Jay from the Plasma Channel wanted to take cooking off the grid, eliminating gas and those pesky open flames in the process. He pulled off the trick by putting together a portable burner that generates plasma discharges using rechargeable batteries and blasts them directly into a metal pan. Result? Slap this thing down on a table or picnic blanket and you’ll have a sizzling hot meal in minutes, like scrambled eggs or crispy bacon.
One builder showcases custom-built photobioreactor from start to finish, having printed the majority of its components on a conventional 3D printer sitting on a work surface. The final machine simply sits there silently day after day, converting water and light into useable biomass without the need for anyone to pay attention to it.
Scientists from MIT’s Media Lab have developed extremely thin strands that wrap and unravel at the flip of an electric switch. They strikingly resemble your own muscles. When grouped together, they can generate significant force and movement, all while remaining completely silent and hidden.
Australian researchers have built the world’s first quantum battery that completes every part of an energy cycle from start to finish. Dr. James Quach was the main force behind this at CSIRO, and he collaborated with colleagues at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne to complete the research. Behind the scenes, engineers shaped the battery as a multi-layered organic microcavity and sent a laser beam across open space to add energy wirelessly.
Australian researchers have pulled off something that quantum theory predicted but nobody had managed to actually observe in matter until now. Working with pairs of helium atoms, they captured the particles existing in two different locations simultaneously, their behavior frozen in a way that has no equivalent in everyday experience. It is the first direct observation of this phenomenon in matter rather than light, and it opens a new window into how the fundamental building blocks of our world actually behave.
Wesley Treat had his face scanned as part of a collaborative 3D model library project with other makers, and when he saw his own scan sitting in the archive he decided it deserved a more permanent form. The result is a strangely fascinating aluminum portrait, roughly life sized and built from dozens of flat welded panels, that now lives in his workshop and stops people in their tracks the moment they walk past it.
Photo credit: Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Cornell University researchers developed a new method for washing fruit that combines tiny bubbles in water with low frequency sound. Every day, people clean fruits and vegetables to remove dirt and residues, which can come from the farm or the store.
Stabi extends its arm from the shadows with a large barrel mounted to its wrist, and what is inside that barrel is not subtle. A kilowatt class laser capable of cutting through wood at a distance or turning stone into a glowing, molten mess sits at the heart of the setup, mounted in the back of a truck and pointed at a series of test targets. The whole rig was built by Prop Department to explore how high energy laser systems might be put to work in future productions.
Astronomers have just released what may be the sharpest views of Saturn ever captured, courtesy of the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes working in tandem. One image was taken in visible light and is breathtaking on its own, while the other, captured in infrared, pulls back the curtain on an entirely different layer of detail across the planet’s clouds, rings, and poles.
Electron Impressions has built a reputation for pushing physics equipment well beyond its intended purpose, and their latest experiment takes things further than most. The team placed a fully grown potted Venus flytrap, open traps and all, directly in the path of a linear accelerator to find out what high speed electron beam radiation actually does to living tissue, and whether the plant’s famous snapping mechanism would have anything to say about it.