Showing 107 posts tagged technology
To celebrate Commander Chris Hadfield’s return to earth today, Monday, May 13, Scientific American has collected the Top 10 Commander Hadfield Videos from the International Space Station. Excellent watching all around.
Above: the most popular video on their list, Wringing out Water on the ISS - For Science. And a just-released bonus vid below, the Commander’s version of David Bowie’s 1969 Space Oddity:
It’s the first music video made in space.
Photographer Todd McLellan has been on my mind ever since I saw this post on making an Inventor’s Box: a collection of tools and second-hand electronics for kids to disassemble, organize, wreck, rebuild, or reinvent into something completely different… you name it!
In this time-lapse video (or this one), watch Todd disassemble different kinds of machines so that they can be meticulously arranged and photographed. Here are two examples of the final product:
Then view his project, Things Come Apart, where he’s also photographed the same parts “flying” through the air.
McLellan’s photographs seek to challenge our disposable culture by making transparent all the things that we regularly throw away. He said he wanted to get inside the older objects to show the quality, beauty and care that went into the original manufacturing process.
“I hope people think a little bit more about the things they use. Not that people should have feelings for objects, but instead think about ‘reuse and recycle,’ not just ‘use and discard.’ “
The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry is featuring Things Come Apart until May 19th, 2013, or check out McLellen’s new book available for pre-order on Amazon: Things Come Apart: A Teardown Manual for Modern Living.
via NPR.
Related art from parts: One Plastic Beach.
Magnifying carbon monoxide (CO) atoms to over 100 million times their actual size, arranging them into a series of 242 still images, and then animating them together, scientists at IBM Research have made the smallest movie ever. Wait, how small is that again?
“If an atom was the size of an orange, then the orange would be the size of the whole planet Earth.”
The movie is called A Boy and His Atom, and it is Guinness World Records verified(!) as the smallest stop-motion film in the world.
You can read more about the project here, you can listen to the sound of moving atoms, and can watch how scientists Susanne Baumann, Andreas Heinrich, Christopher Lutz and Ileana Rau made the movie here:
The future is now.
Thanks, Monika.
From MinuteEarth, The Story of Frozen Food.
via Laughing Squid.
Meet Mantis, an all-terrain hexapod walking machine built by inventor Matt Denton and a team of six.
This 2.2-litre Turbo Diesel-powered, British-designed and -built walking machine can be piloted or remote WiFi-controlled, stands 2.8 metres high with a five meter working envelope and weighing in at just under two tonnes.
The Mantis took four years of research, design, building, and testing, and cost “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to make. It’s for rent as an entertainment vehicle, but Denton hopes to showcase it at science fairs. Read more at the BBC.
via Boing Boing.
Related vids:A smaller hexapod and more robots.
