You can change the shape of drops and pools of water from rounded to angular by coating the surface where the water collects with a superhydrophobic substance. Check out the cool liquid letters! It would be interesting to use this technique to create a watery animation. (The Action Lab)
How to make square water
How to fly a helicopter on Mars
On Sunday, Ingenuity—the small helicopter delivered to the surface of Mars by the Perseverance rover—will, hopefully, take its first flight. The distance between Earth and Mars means that lagtime precludes real-time remote control. The helicopter flies autonomously, but the helicopter's digital twin had a lot of practice in simulations back on Earth. At IEEE Spectrum,… READ THE REST
Can you slap a chicken until it's cooked?
Turns out, you can — if you can get the slapping machine to stay alive long enough for the 135,000 slaps required to get it to a minimum safe temperature to eat. Science! Image: Screengrab READ THE REST
Concrete gets tougher with graphene
Perhaps someday we will once again achieve Roman levels of concrete artistry. Graphene Exponent: In July 2020, Thomas Swan, a global chemical manufacturing company signed an agreement with Concrene for a graphene-enhanced concrete product. That concrete product is now planned to be available in the US market in April 2021. The products in the lineup… READ THE REST
Bright Cellars' personalized wine club turned this beer drinker into a wine person
I consider myself a beer person. My go-to order at the bar is a Miller High Life or Stella Artois. I know the difference between an ale and a lager, and I frequent the local microbrewery. It's not that I only like beer; I just haven't found another drink I like quite as much. Granted,… READ THE REST
The MatrixPad Z10 has all the features of more expensive tablets at just $110
Did you know that 2020 was a surprisingly good year for tablet sales? After several years of stagnant growth and losing business to the creep of incrementally bigger smartphones, the tablet market saw a pretty serious explosion during the pandemic. In fact, tablet sales were up almost 14 percent in 2020. If you're in the market… READ THE REST
The Kyvol Cybovac D6 is a robot vacuum and mopper, all in one
As we continue in our technological march toward Rosie the Robot, we quietly reached a major milestone in that revolution in just the last few years. We've been manufacturing robots to handle all kinds of household tasks for a while now. We have vacuuming robots, for instance. We also have mopping robots. But until recently,… READ THE REST