Professor Tomiki Ikeda of Japan's Tokyo Institute of Technology has been working on light-activated motors since 2003, and it looks like his research is yielding some amazing results. The research team has completed a plastic motor, powered only by ultraviolet and visible light. It's not solar energy, though — rather than store up energy converted from light, at the heart of the motor is a shape-shifting elastic polymer, or elastomer. The elastomer changes shape depending on the wavelength of the light it's exposed to: it contracts in ultraviolet light, and expands back to its original size with visible light.
The way the team used this technology to power a motor is pretty genius. They made a belt of the of shape-shifting plastic and wrapped it around two wheels, one smaller than the other. Then they exposed the part of the belt wrapped around the smaller wheel to ultraviolet light and the larger to visible light, and the forces at work sent the belt spinning into motion.
Right now, the technology isn't where it needs to be to power vehicles and the like, but the elastomer shows great promise. It's proven to have four times the elastic strength of human muscle (cyborgs, ahoy!) and retained its shape without warping even after running every seven seconds for thirty hours.
Via Pink Tentacle
Atmos clocks have been running on thin air since 1928, but never have they looked like this. Now its storied maker, Jaeger-LeCoultre, has teamed up with famed Aussie designer Marc Newson to make this newest clock in the collection, the Atmos 561. It's ensconced in a fine Baccarat crystal bubble to commemorate the clock’s 80th anniversary since engineer Jean-Leon Reutter patented the technology. There’s no word on pricing, but to give you an idea, the cheapest Atmos clock available today costs around $5000.
The Atmos is powered by temperature fluctuations, a seemingly miraculous technique using a mixture of gas and liquid ethyl chloride that expands and contracts when the temperature goes up or down, running the clock for two days on each degree Celsius of change. Take a look at the gallery below and you’ll see side views of this exquisite timepiece, and a few of the more-conventional Atmos clocks from the past that could be marking time forevermore.
We were impressed when GE engineers showed us OLED (organic light emitting diode) lighting that was twice as efficient as regular incandescent light bulbs, but get a load of this: Princeton and U-Michigan scientists have just beaten that by a long shot. Using a new process that involves tiny micro lenses, their OLED lighting is more than twice as efficient, cranking out 70 lumens of light per watt of power, compared with the 30 lumens per watt of GE’s latest OLEDs.
While these fantastic new lighting sources won’t light up every house for a few more years, they’ll be a whole lot better than current compact florescent (CFL) bulbs. Sure, the CFLs are slightly more efficient at 90 lumens per watt, but their color rendering is harsh, they’re laced with toxic mercury, and don’t last nearly as long as LEDs and OLEDs. And, as OLEDs get even more advanced, you’ll be able to have entire walls lit up with their friendly glow. Bring ‘em on!
The problem with shooting a gun at someone is that you just can't control how fast the bullet is going. More than likely, it's going very fast and will seriously hurt or kill them. But geez, you didn't want that! You just wanted to kind of hurt them a little to teach them a lesson. Don't worry, my violent friend, science is working on a solution for you.
The solution will be a gun that controls how fast it fires bullets. Want to blast through a wall? OK, crank it up to full power. Want to just give someone a really bad bruise? OK, turn it down a bunch. Want to scare the crap out of someone by aiming a gun at them and firing a bullet that falls to the ground at their feet? Kind of a jerk move, but that's possible too.
It's all based on the technology behind toy rockets, of all things, and it works "by mixing a liquid or gaseous fuel with air in a combustion chamber behind the bullet. This determines the explosive capability of the propellant and consequently the velocity of the bullet as it leaves the gun." Cool.
Via New Scientist
Who says a PC has to be rectangular, or even square? Designer Apostol Tnokovski thinks the PC world is round, and conceived this 6-inch orb-shaped number as his proof. Not only is E-Ball oddball shaped, it’s called “the smallest PC ever made.”
Take a look a the pics in our gallery below, and you'll see the pop-out laser mouse, a pico projector inside that illuminates either the wall or a sheet of paper for a screen, and that laser keyboard that would almost certainly be a clumsy input device. Fix that, and find a motherboard that’ll fit inside this palm-sized baby, and Apostol might be onto something here.
That's a potential danger, however, if you get in a bar fight with someone carrying this ridiculous knife/gun contraption. As you can see in the above video, bullets are loaded into the handle and then fired out in the direction the blade is pointing, catching any potential knife fight opponents really, really off guard. Not that getting in a fight with someone with a regular knife or regular gun would be a good idea, but if you see someone with one of these, stay on their good side.
Via Geekologie
Imagine watching any HD video wirelessly from any Blu-ray player, PC, TiVo, set-top box, video camera, Xbox — any video source, anywhere in your house, up to 100 feet away. Now add the ability to instantly control that video from wherever you’re watching it. That’s what WHDI (wireless high definition interface) can do. Today a group of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world are agreeing to standardize this new way of moving wireless high-resolution uncompressed video, so that all their products with the WHDI logo will be interoperable. They say we’ll start seeing a variety of products with WHDI technology by 2009.
The revolution has already started. The idea is the brainchild of Amimon, an Israeli company that’s figured out how to move the highest-resolution video around with no added noise, no annoying waiting after you push the Play button, and eventually, low cost. We’ve already seen products demonstrated using WHDI, including a TV from Sharp now shipping in Japan, a set-top pair from Belkin set for late 2008 release, and a wireless HDTV demo from Sony at CES 2008 in January. We’ve seen WHDI in action with our own eyes, and we’re here to tell you: It works perfectly. This is going to be big. Really big. Click Continue and we'll tell you more.
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Americans generally like their gadgets made of slick black plastic and shiny chrome-like surfaces (yes, we all want to be Batman), but to make it in Japan your device has to offer a bit of "kawaii" (cuteness) to appeal to the masses. Sensing that the new white version of the iPhone 3G might not be enough for fashion conscious Japanese schoolgirls, Cut&Paste has released a series of new iPhones cases called the Bone Phone Cube 3G and the Bone Phone Bubble 3G (vaguely reminiscent of the old PowerMac G4 shape).
Both offer casing and screen protection against the elements while allowing you to show off your annoyingly infantile and colorful personality. Assuming you braved the early lines and aren't a victim of the iPhone drought, you can snag your case for just 1,990 yen ($18.70) here.
Via Rakuten
Visitors attending Santa Monica's GLOW festival found a stunning surprise in artist Shih Chieh Huang's Recycled Robots, simple sculptures made from odds and ends including plastic bags and bottles, computer fans, portable DVD players hooked up to screens, and assorted PC components. The sculptures were stuffed full of multicolored lights, black lights and glowing UV liquids that gave them an eerie hue as they danced about. Did Huang really make the things, or are they actually aliens masquerading as an art installation? Either way, it looks like the Recycled Robots come in peace.
Check out the gallery below for more of Shih Chieh Huang’s Recycled Robots, or click Continue to see a video of the 'bots in action.
Conceived by design firm Architecture and Vision, the Moon Base Two is an inflatable lunar habitat that'll keep up to four astronauts safe and sound as they work for six months. While an inflatable base probably isn't what most people have in mind when they picture the glorious future of colonizing the Moon, the Moon Base Two would serve as a temporary home for crews as they construct something more permanent, or as a short-term settlement for scientific experiments.
The Moon Base Two is also pretty attractive because it goes up all at once. It's designed to ride piggyback on the Ares V rockets NASA is working on to replace its aging shuttle fleet. The lunar settlement is based upon work done by Architecture and Vision in 1999 on the Moon Base One, a similar (though a little less impressive looking) inflatable enclosure.
Check out the gallery below for more of Architecture and Vision's Moon Base Two.
A boon to welders and solar-eclipse fans, the Speedglas SL helmet has an auto-darkening filter on the shield and four selectable levels of light filtering. The helmet's strong, non-absorbent material also happens to be very lightweight, making the SL the lightest welding helmet you can find, meaning users can wear it longer for those big welding jobs. The impressive design earned the SL a 2008 IDEA award, and the admiration of science teachers worldwide.
Some of you may be wondering about the results of DVICE's Make a Cylon contest that closed a little while back. We're sorry to say the results have been delayed a bit longer due to some unforseen scheduling conflicts with our judges. We don't want to do a rush job on this — it's essential that they see each and every entry, and there are a lot of them — so please bear with us as we do our best to give you the best possible results. They'll be worth the wait, we swear!
Even though we’ve made it through the statistically hottest day of the year — July 19th — how the heck are we going to keep our beers cold for the rest of the summer? Until you can finally get that self-cooling beer can or special solar beer-can insulating tech in your hands, if you want to savor your brew, it would be worth it to use a cozy. The geeks at My Science Project wondered just how well the various styles of cozies work, so they set out to do a scientific test in 92-degree summer heat, keeping their 47.3-degree beers cold as long as they could.
The winner of the competition was the Thermos Thermax Can Insulator, a $13.25 cooler (see it above with the Cohiba cigar logo) that kept the beer the coldest over an hour, ending up at 53.4F, beating out a foam cozy at 58.6F, a pewter/foam model at 58.2F, and the naked can at 69.2F. The guys also tried out some homemade insulators, with an awkward block of styrofoam doing better than a traditional cozy, cardboard coming in second, and aluminum foil, LEGOs, bagels, Rice Crispies, wool knit, wristbands, doughnuts and a space blanket making less difference.
For us, when it’s 92 degrees outside, we’d rather just imbibe a frosty mug of the suds inside where it’s cool. If it’s that hot and we must go out, we’ll just leave them in the fridge or cooler until it’s time to quaff, and then chug-a-lug. Never mind all that if you’re European — just leave that can out in the sun for a while so you can enjoy drinking it boiling hot.
Via MyScienceProject
If you want your bed to feel a little more exciting, you have a few options. One is buying a race car bed, which has been making little kids excited for years. Two is to not sleep alone. Three is to buy a fancy bed that has lights underneath that makes you feel like you're sleeping in a UFO.
If you're too old for a race car bed and are having trouble finding a sleeping companion, that leaves you with option three. The Beam Bed features a light underneath it and a structure that shoots said light out in otherworldly rays. As a bonus, it's made to be easy to ship and assemble via flatpacking, much like most Ikea furniture, making it a smart buy as well. Who needs a race car bed, anyways?
Looking like something from the next Transformers movie, this slick motorcycle concept toggles between two and three wheels at (presumably) the touch of a button. For highway driving it uses all three wheels, but when things get a little tight the entire passenger cabin rotates, lifting the third wheel in the air, which sprouts blades that keep the chassis stable, just like in a helicopter tail. The seats in the cabin stay upright when it turns, so drinks can stay in their cup holders.
Student Seyyed Javad Ghaffarian created the twisty vehicle for Car Design News' 2008 design contest. It's called the Magic Tricycle, an apt name considering the feats of engineering that would be needed to take this idea from concept to reality. Still, it's amazingly cool — we promise to buy one if it ever comes to a dealership.
editor@dvice.com
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