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How marvellously novel. I'm sure no-one has ever found a way to absorb energy from movement and store it for later use before, or turn that stored energy into electricity.

And on the subject of using the phone's own vibrating alert to recharge the battery: "Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!".

I was about to post this about 'self winding watches' but that would hardly be called 'vibrations'. Anyway, recovering energy, however miniscule, that would otherwise be waste heat is always good.

Google would disagree. "hard disk" yields 4 billion hits, and "hard disc" only 2 billion.

A bit of history might help you get over your issues.

Since the word disk comes from the Latin discus, I doubt very much that it's short for diskette.

Basically it combines their jetpack with a motorcyle.

All you do is picture the jetpack's turbines as the motorcyle wheel.

Rotate the seat 90 degrees.

Then you have a motorcyle/jetpack. Guaranteed these will be made some day.

Read the white paper. It describes the compression and expansion clearly.

Advantages:

• Since the piston does not form part of the combustion chamber, there is much more freedom in designing the combustion chamber for efficiency -- lower surface/volume ratio (unlike a Wankel) and few crevices that trap unburned charge

• The compression ratio, and perhaps the displacement, could be varied by changing the port/valve timing
• Assymetrical compression/expansion ratios are easy -- a larger expansion ratio could provide better efficiency

• The external combustion chamber allows better handling of the heat issues -- e.g., the piston is not exposed to the primary flame front; cooling can be uniform around the chamber

Among the disadvantages of the toroidal engine are the huge swept area of chamber walls and sliding seals. If these seals are to be tight, they are going to have high friction (and thus high friction losses, due to the large F dot ds), as well as high wear. My conclusion is unchanged: this engine is not going to go anywhere before internal-combustion engines are largely replaced by fuel cells.

• African Edventure
• Reaching Beyond Borders
• Africa Overland Network
• How Stuff Works
• Kids' Democracy Project
• On the trail of Emporer Norton
• Emporer Norton's Archives
• The Why Files

I usually find out some cool stuff too :)

HowStuffWorks.com

Try How Stuff Works. Lots of cool explanations of, well, how stuff works!

All sorts of places have great kids pages: You could try the NRA or the CIA, for instance.

More seriously, you could try somethings like HowStuffWorks.com or project-oriented sites like PARTS or FIRST (yes, I have a robotics bias) that could get them involved in activities beyond just websurfing.

I'll betcha places like Smithsonian, National Geo, NPR, PBS or other traditional educational media organizations are good places to look as well. I swear BBC has a kid's oriented news page. It's just too bad 2600 doesn't have a kid's page...

Here's where I go when _I_ want to learn.

How Stuff Works - Helped with a project or two.
So You Wanna - Doesn't look like it's been updated recently, a pity too. Great step-guides to doing lots of things, from good interviews to skydiving (some vague, some specific)
Everything2 - Geeks guide to everything and anything (including the kitchen sink)

Everyone I point towards this site is thrilled, check it out.
www.howstuffworks.com

i assume you've already used the link howstuffworks? it's pretty appropriate for any age, and has a great section on computers.

Most anti-perspirants, afaik, work by clogging the pores with zinc.

Not according to this article by the folks at HowStuffWorks.com. The active ingredient is not zinc but rather aluminum compounds, which stimulate skin cells to absorb water and thus close the sweat pores. Basically it is a trick of osmosis, and closes rather than clogs the pores.

Zinc compounds tend to be pretty caustic stuff, but they are used in some dermatological treatments. One is dandruff shampoo. However, antiperspirant is not one of them.

Beer works great for me.... I'm a "Slim Sammy" and I drink about 8 beers a night. That's a whopping 1200 calories!!

The catch is that alcohol is a diuretic (pisses right through), not giving it time to metabolize. Plus it burns a few calories for your body to heat it to body temp. I start drinking a bit before dinner so usually too full to eat much anyway.

Oh... and I usually toss down a bottle of wine or a couple scotches after dinner so I'm usaully too hung over to eat breakfast!

Do you have the 1.5L or 1.8L? If it's the 1.8, you have a really great starting point for a small car (under 2400 lbs.). I'd recommend a turbocharger instead, but you can probably get some good advice at http://www.flyinmiata.com/protege/default.asp. (Bah. After looking at their turbo kit, it looks like it would only work on the newer 2.0L.) If you have the 1.5L, perhaps a swap to a more potent four cylinder would be a good choice.

Good luck with the project. I've done some mods to my Civic Si (mostly suspension) and have spent a good deal of time researching performance modifications. Feel free to email me if you want any input.

A couple other good links in case you haven't seen them already:

• HowStuffWorks automotive section
• Sports Car Club of America. Check out "Solo II" if you really want to learn about your car. :-)

HowStuffWorks has your answer, and if properly done they can look exceptionally cool. Not that I'm endorsing building a device for it, nor doing it, for education purposes only. Do not try this at home, and I'm not going into design instructions no matter how hard you beg.


http://www.howstuffworks.com/question150.htm

Although I can't see how you could build one across the Atlantic.

Precisely. That was what I was getting at, though I guess not clearly enough. Maglev trains require a huge infrastructure. Most designs travel in enormous, power-hungry basins (that's a crude description) that would be far too cumbersome for such a long network. Here's an article that goes in to a nice degree of detail about how Maglevs work.

This doesn't address the additional detail that as soon as you put a train across the Atlantic then ships won't be able to travel from one side to the other, since Maglev trains couldn't possibly operate with cantilever bridges. The possibilities for accidental damage and destruction by ships are endless.

I don't know about you, but your grammar is certainly on drugs...

Or perchance, it's your attention span that's on drugs? Grammar Nazi away my grammar, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. And while at it, read what I posted more carefully. I said:

[...] speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec [...]

Speed at the end. Speed of the payload at the end of the cable. Not "speed of the end of the cable." Distance 120,000 km. Average speed estimated at conservative 3 kph. 120,000 divided by 3 equals 40,000 seconds total travelling time. That's just over 11 hours.

As for your claim that it's not a rocket, well, that's debatable. Who says it's a vertical monorail train? There have been several propulsion methods proposed. I got my info here. Not the most scientific of sources, but at least my claim holds a source, unlike your ramblings. (Jeez, 120kph as top speed....any modern rapid rail transit system beats that, and they have stuff like air drag to factor in. Did you pull that number out of thin air, pardon the pun?)

It takes weeks to crawl up there, I shouldn't think braking would be much of an issue.

Uh...the crack you're smoking must be sub-standard. Calculating that the cable reaches about one-third of the way to the moon (or about three times around the globe) and that speed at the end of the cable could be about 10 km per sec, estimating with average speed at a conservative 3 kph the trip to the end of the cable will take about 12 hours.

Heck, with that sort of momentum, the craft will reach Mars in your estimated time of weeks!

A nice article on space elevators without the fancy scientific buzzwords can be found here

You can also construct the cable in a satellite that's on geosynchronous orbit. Molecular construction both ways, so that one end lowers itself to earth, while another grows into space and towards the space station acting as the elevator end point.

As for space elevators in general, not only does the construction pose significant obstacles, but the reality of having a tensile cable stretched from earth to the sky (literally) introduces interesting variables. Back-up plans in case a plane flies smack into the cable? Effects of wind, lightning, hurricanes? What happens if the cable snaps below geosynchronous orbit? Anyway, sure, problems abound, but there's something very exciting about the idea of building something as massive as a space elevator will be.

A good fraction of crude oil is benzyne, right?

Nope. Gasoline is mostly heptane, octane, and other simple carbohydrate chains up to C(11)H(24). Benzene is a simple carbon ring of C(6)H(6) and is very volatile. You can read more about it here. Pay close attention to the second page which talks about which simple hydrocarbon chains go into what kinds of applications. Benzene's volatility means that it wouldn't be filtered out by the refining process (which should also convert it to hexane while we're at it). This cooking process they envision should turn benzene to hexane too, if I recall my organic chemistry correctly.

Oxygen Poisoning info

It looks like oxygen toxicity begins at about 10 times sea-level partial pressure of oxygen (article cites 29 lb/sqin). How stuff works explains that the process is very dependent on both pressure (not % of atmosphere!) and time. Early astronauts used 100% oxygen atmospheres at a low pressure without any problems.

That's completely, 100% false. Look closely at a monitor that's on but black with a magnifying glass some time, and compare it to the same monitor that's off. You'll notice that when it's on, the phospohors are glowing only because of leakage from the electron gun, and not because it's somehow actively painting black onto the screen.

There might be some useful information here.

I thought the inside of the CRT looked more like a speaker, with a big magnet and a speaker-cone shape coming off of it going to the glass.

Except for the fact the entire assembly is rigid, unmovable, and utterly incapable of functioning as a speaker.

It is not an issue of looking like a speaker, but rather being able to move in such a way to produce a compression wave in the air.

Electrostatic speakers use an electric field to move a membrane. Apparently this can be accomplished by using the membrane of an lcd, although the small size would limit the range and quality of the sound. Also I imagine the effects of a vibrating visual display would run contrary to the desire for a stable-nonflicking presentation.

Read this, from HowStuffWorks.

The size of the sun is a balance between the outward pressure made by the release of energy from nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When the core runs out of hydrogen fuel, it will contract under the weight of gravity; however, some hydrogen fusion will occur in the upper layers. As the core contracts, it heats up and this heats the upper layers causing them to expand. As the outer layers expand, the radius of the sun will increase and it will become a red giant. The radius of the red giant sun will be just beyond the Earth's orbit, so the Earth will plunge into the core of the red giant sun and be vaporized.

Of course this will take several billion years, but it sure beats the hell out of global warming. =)

FYI the US spy satellite range is the Keyhole Series. Has been taking pictures of our earth for more than 30 years.

Tho a lot isnt know about current generation (or even the past 2 generations), the US has released older footage.

Here. Its been posted before but it is still jaw-dropping stuff...

That is true, but they aren't using laser guided bombs anymore for that reason. They use GPS now.

To be precise, 2-stroke diesels work on a very different principle than a 2-stroke gasoline engine. They do not mix raw fuel and exhaust, and they have oil pans, so they don't have problems with spewing unburned fuel and oil. They also require an external supercharger to push air into the cylinders, so you won't find one on a chainsaw.

A Montgomery Ward motorcycle from the 60's or 70's got similar gas mileage, but was bigger and faster.

And how about the top of the range polluter the 12 cylinder 2-stroke diesel locomotive.

The GM Hy-Wire

You should also read Wired's article on the Hy-Wire, Popular Mechanics' article and How Stuff Works: GM Hy-Wire for more details.

I wonder if it would be anything like deja vu. Perhaps it would also restrengthen the values of the neurons that were originally altered during the original encoding. That's not always a good idea: Run the same value through a neural network enough times and the neural network becomes too rigid and loses its ability to estimate.

Microsoft Bob?

It sounded really nice in the description, but when I RTFA (or at least looked at the pretty pictures) I had horrible flashbacks of MS Bob.

The interface of this "OS" (It's not really an Operating System, it's more of a graphical environment) can only be kludgy. Imagine actually trying to navigate in this 3d environment. In order to get to different things you have navigate through "portals" and such like that.

I'm sorry, but this will never be practical for anything. Everyone's just going to just keep the current gui system because navigating it is a lot easier than trying to navigate a 3d environment. (I can already see the thousands of geeks frantically running about crying, "now where did I put my pr0n again?")

Download the pdf, look at the pretty pictures (saying "ooooo" and "ahhh" where appropriate) and move on.

Ford gets the prize for being the first company to embrace RABS (Rear Anti-lock Braking System -- at less than $100 per vehicle for about 80% of the benefit of a four-wheel system, it was a safety bargain). In '87, it appeared on F-series pickups, Broncos, and Bronco II's as standard equipment. Chevy followed with a similar system on its redesigned '88 C-series, and calls it RWAL (Rear Wheel Anti-Lock).

Hydrogen is the preferred fuel, but it is unstable and difficult to work with. Methanol (which is easier to handle) can be used in conjunction with a reformer, which basically extracts the hydrogen from the methanol.

At that point, it is the same thing as a normal fuel cell, just a bit less efficient

HowStuffWorks has a good explanation about it http://science.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell.htm

http://people.howstuffworks.com/art.htm

Don't be so sure. The thing is, asteroids are valuable.

Check out this page and read some of the value of asteroids.

There are around one million asteroids with diameters of 1km. On average, it'll contain (among other metals), 30 million tons of nickel (for example, picked randomly).

According to metalprices.com, the market price for nickel per metric tonne is $8950 USD on the London Metal Exchange as of 2/28/2003. A little math suggests that the value of one of our average asteroids purely for the nickel would be $268 billion. According to the first page, the platinum contained would be worth more than $150 billion. Not to mention the cobalt, iron, etc in an asteroid.

So what will it cost to mine? $100 billion? $200 billion? $300 billion can go far, and you're still far less than the current market value of just ONE ASTEROID. Of course, there's dangers of flooding the market, but you can manipulate the market (DeBeers diamonds, anyone?).

As for the moon, you have helium-3, which is damned good for fusion.

It's definately worth mining in space. The asteroids are worth an incredible fortune, and the moon is a great place to put a base.

I hope we do try. If we try, we'll do it. Only time will tell if it was worth it, but we must make the first step. We'll never get there or get the tech to get there if we don't try.

Is there any way to factor a huge number with DNA computers? Similar to how that travelling salesman problem was solved, you could put every prime encoded into DNA, add em together in a test tube where they will all be magically multiplied :P, and look for the number you want.

Seems about as plausible as this article anyway...

To understand all the hype, here is an article about how DNA computing works. DNA Computing, interestingly, was first proposed by Prof. Len Adleman (of RSA fame), who used it to solve the famous travelling salesman problem for seven cities. He encoded the cities in DNA such that only valid tours could react and form longer strands. The reaction was instant and presto - he had a solution (pun unintended ;)) in a gazillionth of a second.

Here is the bad news. The solution to the problems might be instant, but programmability and reading the output are still headaches. It is interesting to note that it took Adleman several days to read the answer even though the DNA computer "figured out" the answer in no time. But its a promising technology that would be refined in future no doubt.

-Dracken

Oh please, and next you'll want to know if anyone has run Linux on one.

Yup. I sure have.

Until there is a display technology available that doesn't have this [eyestrain] problem

The future is now. Here's how LCDs work.

The Honda S2000 does not have the highest horsepower per liter ratio for a naturally aspirated engine. That honor belongs to the Mazda RX-8, which produces 255 horsepower from 1.3 liters of displacement. That's 196 hp/l, significantly greater than the 120hp/l figure of the Honda S2000.

The Honda S2000's engine has over 50 moving parts. The Mazda RX-8's Renesis motor has only five (2 rotors, 1 shaft, 1 flywheel, 1 counterbalance). Feel free to read up on the wonderful Wankel Rotary engine at http://www.howstuffworks.com/rotary-engine.htm

P.S. Honda's Suck.

"So, anyone outside of Wired's offices know what a Stirling engine is?

http://www.howstuffworks.com/stirling-engine.htm

Gametab - Game Reviews Database

And if everything didn't go as planned .... ? From all the information I've ever seen, we've been more worried about moving asteroids away from earth, for obvious reasons.

Just about any radio I can buy here has RDS integrated with it. Here's an explanation. It doesn't seem to have taken off in the US. It is available on some radio stations, but US versions of even high-end car radios don't have RDS.

Ummm... I thought that a stinger missile uses only infrared guidence. Those missiles are not likely to be talking to an electronic gadget on the space shuttle, nor are they likely to be effective after the first few seconds of liftoff (when the engines are on and the vehicle is in range of the stinger). Even at liftoff, I would guess that a stinger might be incinerated by the exhaust plume before it reaches the shuttle.