine with a clear cylinder head.In the video above, the team builds a piston engine and fires it up while filming it in super slow motion....

After blasting the Northeast with 80-mile-per-hour winds, Hurricane Sandy has left 6 million people without power. Last year, Hurricane Irene knocked out power to 7.4 million homes, and a freak Halloween storm left 90 percent of Connecticut in the dark for almost a week. With so many storms wreaking havoc on our power grid, why not put power lines underground?Fallen trees, snow, and ice are major causes of power outages, so putting electrical infrastructure underground means customers have fewer service interruptions....

Partway through cleaning her Austin, Texas, home last spring, Ashley Menger encountered an eco-riddle: How do you throw away an old garbage can? “I left it by the curb for days, but the garbagemen wouldn’t take it,” recalls the 31-year-old design analyst. “They thought it was just another can.” She eventually got rid of the relic by taking it to Goodwill, but the episode made her think about her dependence on the convenient round bin....