This is an impressive modification of a standard PC keyboard into a work of steampunk art.
I expect to see everyone in the class with one of these on Monday morning, you have your assignment now get cracking!
Category: Technology
GFS-UAV N-02 ‘UFO’ Takes to the Sky
At first glance this flying craft looks like a simple ducted fan with a weird skirt under it. Fancy hovercraft? Kind of. In reality the skirt has no air flowing through it only over it. Something called the ‘Coanda effect‘(wiki) causes the air to ‘stick’ to the outside of the craft and in effect creates an inside out hovercraft. The high efficiency electric motor in the top housing forces air to flow over the outside of the main body to create lift. The torque of the motor and the spin created by the prop wash are countered by the fins that ring the mid section and the direction is controlled by the four lower flaps. The platform is quite stable and looks to be a very good platform for just about any UAV application.
R/C Helecopter With Rockets!
One of the captions on the page says it all:
Unmanned Attack Helicopter, Ver. 2, 2004
Gas Powered Radio Control Helicopter modified to carry and remotely fire model rockets
Oh yeah… This would liven up the company picnic don’t you think? I wonder how he managed to ignite the rocket without throwing the chopper into a nasty spin? Any one else have something like this? BB gun mounted on a glider maybe?
The artist also has some very impressive sculptures listed in his online portfolio. I like the ‘Bronze Skull’ ones myself.
[via jaf project]
The Sculpture of Christopher Conte
Bronze Skull prototype
Boiling Hot Ice created in Nanoseconds by Sandia’s Z machine
Icy hot!
“The three phases of water as we know them — cold ice, room temperature liquid, and hot vapor — are actually only a small part of water’s repertory of states,” says Sandia researcher Daniel Dolan. “Compressing water customarily heats it. But under extreme compression, it is easier for dense water to enter its solid phase [ice] than maintain the more energetic liquid phase [water].”
In the Z experiment, the volume of water shrank abruptly and discontinuously, consistent with the formation of almost every known form of ice except the ordinary kind, which expands.
(One might wonder why this ice shrank instead of expanding, given the common experience of frozen water expanding to wreck garden hoses left out over winter. The answer is that only “ordinary” ice expands when water freezes. There are at least 11 other known forms of ice occurring at a variety of temperatures and pressures.)
Solar Hot Air Balloons, Not Just For Kids Anymore
Everyone knows about hot air balloons. A great big sack filled with hot air that floats as if by magic in the sky. Ok, not by magic, they float because the hot air takes up less space than cold air so it weighs less and thus floats. I’m sure most people think that the air needs to be heated by great honking propane torches to obtain positive buoyancy but that just isn’t the case. With a thin enough envelope (ballooning lingo for the thing that holds the hot air) you can use the mighty power of the sun to do this job on the cheap and clean. This site is loaded with useful info (some may be in French however) and data for your own personal exploration of the atmosphere. Did I say personal? Yep, you bet. Some people have actualy build solar balloons large enough to lift a person. There are even instructions on how you can build and use a 1.9 meter diameter mini solar balloon. I’m surprised that this hasn’t graced the pages of MAKE magazine yet.
An AVR-based Analog Plotbot with an E-Paper Display
This is just perfect! Using a Magna Doodle as an output device for a computer is just brilliant.
What do you get when you mix a 1970’s style analog chart recorder, an 8-bit microcontroller, and a Fisher-Price Doodle Pro? A truly 21st century toy: An analog PlotBot with e-paper display technology!
Our machine is based around a vintage analog X-Y data recorder. Its original purpose in life was to perform basic laboratory data collection, plotting two voltages against each other, and was one of the primary tools for that purpose right up until computers took over that job in the 1980’s. Because they were once so common and are now generally obsolete, it’s quite easy to get one of your own. There are usually several under $50 on eBay at any given time, and that’s where we got ours. …
The other major modification that we’ve made is that we’ve replaced the pen and paper with what seems like out of reach technology: an inexpensive and readily available e-paper display: the panel from a Doodle Pro. …
The Doodle Pro is a descendent of the Magna Doodle, a classic children’s toy dating to 1974. (I’m not sure what makes this a “Pro” anything, however.) It uses a simple magnetophoretic display, where ferromagnetic particles are suspended with near-neutral buoyancy in an opaque, viscous white liquid. Using a magnetic stylus, you can attract the black particles to the top surface, or with a magnetic “eraser” on the bottom side, pull the particles away, leaving only the white liquid visible.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – An AVR-based Analog Plotbot with an E-Paper Display