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Interview: Ask Alan Adler About Flying Toys and the Perfect Cup of Coffee
When he's not lecturing at Stanford or NASA, Alan Adler is working on brewing the perfect cup of coffee and engineering flying toys. His AeroPress is one of the most popular coffee brewing systems available and one of his Aerobie Pro Rings set the world record for the farthest thrown object at 1,333 feet. Alan has agreed to sit down and answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
After reading the article about the Aerobie setting a world record as the farthest flying thrown object in human history (uber-neat, BTW), I wondered: Do you think there's any way that such a design would work as a small drone platform? Perhaps something that can be thrown from the hand, then perpetuate flight at least semi-autonomously?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I love french press coffee, but drink paper filtered drip because cafestol present in coffee oils increases blood cholesterol. Unfortunately, those coffee oils are delicous so I lose a lot of the flavor as well.
I see the Aeropress is a french press like device, but uses paper filters. Doesn't using a paper filter remove most of the flavorful coffee oils you'd get from using a french press? If the Aeropress lets more of those oils through, does it also let more cafestol through?
Graphs with scales labeled in the appropriate units and measures of uncertainty(error bars) would be highly appreciated.
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The Aerobie Pro Ring is one of the best skill toy inventions ever created.
Can you tell us about the physics and engineering challenges that you had to overcome to break the world record?
Oh, for just 4 more feet, that would have been awesome. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.