January 20, 2008
The Brazil nut effect
Joe Rinaudo has a passion for antique phonographs, hand crank motion picture projectors, and mechanical musical instruments. Among these, his most prized possession is the American Fotoplayer. (From Dirty World)
The Brazil nut effect is the name given to a phenomenon in which the largest particles end up on the surface when a granular material containing a mixture of objects of different sizes is shaken
Patent redering. Promote your patent with high-quality 3-dimentional visualization
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
January 20, 2008 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 20, 2007
HGP
Completed in 2003, the The Human Genome Project was a 13-year project coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
Project goals were to
• identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,
• determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA,
• store this information in databases,
• improve tools for data analysis,
• transfer related technologies to the private sector, and
• address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.
Though the HGP is finished, analyses of the data will continue for many years...
Video: Omni directional wheels
Edison labs, Henry Ford Museum, Detroit
Re-post: The Rube Goldberg Alarm Clock
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
December 20, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 26, 2007
Liquid oxygen
The Swiss-made Mikiphone was patented by the Vadász brothers in November 1924. It's probably the smallest gramophone ever placed on the marked, folded up to the size of a large pocket watch or a small cheese case. (From Ishbadiddle)
USPTO Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Databases
Most folks in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel know Scott Jones as "the guy who invented voicemail." In the early '90s Jones made about $50 million on his company, which created the predominate form of voicemail, and he "retired" at age 31. Over the past two decades this driven inventor has been generating ideas for new products and companies - some were successful, others hit the scrap heap - at a pace that would make Thomas Edison's head spin. Inside the mind of a crazy (rich) inventor
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
November 26, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 27, 2007
Patterns in Primes
Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers, photographed by Mark Richards. (From Guy Kawasaki)
Patterns in Primes. Also, List of Largest Known Primes at The Prime Pages
A short about Dictyostelium sorting cells
The entertainment industry is abuzz following the Sony Corporation's unveiling Monday of the Utertron 9000, a state-of-the-art in-utero womb-entertainment system for children between the ages of minus nine months and zero
(Graphic above from Binary Symmetry by MC Hess)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
October 27, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2007
Pr(yi=1|xi) = 1/(1 + exp(-xi ß))
US patent number 5255452 for the ‘Jacko Lean’ as seen in the video for Smooth Criminal and his live performances. (From It’s nice that). Also, US patent # 7122000: Method of Using a Water Pipe to provide sexual stimulation…
Weapon of Math Deduction: A Statistical Formula for Conflict Evaluation
Science Tattoos by Carl Zimmer
Test your randomness - Click 50 times randomly inside the box and press countinue when you are done
Timeline of the most important inventions on wikipedia
Interesting elevators @ Deputy Dog
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
October 6, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2007
Battle between AC and DC current
Antique microscope slides, looked at from a strictly aesthetic standpoint (egged on by a design obsessed brain obviously) are some of the most elegant and perfectly beautiful human artifacts on planet earth. You can quote me on that. See below for irrefutable Beautiful Specimens
Thomas Edison hated cats
Also, Edison's prose poems. (From Nelson's blog)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
August 28, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 26, 2007
RBS
Flight of the Bumble-Bee and other amazing rolling ball sculptures (also known as a RBS) by Eddie Boes, a combination of art & engineering
Other kinetic sculptures; The Octapult by Bradley N. Litwin, a vocalist and guitar player whose repertoire includes 1920's and 1930's vintage blues, stride and ragtime
When Ph.D.s Get Frustrated - Contains a fairly detailed explanation of Lord Kelvin’s formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, and a helpful diagram
A Huge Depository of Unusual Inventions & Discoveries Here
July 26, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2007
Human curiosity
Simple extra handle added to a shovel makes it almost fun to dig. I came up with this idea while digging a 100 foot long, 2 foot deep drainage trench and it works so well that I wanted to put it on my webpage. On the web I find a SNOW shovel for sale that has an added handle, but could not find any reference to using a second handle with a regular dirt-digging type shovel
Home Made Welding Machine and other African gadgets and ingenuity
Make a personalized bottle of Clear Slime
The 999 black wooden cubes represent the material representation of human curiosity
10 years of Weird Inventions at The Daily Show
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June 25, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
April 17, 2007
Frank Pichel's Tear-Away Suit
Inventor Frank Pichel demonstrates the tear-away suit he developed to enable stealthy streaking, the last scene of the clip shows an extremely successful demonstration of the suit's capabilities. This clip does contain pixellated genitalia
Treknology Encyclopedia - Scientific concepts and technical devices in Star Trek
How to Un-Solve a Problem
Trampe - A bicycle lift in Trondheim, Norway. With instructional video
The Cox Bolt Gun is perhaps one of the Most Dangerous tools ever conceived
Virtual Lens Plant: How Canon lenses are made
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April 17, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 10, 2007
Solar Powered Chariot That walks
Found on Bruce Brennan’s Hippy gourmet blog
Also, Fish-n-Flush
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March 10, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 02, 2007
My Science Project
A moiré pattern is an interference pattern created when two grids are overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes. (Many more interesting examples of Mathematical Modules at Oliver Knill’s site)
Unfortunate Science Fair Projects
Alexander Graham Bell and his giant ring kite (1920 National Geographic Magazine scan)
Frigits, the refrigerator marble toy (YouTube)
The art and geometry of folding circles by Bradford Hansen-Smith
From goalie mask to Wonderbra – 50 Greatest Canadian Inventions
Search over 7 million patents. With the new Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus. Update: A Slate's article
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January 2, 2007 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 12, 2006
The oldest known computer
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to about 150-100 BC.
Sometime before Easter 1900, Elias Stadiatos, a Greek sponge diver, discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off Antikythera island. Sponge divers retrieved several statues and other artifacts from the site. The mechanism itself was discovered on 17 May 1902, when archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed that a piece of rock recovered from the site had a gear wheel embedded in it...
The device is remarkable for the level of miniaturization and complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 18th century clocks. It has over 30 gears, with teeth formed through equilateral triangles
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5MB Hard Disk in 1956. The first computer with a hard disk drive weighed over a ton
A PicoCricket is a tiny computer that can make things spin, light up, and play music
From deep drilling for gas & paper currency to the wheelbarrow & the compass - 10 best inventions of the Ancient Chinese
By the way, I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt
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December 12, 2006 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 28, 2006
Lots of amperage
The largest superconducting magnet ever built, (Click for High-Res) in the Atlas detector at the Cern lab, has been powered up successfully. Engineers sent a current of 21,000 Amps round the coils. Atlas will analyze collisions in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will recreate conditions just after the Big Bang.
More about the ATLAS experiment plus a video explaining it. There will be a test tomorrow. You can also visit CERN next time you are in Geneva
Photos of Plasma & High Voltage Sparks. (flickr set. Thank you, Richard Morrow)
Simplicity, new concepts from Philips
A moving stone bicycle. More from Japan: See-through Refrigerator
Medieval and renaissance scientific instruments from four European museums: the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, the British Museum, London, and the Museum Boerhaave, Leiden. (From Barista)
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Grab a graphic to link to Grow-a-brain
November 28, 2006 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 29, 2006
R2 D2
The Official Website of the R2 Builders Club
Google periodic table of elements
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is located in the recently restored former headquarters of the U.S. Patent Office
Ever stuck your foot in one of those Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope? (From Scribal Terror)
How does an Etch-a-Sketch work?
Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage. One of the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
Some guy built an elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine in his apartment. Re-post: incredible Japanese machines
A photo of a Plasma Lamp on wikipedia
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October 29, 2006 in Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2006
Robots on fire
= (Anagrams: "son of orbiter," "strobe of iron," "reborn if soot," "borne of riots," "orbit for eons," "sin for reboot," "best iron roof")
A flaming robot device that is lit at night - BurningMan 2000
Why not light a robot candle with robot safety matches?
Sandman is an 850-lb fire shooting performance robot. Also, re-post: The airplane-tossing fire-breathing Robosaurus
Fire-breathing retro-robot comic figure, by Mr. Hooper of Nashville, TN
A robot using himself as a cigarette lighter
Christian Ristow's robots destroy each other with fire on a regular basis
A two-headed fire-breathing robot bird
The robotic fire art of Heather Gallagher
Christian Bale as a fiery, melting cyborg. (Worth 1000)
Flaming inferno
Eliot K Daughtry’s Humanoid robot art
Moral of this story: when testing the shaving cream, take all the expensive electronics off the robot first. (With pictures!)
A new Japanese wine-tasting robot fires a beam of light into the wine, and then uses an infrared spectrometer to analyze the reflection. It studies the chemical composition of the wine and delivers an instant verdict about how good it is. (From Robots.net)
A robotic camera is taking a fish bowl for a swim
Murata Boy, the Robot that can Ride Bicycles, demonstrating gyro sensor technology
Crabfu miniature live steam engines
Also, How To Make Foil
This is another post that I am “co-blogging”, and the third time that I’m doing it with eccentric scholar and "language fanatic" Craig Conley of strange and Unusual dictionaries who blogs at Abecedarian, and who provided most of today’s links. (All previous posts archived here.) Thank you again, Craig! If other bloggers are interested to share the forum here on any other topic, please contact me for details.
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October 6, 2006 in Co-blogged with, Science & Inventions | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack