The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety did a very interesting crash test, a 1959 Bel Air vs a 2009 Malibu. It is designed to show how much automobile safety has improved in the last 50 years. The results are very interesting. Car Crash
by 53X11 on March 30, 2011
Since the release of radiation from the Japanese nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi is in the news I thought it may be a good time to post a link to a site about radition levels. The site discusses what is natural, what is normal, what common actions are risky, and what levels of exposure are [...]
by 53X11 on March 4, 2011
I found a really interesting story at The Wichita Eagle about how the end of mercury thermometers is coming soon. To me the mercury thermometer is a iconic image of both science and society, but it seems that much like the horse and buggy they are soon to be mostly a thing of the past. [...]
by 53X11 on February 25, 2011
Very interesting video story up at CBS news with a guy asking random people how far in relatively space (using a basketball as the earth and at tennis ball as the moon) the Moon is from the Earth. The recorded people all fail pretty badly. At the end the host shows the “correct” distance. After [...]
by 53X11 on January 12, 2011
Found a very interesting article online about Ford’s new “supercharged” hybird that could offer a 500 mile range and overnight charging on 120V power. Very interesting stuff. Still waiting for a medium sized to full sized sedan or full sized SUV that is averaged price before my family makes the move, but steps like this [...]
by 53X11 on August 12, 2010
Wired has a story up about the most complex clock in the world, built by Jaquet-Droz to celebrate the 1774 “robot” built with clock works by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. The new creations writes the time and cost about $371K to build. Full Piece Here
Lucas films is requesting that a Hong Kong based firm called Pro Arctic Laser pull their product series called “Wicked Lasers” from the market due to their resemblance to lightsabers used in the Star Wars movies. Lucas Films holds the trademark to the design, look and name of the lightsaber. Pro Arctic Laser’s claim that [...]
The Daily Mail had a nice post up on June 26th that summarized 10 theories (Quantum Field Theory and The Finite Universe just to name two) in just a few paragraphs. This is a nice way to get a jump start on understanding some relatively complex ideas. Even if you don’t agree with, or even [...]
by 53X11 on March 28, 2010
Looks like someone (the Korean’s in this case) has developed a means of proximity charging (charging batteries without cables) in a larger scale then cell phone batteries. In this case it is a trolley at the zoo, but such a method could really be interesting as it reduces battery size and does not requires stopping. [...]
by 53X11 on September 29, 2009
It seems that some of the taxpayer money the US government decided to give out to help car companies went to higher end eco car start up companies (Tesla and Fisker respectively) when other similar bid requests were denied. Some government watch dog groups are wandering if Fisker’s relationship with Al Gore may have helped [...]