June 29, 2009 @ 12:43 am
World War 3 isn’t currently under way (at least not officially), but if it were to happen I believe these fake WWIII propaganda posters speak the truth about the power behind the spread of information in the virtual world. The continual access to relevant and correct information is no doubt going to make a big difference in driving support — or disgust — against a particular side in a conflict. Check out the rest of the Flickr photoset to see some posters about the power behind Twitter.
April 24, 2009 @ 2:12 pm
Students at MIT have engineered and built a prototype of a washing machine they believe to have significant impact in slums and other poor places around the world that have no easy access to water. The washing machine is built out of a standard drum barrel (shortened) and the rotating inner drum is made from identical plastic plates bolted together.
The plates are then pedal-driven by a rider sitting on a modified bicycle with chains going from the crank to the side of the barrel. Although the prototype was not a perfect success — there was water leakage on the barrel — the students think that a modified version can be made relatively quickly for the next round of testing.
As for the name ‘Bicilavadora’, it’s a combination of the Spanish word for bicycle and washing machine.
September 26, 2008 @ 3:03 pm
I am never satisfied with the amount of USB ports my computer has. I always seem to need more USB ports to connect my supply of USB-enabled devices (card reader, multiple iPods, multiple portable HDDs, Nintendo DS Lite charger, nonsense desk toys, etc.).
Anyway, Griffin Technology has this pretty fantastic USB device called the Simplifi that serves as an iPod charging dock, a card reader, and a USB hub as well. It supports just about all recent iPod lineups and reads all popular memory card formats like SD, Compact Flash, and Sony’s stupid Memory Stick. On the back of the Simplifi are two extra USB ports for plugging in extra USB-powered devices.
I want it, and at $70, this sounds like a pretty good way to keep as many USB devices plugged in at the same time without having to worry about ejecting and swapping disks.
February 3, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Here’s an interesting photo from Matthew Wahl’s Flickr showing the glow from fluorescent tubes as a direct result of the electromagnetic field surrounding overhead power lines. The fluorescent tubes are not plugged in to any power source.
Photo: Peter Dibdin
Richard Box, an artist-in-residence at Bristol University’s physics department, was one of the first people to discover the phenomenon. He describes it below:
A fluorescent tube glows when an electrical voltage is set up across it. The electric field set up inside the tube excites atoms of mercury gas, making them emit ultraviolet light. This invisible light strikes the phosphor coating on the glass tube, making it glow. Because powerlines are typically 400,000 volts, and Earth is at an electrical potential voltage of zero volts, pylons create electric fields between the cables they carry and the ground.
Box denies that he aimed to draw attention to the potential dangers of powerlines, ‘For me, it was just the amazement of taking something that’s invisible and making it visible,’ he says. ‘When it worked, I thought: ‘This is amazing.’’
Check out this Quicktime panorama of Richard Box’s FIELD project.
Keep in mind that the bulbs do not necessarily glow that bright on their own. Many of the images taken of bulbs in these scenarios are long exposures. However, the bulbs do glow enough to see with the naked eye, so the awe in seeing this occurrence will surely still be there if you were to try this for yourself.
Cool! I’d love to try this one day. :)
