I recently needed to glue wood together in a real hurry and tried a product called RapidFuse that didn't do too well. Annoyed, I decided to look for tests of the zillion wood glues now available so I could find something with a 15-minute set that works. It turns out I'm asking too much, really, but I did find Wood by Wright's incredibly exhaustive series of tests on dozens of different products. The overview video is embedded above; with more details for the thirsty and the 64-brand follow-up.
The data collected is presented in a single enormous spreadsheet at Google Docs.
The absolute best product depends on grain and exposure to the elements, but Elmer's Wood Glue Max [Amazon] is a clear winner for standard indoor woodworking projects with DAP Plastic Resin Glue [Amazon] winning if you're outdoors. Read the rest
Project Farm set out to test major brands of duct tape to see which was the best. He devises three trials, testing the pull strength of the adhesive, how much weight a loop can bear, and the shearing strength of the tape itself.
What we saw here were varying degrees of tackiness, elasticity and strength between brands
T-Rex tape devoured the field on the adhesive test, Gorilla barely pipped it for the weight test, and 3M won the shearing test with T-Rex and Gorilla not far behind. Fasten, Scotch and Duck brands trailed the pack in every test. Project Farm didn't make a recommendation, but I think it's obvious T-Rex brand duct tape [Amazon] is best unless you're using the tape to hold things under shear stress. A general principle seems to be that the more menacing the animal brand, the better the tape. Read the rest
Give Analyze Words a Twitter handle—perhaps your Twitter handle!—and it will perform a personality analysis based on all the words it finds. My report is embedded above; I am a spacy, sensuous valley girl. Read the rest
As a method of testing battery output, it seems a bit elaborate, but racing AAs down coiled copper tubes looks like a lot of fun. Mr. Michal:
Duracell, Varta or Energizer, Which Will Be the Best? In this video you'll see two races between aa batteries. Infinite loop and DRAG RACE. How to make the simplest electromagnetic train in the world ? It's very easy. You only need these three parts. 1. copper wire raw 2. battery ( AAA, AA or C ) 3. and two neodymium magnets ( it must be larger in diameter than battery )
I figure as a benchmark, you'd need to immobilize the tube for comparisons to be fair? Say, if you wanted to create a whole YouTube channel dedicated exclusively to well-controlled battery races. Read the rest
Chris "The Crispiest Bacon" Hill made this perfectly-designed chart showing how long different brands of alkaline battery lasted in the same flashlight. The surprise would seem to be the Rite Aid and CVS store brands. [Via Data Is Beautiful] Read the rest
Safety standards matter. The cheapest Nissan sold in Mexico, the Tsuru, and the cheapest Nissan sold in the USA, the Versa, were driven into one another at 40 miles per hour. You don't want to be in either car, but you definitely don't want to be in the Tsuru.
A car-to-car test between a 2015 Nissan Tsuru, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico, and a 2016 Nissan Versa, the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in the United States. With a 50% overlap and each vehicle travelling at 40 mph (64 km/h) the test highlights the significant differences in safety standards between these two baseline models sold by the same manufacturer in different markets.
Wired reports that the Tsuru (basically a 1990s Sentra) is being put to pasture soon, and that Mexico is toughening its car safety laws. Read the rest
I took Ghent University's vocabulary test, and according to the results, I know 83% of the English words.
The Minnesotan took the test and got a 94%. He said:
The test does not require you to define or spell words. Instead you are asked to determine whether an entry ("glyph," "moktam," "macrophage," "wookel" etc) is or is not a word in the English language.
There seemed to be about a hundred words in the test, which you can proceed through at your own pace, and you can retake it if you wish (with a different group of words on the retest). At the end you can review your errors and see the definitions of the words you missed.
Read the rest
Baker was a 23-kiloton nuclear weapon that was detonated underwater at Bikini Atoll in 1946. The goal was to see what would happen to Navy boats if they were in the region where a nuclear bomb went off. The boats you see in this photo were unmanned, but there were sailors relatively close by, taking these shots. There's evidence that they weren't properly protected against fallout, and later used contaminated water to drink and bathe in. (Also, as a fictional side effect, Bikini Atoll nuclear tests like Baker might have been responsible for the creation of Spongebob Squarepants.)
My Modern Met has compiled several photographs and video that give you an up-close, mind-boggling view of the explosion — including the massive column of water that shot into the mushroom cloud and the 2-mile-high tidal wave that followed. Read the rest
