technology

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The Flying Pinto That Killed Its Inventor

Image credit: Doug Duncan The flying car has been invented over and over again. The problem is, each iteration has fallen somewhere on the line between amusing failure and outright disaster. Perhaps the most infamous example was the AVE Mizar, a.k.a. the “Flying Pinto,” which killed its inventor on an early voyage. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine Henry Smolinski was born in 1933, one of eight children in a Polish American family living in Cuyahoga, Ohio. After attending the Northrop... READ ON

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How Smartphones Could Keep Psychology From Getting Too WEIRD

In 2004, I was a lab rat for about 15 minutes. A psychology professor at Juniata College, where I spent my freshman year, was conducting an experiment. I don’t remember what exactly he was studying, but it involved video games. He put up posters around campus and gathered a bunch of volunteers in a campus building basement to frag each other in several rounds of Unreal Tournament. I lost pretty quickly, but did my part. I think I got a game store gift card for my time. Now ideally, if you want to... READ ON

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The Autofrisk: All the Groping Action, Just 40 Pence

Cheeky engineer Tim Hunkin (of Secret Life of Machines fame) invented the Autofrisk, a device that gently gropes the user in exchange for a few coins. (In the U.K. apparently one cannot get this experience for free at local airports.) The Autofrisk is one of many coin-operated machines Hunkin built for an ongoing show under the Southwold Pier in Suffolk, which looks to me to be a kind of geek Mecca. Hunkin and compatriots made a ten-minute film about the process of making the Autofrisk and similar... READ ON

Article

Walk This Way: The History of the Moving Sidewalk

Authors like H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein have long envisioned a future where the automobile gives way to massive, high-speed moving walkways. Some of them merely zoom commuters around cities, while others, like Heinlein’s "mechanized roads,” could take people from Cleveland all the way to Cincinnati. The moving sidewalk is familiar to travelers in the real world, too, but smaller and limited to controlled environments like airports and train stations. They lack the grandeur and the... READ ON

Article

The Late Movies: The Secret Life of Machines

I love The Secret Life of Machines, a late-1980s series about how everyday machines work. Presented primarily by engineer/cartoonist/artist Tim Hunkin, it's understated, funny, and deeply smart -- a gently curious investigation of how things go. Hunkin wrote about the first series: The two sides of my life - researching stuff in books for the cartoon strip and making things, had made me realise just how much clever human activity in the world can not be explained in words or suit the format of a... READ ON

List

10 Ways You Can Use Your Smartphone to Advance Science

Your iPhone is not living up to its full potential. Sure, everyone loves posting pictures of their cats to Instagram, and the new RadioLab app is awesome. But we're living in the future! Why not use those tiny computers we're all carrying around for something bigger, like helping advance knowledge in a way that would have been impossible just a few years ago? Scientists have started to use the abilities and prevalence of smartphones to their advantage, creating apps specifically for their studies and... READ ON

Big Question

What Is Greenwich Mean Time?

In south London, at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, it’s possible to walk up to a metal strip running along the ground in a courtyard and, stepping over it with one foot, straddle the world. Suddenly, one half of your body is in the Western Hemisphere and the other is in the East. Sort of. More on that later.This line is the prime meridian, or Greenwich Meridian. In 1851, Sir George Airy established it as 0° longitude. With a fixed line of longitude, or “home meridian,” sailors and explorers... READ ON

Big Question

How Do Glowsticks Glow?

Picture an atom. Now picture that atom getting excited. Maybe its birthday is coming up. Anyway, when an atom or a molecule gets excited, its electrons' energy levels go up. When the electrons fall back down to their normal state, they release energy in the form of photons, a basic unit of light.For most of the lights we make and use, those excited atoms release heat as well as light when they’re coming back down. Sometimes you want the latter without the former, a “cold light” like the kind made... READ ON

Big Question

Why Does Everything Look Green Through Night Vision Goggles?

The characteristic green tint is by design, for a few reasons. First, device makers have experimented with a few different colors and found that the different shades that make up the monochrome night vision image are most accurately perceived and distinguished when they’re green. In other words, while the night vision images you’ve seen in Silence of the Lambs and Call of Duty might seem a little clunky, green presents a night vision device wearer with the most accurate and user-friendly picture... READ ON

Article

Pencils Down: Scantron Inventor Michael Sokolski Has Died

(Modern Scantron test sheet; photo by Josh Davis, used under CC license.) We learned this week that Michael Sokolski, a soldier, engineer, and inventor of the Scantron, died on June 13. Sokolski was an immigrant to the US from Poland, and later an engineer and inventor best known for his work with Scantron. Today, we dig into some Scantron trivia -- please make sure your trivia bubbles are completely filled or the machine may not give you credit. How Does the Scantron Work? The original... READ ON