Okay, I was initially impressed by Becky Stern because I loved this ASCII Heart necklace she made in her metalworking class. Then I saw the LilyPad Arduino Blinking Bike Bag Patch tutorial she submitted to Instructables. What I especially like about this project is that she’s using the ability to illuminate clothing for a purpose. She’s someone to watch.
LINKS:
- Sternlab (Becky Stern’s website)
- Craftzine.com: ASCII Heart Necklace
I would define an ingenious device as one that solves a complex problem with a cleverly simple and inexpensive (and therefore accessible) solution. The Kyoto Box is a solar-powered oven made from cardboard — yes, cardboard.
This device recently won the FT Climate Change Challenge, which is a Brit competition to find the most innovative solution to the effects of climate change. The box’s creator, Jon Bøhmer, is a Norwegian who lives in Kenya.
So what makes this box so great and so “green”? It can be used to purify drinking water (did you know that water pasteurizes at a mere 65 degrees?) and it decreases the need for firewood. In the developing world, these are big issues.
Kyoto Energy, Bøhmer’s company, has a few other really cool inventions, including the Kyoto Bag, which heats and cleans water and can be used as a shower, and my favorite: Kyoto Mosaic — plastic mirrors that can concentrate the Sun up to 500 times.
LINKS:
- Kyoto Energy
- “Cardboard Oven Wins £50,000 Green Contest”
- FT Climate Change Challenge
Actually, it’s pretty cool. Then again, it’s not just pretty cool — it’s extremely cool. Icy even.
Most people have an idea of what a robot should do: it should serve us –- cart snacks over to the couch, rub our feet, make the bed. Kind of like a slave, which is when all the worries about robot consciousness crop up. Uh oh!
But the technology coming out of robotics allows your camera to self-focus and gets rid of pink-eye. It’s also allowing for better medical treatment with regard to, for example, prostate surgery (just went to a lecture on this last night, with video).
In fact, maybe someday –- and this is the most fascinating robot-related research I’ve read about recently — you’ll be able to pull a mobile phone out of your pocket and morph it into a laptop. Seriously. I’m shivering over here.
LINKS:
- “Intel Talks Up Our Wire-Free, Robot-Ruled Future”
- “Ready for the Robot Revolution”
My 11th-grade chemistry teacher was five feet tall with four-foot boobs and wore lab coats over her minidresses (no, this wasn’t the ’60s) so all you saw were her spindly toothpick legs on top of platform shoes. Sounds cool, doesn’t she?
But she wasn’t cool at all. In fact, she was so crabby and had such an instant dislike to me that I despised chemistry class, including all the experiments that I otherwise would have loved. (At least my Physics teacher was kind of nice.) But now I can re-learn fun facts about all the elements with The Periodic Table of Videos.
It’s such a blast! Just click on an element and discover some of its most interesting qualities. Right now K (potassium) is my favorite. It’s highly reactive and according to Professor Martyn Poliakoff (the vid host), one of his colleagues describes it as evil — wha-ha-ha. Check it out:
LINK:
- The Periodic Table of Videos
Technology can be too literal and so can I. But words are as devilish and beguiling as the magic that makes the web tangle, so what's a girl to do? Write, of course, and build and...
RT @smjyoti: Precise, insightful poems of science. Love this post: An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman http://t.co/nNyudg0r via @nijhuism
3:28am via Twitter
Mine are Russian & the perfect shade of pink (diff makers, diff colors) - so pretty. "NYC Ballet 'Pointe Shoes' " http://t.co/gIkDeucp
1:14pm via Twitter