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

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 defined a risky / dangerous. Be sure to check out all the info here.

P.S. – Foreign Policy has a interesting post up about the release of radioactive elements at Daiichi here.

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.

Between the increase in precision in both digital and non mercury based analog thermometers and the risk associated with mercury exposure there has been a huge decrease in both the demand and use of mercury based thermometers. It seems that the 700 Federal Standards that require a mercury thermometer for calibration and measurement may be the biggest thing keeping the mercury thermometer around. Leave it to the Fed to be behind the curve, even in standards. In The Wichita Eagle story I found the most interesting thing to be the following statement regarding NIST (National Institute of Standards and Testing) testing –

The declining demand from business and industry for calibration of mercury thermometers at NIST labs tells the tale best.
“Back in the early 1900s, they employed five people to do nothing more than calibrate mercury thermometers,” Strouse said. “When I started here 20-some years ago, there was one person in the lab calibrating close to a thousand of them a year. Last year we calibrated four.”
And so far in 2011, there have been none.

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 that, the host points out that drawings which do not show scale can have a dramatic impact on perceived knowledge. This is very true Full Video / Story here

The correct answer is about 239,000 miles and in relation between the basketball and tennis ball about 40 feet or so.

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 give me hope about the near future. Post at Green Tech Media here

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 none of their advertising or literature reference or discuss any products trademarked by Lucas Films, though they have changed how they ship their product (they install a filter) to reduce the risk of eye damage if the laser is used improperly. Give the story a full read at CNN.com here. and think what you think.

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 care about, all the theories it is always good to understand them a bit. Read the full post here.

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. Full story at All Cars Electric here

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 their bid. The Wall Street Journal story is here on the story.