Tag: Science

The Geobat

Geobat

Looks like a workable design, there are R/C flying models of it and they act pretty stable. The 1/4 scale (5.5 feet) craft is downright impressive, I would very much like to see the full scale version come to market. At the very least as a kit that an experimenter could build on their own. General aviation has taken a big hit in the last few decades due to the rising cost of aircrafts, maintenance, and insurance. Plus I think that many people just don’t get exposure to aviation like they once did. In my fathers day, due to pilots being trained for World War II, the general aviation field entered it’s golden era. My dad dusted crops in North Dakota from his Piper Cub and people were talking about every family owning their own flying car. Now days that is still a dream. I hope the Geobat makes it.
I could even see in the future a group of Geobats preforming acrobatics at air shows. Talk about a show stopper!

Good overall performance envelope combining outstanding Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) performance, (expecting less than 500 ft. ground run) reasonably high cruise speeds (180 – 220 mph depending on power installed and cruise altitude), with eyewatering aerobatic performance. Expect power-off stall speed to be at or below 55 mph with flaps down at nominal gross weight. Excellent forward visibility combined with transparent floor panels creating a helicopter-like cockpit environment. Unique leading edge design feature, transparent leading edges about the forward and rear wings are illuminated with lights (pick your color).

BTW, they have a store if you want to build your own! (Sorry, radio control only)

Flying Saucers – The Geobat

future, cool, aircraft, experimental, aviation

NASA TV Feeds

NASA TV

If your looking to keep up with what is going on with the current Space Shuttle mission and can’t get NASA TV in your area, you should take a look at this list. Dozens of links to feeds with a quality rating next to each one. I like the 350 kb/s feed myself, it’s almost like watching the video feed on cable. I’m watching the crew move the Canada arm around so they can install Raffaello, the Multi Purpose Logistics Module that was hauled up on orbit by the shuttle, to the ISS. It’s simplay amazing to see something like this and know that its happening right now.
Go celebrate NASA’s return to space by geeking out in front of your computer and absorb some hard core space news.

NASA TV Feeds

NASA, space, video, news

Seebeck Effect Powered Fan

heat fan

Why not get more work out of your wood stove? this device uses the Seebeck Effect to run a fan that will move air from your stove to other parts of your room. Its a clever idea alright, it’s pretty much the same thing that powers space craft except your not using burning wood as your heat source – your using the natural decay of nuclear materials.
As I encourage everyone to play with science whenever possable, I’ll tell you how you can make your own Seebeck Effect electrical generator.
You’ll need the following:

      A steel nail – 4″ long will do
      Some copper wire – stranded about the diameter of a coathanger
      A candle – nice sized on a sturdy base
      A volt meter of some sort – you could use a small motor if you wanted but you might not see any movement on your first try
      Something to hold the nail with, it’s going to get hot.

Strip the insulator from the copper wire and wrap some around the nail.
Around a four inch nail I’d wrap about six inches of wire in a space of apx. one inch.
Connect the leads of the meter to the nail and the wire and hold the wrapped part of the nail in the flame of the candle.
You should see a small voltage show up on your meter. Pretty cool, eh?

Yes, you can build bigger ones out of better materials but at some point you end up melting your experiment. I suppose if you had some good thermocouples (thats what the bimetal junctions are called) and some very low voltage LEDs you could build a sundial that you could read from inside your house. Leave a comment if I lost you anywhere.
Anyway, the bimetal strips in the little fan are doing the same thing as the wire and nail, just that they are built of metals that have a better energy coefficient. A pretty good use of science if you ask me.

Ecofan Woodstove Fan

science, thermal, clever, neat

Direct Hit!

Temple 1

Last night the space probe ‘Deep Impact’ did just that to comet Temple 1. Some fo my friends and I were out looking for it, I didn’t see anything but Kevin and Donovan said they might have seen somthing flash. I had a camera with me but didn’t know exactly where to aim it. I have to admit that I was too busy playing ‘Ticket to Ride‘ to look up the info correctly. Anyway, the probe impacted as planned and hopefuly it will produce some good science as to what a comet is made up of. The photos from the impactor just before touching down at 6 miles a second are pretty cool. Go have a look now.

NASA – Deep Impact

NASA, Deep Impact, comet, space

Arizona Wildfires

FIRE!!!

Pretty cool, depending on the time of day you can see a nice time laps of the fires in Arizona.
This is from the GOES-12 satellite in the visible spectrum, so it will be dark about half the time. Arizona is -7GMT so if you catch it in the morning and evening it should be pretty cool.

NASA/MSFC Interactive GOES Data Selector
Arizona, wildfire, satellite, weather

If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen With Your Eyes…

New Eye

For people that suffer with degeneration of their retnas ( like Macular Degenerationthis or Retinitis Pigmentosa) could be a new lease on sight.

The retina implant developed by IIP combines medicinal and information technology with micro-systems technology.
A blind patient has a unique microchip implanted in their eye, wears special glasses with an integrated camera and carries a microcomputer on a belt around their waist.
Visual information received by the glasses is converted into electrical pulses by the microcomputer and the pulses then used to stimulate the patient’s optic nerve. The implant helps restore limited eyesight to people affected with specific hereditary blindness.

The amazing part of this is that when the device is implanted and activated it will produce randon visual information. The user will then be given a visual reference ( a white ring on a computer screen) and told to adjust the input settings. This is done until the user sees the white ring. The trials are to last about five years and if they are successful it could mean that thousnads of people may re-gain at leat some of their sight.
I wonder that if on future models the settings could be adjusted on the fly for different conditions. Lower contrast in bright light, enhanced night vision, digital zoom. Hum, sounds like something Steve Austin would have…

IIP Tec

eye, blind, bionic, medical, sight