Category: Science

Lego-Tronics

LEGO

I saw this on MAKE today. I used to dream about building this sort of thing. However, due to time and a billion other things I never did.

Using LEGO bricks, soldering nails, various electronic components to build an “Lego Electronic Lab Kit”.

Exactly! a concept so simple and cool that it’s a wonder that LEGO themselves have not already produced the. Ok, if your old enough to remember the Dacta line they had some sensors and such, but nothing like this. Makes me want to get my electronics parts bin out and do some building…

Lego Electronic Lab Kit Main

DIY, science, electronics, lego

The Z Machine Gun Shoots Faster Than the Earth

Z Machine

Anything is a good excuse for a story about the Z Machine.

Sandia National Labs has accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second.
The speed of the thrust was a new record for Sandia’s Z Machine — sometimes referred to as the fastest gun in the West. Actually the fastest in the world, it is now able to propel small plates at 34 kilometers a second, faster than the 30 km/sec that Earth travels through space in its orbit about the sun, 50 times faster than a rifle bullet, and three times the velocity needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field.

The immediate purpose of these very rapid flights is to help understand the extreme conditions found within the interiors of the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter, hasten the achievement of virtually unlimited energy through peacetime atomic fusion, and provide more information about the condition of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without having to explode a nuclear weapon.

The Z Machine Gun Shoots Faster Than the Earth

z machine, energy, physics, Sandia, simulation

Bladeless Turbine

Tesla Turbine

Oh so cool and nifty! The idea is real simple, just a (or many) flat disk(s) with a gas or a liquid shooting across at a tangent.

A Tesla turbine is a quite unique technology. It was invented and patented by Nikola Tesla on the 21st October 1909 at the Untied States Patent Office from experiments done in England. The patent 1061206 was granted on the 6th May 1913. Although, it is thought that a Tesla first showed a 200 hp 16,000 RPM version on the 10th of July 1906 (on Tesla’s 50th birthday).

Tesla Turbine
Tesla, turbine, technology, cool

FREE!

Free at last

Opportunity is once again free of the sand dune and can continue on its extended mission.

The Mars rover Opportunity has successfully escaped from a sand trap. JPL engineers cheered when images returned from Mars showed the rover’s wheels were free. Engineers worked for nearly five weeks to carefully maneuver the rover out of the sand dune

The Latest News from Mars

Mars, Opportunity, NASA, space