tingilinde

speeder

One of the rarest pursuits is the land speed record on a bike.  There are various types mostly breaking down to paced, unpaced, and downhill(!).  Since work needed to travel fast goes into dealing with air resistance, paced bikes that travel behind a moving wind break are the fastest. They don't have to be aerodynamic but a variety of engineering issues need to be met.

Donhou has made such a beast.  Bizarre looking with that huge 104 tooth chain ring, but still a bicycle.  Unpaced bikes have to be streamliners.  I think the fastest official speed was recorded by Sam Whittingham at just under 83 mph in 2009. Serious aerodynamics and a serious athlete.

mining the sky

How did ancient Egyptions fashion iron objects before anyone mastered the necessary smelting?  It turns out some (perhaps all) of it was through the use of meteorites.

The paper is here

Analysis of a prehistoric Egyptian iron bead with implications for the use and perception of meteorite iron in ancient Egypt

Johnson, D., Tyldesley, J., Lowe, T., Withers, P. J. and Grady, M. M. (2013), Analysis of a prehistoric Egyptian iron bead with implications 

for the use and perception of meteorite iron in ancient Egypt. Meteoritics & Planetary Science. doi: 10.1111/maps.12120

Author Information
1Department of Physical Sciences and Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
2Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
3The Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
4Henry Moseley X-Ray Imaging Facility, School of Materials, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
5The Natural History Museum, London, UK
*Corresponding author. E-mail: diane.johnson@open.ac.uk

Abstract

Tube-shaped beads excavated from grave pits at the prehistoric Gerzeh cemetery, approximately 3300 BCE, represent the earliest known use of iron in Egypt. Using a combination of scanning electron microscopy and micro X-ray microcomputer tomography, we show that microstructural and chemical analysis of a Gerzeh iron bead is consistent with a cold-worked iron meteorite. Thin fragments of parallel bands of taenite within a meteoritic Widmanstätten pattern are present, with structural distortion caused by cold-working. The metal fragments retain their original chemistry of approximately 30% nickel. The bulk of the bead is highly oxidized, with only approximately 2.4% of the total bead volume remaining as metal. Our results show that the first known example of the use of iron in Egypt was produced from a meteorite, its celestial origin having implications for both the perception of meteorite iron by ancient Egyptians and the development of metallurgical knowledge in the Nile Valley.

(hat tip to Sukie)

laptop chargers

what goes on in Apple's magsafe connectors...

probably a bit more than you thought.

a physics based car

The trick to improving the efficiency of a car is to reduce its mass and make it more aerodynamic.  VW has been working on a vehicle that was once called the 1 liter, but has modified into something that might attract normal buyers ...  that is if it was affordable.  The XL1 is more of a technology demonstrator that VW is using to learn and gain experience with.  Lots of exotic design and materials.  Wired has a test.

Edison2 is an attempt at something more practical than the XL1.  The Very Light Car is built with inexpensive materials using onventional fabrication techniques.  

Moving people towards seriously more efficient vehicles will probably be very difficult unless the costs are much lower than conventional vehicles - something that seems unlikely.

 

tailgates

GM speaks about their wind tunnel work on pickups.  Even small changes can make a big difference.  

Of course the question most people have on their minds when it comes to pickup aerodynamics is how much does the tailgate cost?

snip

...

A long-disputed topic among truck owners is whether a tailgate raised or lowered is better for aerodynamics. Bloch says a tailgate in the up position is more aerodynamically efficient. As air flows over the truck, it falls over the cab and pushes forward on the rear of the truck. With the tailgate down, the benefits of that airflow are diminished. Additionally, Bloch said replacing the tailgate with an aftermarket net is worse than having no tailgate at all. So what accessories can truck owners add to help aerodynamics? Tonneau covers for the bed help smooth airflow over the truck with soft covers being more beneficial than hard ones because they form to how the air wants to flow. Running boards can also help air flow smoothly down the truck’s sides.

...

 

 

a huge floating object

Technically the Prelude Floating Natural Gas Project isn't a ship.  It floats and sort of looks like a ship, but it is a huge floating platform to mine and liquify natural gas.  Massive is an understatement - and massively spendy.

 

there's kit for that

Kit plus an app..  Inexpensive biosensing with a smarphone at the University of Illinois. 

snip

...

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the phone’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.

Having such sensitive biosensing capabilities in the field could enable on-the-spot tracking of groundwater contamination, combine the phone’s GPS data with biosensing data to map the spread of pathogens, or provide immediate and inexpensive medical diagnostic tests in field clinics or contaminant checks in the food processing and distribution chain.

...

 

dynamic visualization

Bret Victor's new tool.  Very promising stuff .. illustrator for data visaulization

Drawing Dynamic Visualizations from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Lynn

a clever mudguard for bikes

A clever kickstarter project- the Plume retractable mudguard

storing energy from offshore wind turbines

Take a big hollow sphere and sink it to help anchor an offshore wind turbine.  Pump water out when you have extra wind and open a valve and let water back in, spinning a turbine connected to a generator, when it is calm.  Massive engineering, but it may be a viable way to store energy.

snip

...

Whenever the wind turbines produce more power than is needed, that power would be diverted to drive a pump attached to the underwater structure, pumping seawater from a 30-meter-diameter hollow sphere. (For comparison, the tank’s diameter is about that of MIT’s Great Dome, or of the dome atop the U.S. Capitol.) Later, when power is needed, water would be allowed to flow back into the sphere through a turbine attached to a generator, and the resulting electricity sent back to shore.

One such 25-meter sphere in 400-meter-deep water could store up to 6 megawatt-hours of power, the MIT researchers have calculated; that means that 1,000 such spheres could supply as much power as a nuclear plant for several hours — enough to make them a reliable source of power. The 1,000 wind turbines that the spheres could anchor could, on average, replace a conventional on-shore coal or nuclear plant. What’s more, unlike nuclear or coal-fired plants, which take hours to ramp up, this energy source could be made available within minutes, and then taken offline just as quickly. 

The system would be grid-connected, so the spheres could also be used to store energy from other sources, including solar arrays on shore, or from base-load power plants, which operate most efficiently at steady levels. This could potentially reduce reliance on peak-power plants, which typically operate less efficiently.

...

 There are any number of ways to store energy - the trick is finding one that is cost effective and efficient.  Perhaps this one makes sense.