Innholdsfortegnelse for January/ February 2019 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

In November 2018, construction broke ground in Dubai on a R550 million, 12 000 square metre vertical farm, the largest in the world. For now, however, the Newark, New Jersey, headquarters of AeroFarms (pictured) still holds that title: At 6 500 square metres, with lightweight plant beds stacked under a custom array of LED lights, the facility yields 900 000 kg of greens per year. That’s 390 times more productive than a traditional farm would be with the same amount of land – while using 95 per cent less water. When water and arable land are scarce, or import costs are steep, this new kind of farm offers a way to grow fresh, local, and environmentally sustainable produce.…

‘HOROLOGY? WHAT’S THAT?’ … I hear you say. Well, it’s the study and measurement of time, as well as the art of making clocks and watches. This includes the maintenance, repair and restoration of timepieces, which is exactly what Andrew Millar, the Overberg Horologist, does. Andrew lives and works in Villiersdorp, a small town tucked away between Worcester and Grabouw in the Western Cape. He has clients throughout the Overberg, Cape Winelands and Cape Town, and I spent a few weeks speaking to him, and shadowing him in his work. HOW IT ALL STARTED With basic horology skills learned from his father, for whom clock repair and restoration was a hobby, Andrew took on his first paid repair job in 1993. He did this to widen his customer base, for whom…

1 / Dynamic rope Dynamic rope is the only type of rope used for rock climbing, because it stretches under load (5–10 per cent when weighted, and as much as 40 per cent during a large fall). The stretch helps to absorb shock, and reduces the forces experienced by both the climber and the equipment, making injury and equipment failure less likely. 2 / Ascenders These devices are used for ascending a rope. They slide easily along a rope in an upward direction, but lock in place when pulled down to bear the weight of a climber. Typically, a climber uses two at once (one per hand), when the rock face is too difficult to climb using natural hand- and footholds. 3 / Rigging plate Used for keeping lots of…

Density Current: Smoke blocks sunlight from the forest floor, creating a low-lying layer of dense, cool air that pushes smoke in unexpected directions. Pyrocumulus Cloud: Hot air and water vapour released by combustion rise over a wildfire. The vapour condenses into clouds that can cause rain or lightning. Updraft: Heat creates crazy powerful winds that can sweep skyward at up to 190 km/h. Clements’ team unwittingly flew through one. ‘One of the radar scientists on the aircraft hit his head and started bleeding,’ says Clements. ‘We got this text where he said, “I’m bleeding for science, but we’re okay.”’ Horizontal Roll Vortex: Updrafts rotate along the ground in opposite directions (like log-rolling). ‘They can lean over and collapse on firefighters,’ says Coen. Fire Whirl (aka Firenado): Winds swirl around hot,…

Bottle jacks lift sink I had to replace an under-mount sink recently, and I had to devise a process to do it for myself, because none of the pros wanted the job. The sink shop told me to talk to a plumber. The plumber told me to talk to the counter guy. The counter guy told me he’d do it, but would probably break my counters in the process. That seemed a little dramatic. Counter guys are such divas. The full install is a longer story – just know that every adhesive, even the one whose label says something like ‘Want to glue bowling balls to a Teflon ceiling? Bring it on!’ can be undone by the constant strain of a sink, and various pieces of water-filled cast-iron cookware –…

WHEN JOHAN ACKERMANN was in his twenties, he watched the 1971 Steve McQueen movie Le Mans. All credit to him for making it through the interminable yawnfest ably supported with a plodding storyline, but just like any hot-blooded petrolhead, he was utterly transfixed by the film’s obsessively crafted race sequences. Steve McQueen, belting a genuine Gulf-liveried Porsche 917 flat-out down the Mulsanne Straight at speeds approaching 350 km/h (another Porsche 917 was used as the camera car to capture the awe-inspiring footage), was enough to get him hooked on the power, majesty, drama and glory of Le Mans. Fast-forward 40-something years, and Johan – these days a retired aircraft technician enjoying a well-earned rest after years of hard labour –finds himself spending many hours driving a 1989 Sauber Mercedes C9…

Astronaut Scott Kelly lived for a year aboard the International Space Station, orbiting Earth 400 kilometres above its surface. His new book Infinite Wonder is a collection of photographs from that year. The images were tricky to take: He had to pan the camera to compensate for the fact that the ISS was moving at 28 200 km/h relative to Earth. ‘I CARRY A PETZL Tikka headlamp with me whenever I travel – even to space. It’s a flashlight that, since it’s attached to your head, looks where you look. This allows both of your hands to be free to accomplish tasks. In space, that’s even more necessary. In the absence of gravity, you sometimes need one of your hands to react to control your body if you are turning…

IMAGINE BEING WOKEN at 3 am by your home-alarm siren blaring away. You stumble to the alarm panel, fumble for the light switch, get your glasses on and squint to see which zone was triggered. The flashing red light tells you it was zone 3, but in your sleepy haze, you have no idea what that means. You then spend another 40 seconds deciphering the legend in the panel lid before you eventually realise that zone 3 apparently corresponds to the area around your garden shed. By the time you are completely awake and aware of what exactly is going on, the intruder could’ve already gained access to your home. Contrast this with being woken by a speaker loudly proclaiming ‘Intruder at the garden shed!’, all in your own prerecorded…

WINNING LETTER BONDING MATERIAL My dad is a fixer, a builder, an inventor, a saver of perished things, but most importantly, he is my dad. Ever since I could remember, he’s been buying Popular Mechanics. I used to think, ‘What a boring, typical dad magazine,’ until a year ago when one of your bright and colourful covers caught my eye. So I picked it up to have a look… From that day, whenever my dad buys the month’s issue, I sneakily steal it without him knowing, and get so excited to see what new things I can learn. Since then, I’ve found out about the honeycomb satellite being built for outer space, I’ve learnt about the latest tech gadgets, and how a number of movie stunts were filmed. Your magazine…

GOOGLE THE NAME Robin Hood and you might be amazed at how often a filmmaker adapts the tale – at least every two years, and three times in 2012. The latest, starring Jamie Foxx and Kingsman’s Taron Egerton, is different: Lit like a Batman movie, with eternally compelling themes of corruption and abuse of the masses, it feels modern. ‘It’s absolutely still set in medieval times, but as a viewing experience, I didn’t want it to feel like a traditional, cliché medieval period drama,’ says director Otto Bathurst. That thinking led to scenes like this one – a chase between two horse-drawn carriages that looks more akin to The Fast and the Furious than Braveheart – down to two-wheel turns and drifts worthy of rally racing. With the help of a…

UNDER ARMOUR When it comes to performance footwear, Under Armour is one of the leading names on the market. On 1 January (which might just have passed by the time you read this), the company is unveiling its all-new UA HOVR Infinite shoe, which they say is called ‘Infinite’ because it’s made for the distance runner. It has super-soft, full-length HOVR foam in a ‘dynamic energy web’ which, we’re told, is for comfortable landings and springy take-offs. Added to that set-up is a firm foam frame with deep flex grooves in the outsole and a breathable upper. Under Armour’s biomechanics team has even conducted extensive research to identify the gender-specific needs of a woman’s foot. Taking it one step further, there is a sensor embedded in the midsole of the…

IT’S probably fair to assume that the average modern household has a drawer, box or plastic container hidden away somewhere that’s full to bursting with long-discarded electronics. It’s the one overflowing with old gadgets, cellphones (no, not the smart kind), TV remotes, and cables you reasoned you should probably keep safe (just in case you need them) … 10 years ago. The rate at which we all tend to update our electronics with better, faster and now often cheaper versions of themselves is on the rise, not to mention when we completely adopt entirely new tech. Most of us, for example, will get a smartphone upgrade of some kind every two years – even if it’s a hand-me-down from a relative or a friend, it’s still an upgrade of what…

URINE. PEE. WHIZZ. WEE. Or as Dr Dyllon Randall (pictured left) likes to calls it, liquid gold. Currently a senior lecturer in Water Quality Engineering at the University of Cape Town, Dr Randall is fascinated by urine. While he has always had a keen interest in waste management, his real fascination with urine started in Switzerland a few years ago. As a participant in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, he started looking into what we can recover from the yellow liquid we flush down the loo. Sitting in Dr Randall’s office in the university’s snazzy new Engineering Building, it’s hard to believe how much experience he has under his belt. Put a beanie and a backpack on him and you could easily confuse him with…

THE FIRES ALMOST SEEM TO BE WINNING. EVERY SUMMER IS WORSE THAN THE LAST: THE BLAZES ARE LARGER LAST LONGER. AND DO MORE DAMAGE. THESE ARE THE WEAPONS THAT WILL HELP US FIGHT BACK. WILDFIRES USED TO have a season. From May to October, much of California – plus parts of most states west of the Rockies – would be on alert for dry conditions. Cold, wet November meant the threat was over. And then 2018 happened. During that year, David Tikkanen, a 20-year veteran of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, worked a 34-day shift, from 19 July to 21 August. ‘Back when I first started, it was the 11-day mark,’ he says. ‘When I started to cross the 11-day mark on a regular basis, it was…

PROLOGUE MARCH 2016. On a sunny Bay Area Friday, Jamie Hyneman is alone at M5 Industries, a tinkerer’s dream of a workshop in south San Francisco that was for 13 glorious years or so the de facto headquarters of MythBusters, one of the most successful reality shows in television history, of which he was the walrus-mustached cohost. He’s alone here a lot these days, now that the show is over and the crew cleared out. He owns the space, and a lot of the MythBusters stuff is still here, pieces and parts and gear stacked in neatly labelled boxes from floor to ceiling. He’s giving an impromptu tour to a couple of kids, showing them scary masks from his days doing Hollywood special effects and a mechanical spider that’s taller…

I’VE BEEN WOODWORKING for about 15 years, building mainly furniture pieces from solid wood and plywood for panels. Cutting up huge sheets of board material in my home workshop is always a challenge – one overcome by a simple game-changing machine called a track saw. The magic lies in the track on which the saw runs. The blade overhangs the side of the track and when you use it for the first time, it scores a zero-clearance strip, which is the cut line of the saw. In use, you line up your pencil lines with the edge of the track and make a perfect cut every time. The Festool brand has been leading the track-saw market for many years, but it has recently had to face some stiff competition from…

1 / BODY: This component, being the bulkiest part of the lock, is generally made of brass, aluminium, cast iron or laminated steel. Brass is very common locally, but it’s brittle, so the strength is limited. Lighter aluminium bodies are around 10% stronger than brass. The strongest bodies are made from laminated steel plates, which are stacked and riveted together. 2 / SHACKLE: What some might consider the business end of the padlock, the shackle is usually made from steel, coated with nickel or chrome. Hardened shackles go through a process whereby the metal is heated to a very high temperature, then cooled quickly in water or oil. This alters its metallurgical structure, making the shackle more difficult to saw through or sever with bolt cutters. Some shackles are made…

FUEL JUST SEEMS to get more and more expensive. Which is understandable when you acknowledge that it is a natural resource that won’t last forever, and economics drive its price – from the big oil-producing countries down to exchange rates and government taxation. Until the time comes when we’re all driving electric cars that are powered by the sun, combustion engines will continue to drain a portion of our monthly budgets, both in fuel and vehicle expenses. But there are steps that you can take to ameliorate these costs. Driving in a way that optimises your vehicle’s fuel economy and prolongs the lifespan of various components of your car will mean that a tank of fuel takes you further, and there is less likelihood of expensive repairs when next you…

1 DECEMBER 1974 Calculators Get Smaller, Smarter and Cheaper By the end of ’74, things were heating up on the calculator market, and their prices were dropping. We focused on how to choose the right one, considering features like floating decimals, number of digits, ‘ feel ’ of the keys, and power supply. Scientific calculators were cutting edge, with the ability to perform trigonometric and logarithmic calculations. 2 MAY 1954 13 000 Feet Under the Sea In the French Bathyscaphe We covered the bathyscaphe, a crude submarine used by two French seamen in the Atlantic Ocean off Dakar to descend to the record depth of 4 049 m. Designed for deep-sea research (and not just record-setting), the vessel’s superstructure comprised mainly tanks filled with gasoline. 3 AUGUST 1964 Chair That…

We wanted to see … just how far it could go. I’M IN CROYDON, PENNSYLVANIA, where I would never be if I weren’t doing what I’m doing. It’s a sleepy Pennsylvania burb, hard by I-95 – unremarkable, nice. The traffic thins and I have this winding back road to myself. I zoom over a quiet two-lane bridge, and I’m gazing down at the small stream passing beneath it. I lift my head up again, but it’s too late. Five metres in front of me is a crack in the bridge deck that could swallow a Miata. I can’t stop, can’t swerve. A few kilometres back, the skateboard I’m riding handled a railroad crossing no problem. This is much worse. Also, it’s not really a skateboard. Or it is, but it’s…

OKAY, WITH A PRICE TAG of R89 999, it is not cheap, but riding the Trek Powerfly FS 7 Plus is something special. Start pedalling, and the strong battery-powered Bosch motor kicks in and boosts your own physical effort. This means easier (and less sweaty) commutes to work, climbing higher and further in the mountains, and keeping up with those friends who are just too annoyingly fit. Learn more at trekbikes.com/za/en_ZA. >> COMPUTER: The Bosch Purion display is easy to operate using your left thumb without letting go of the handlebars. Flick through the four modes depending on the amount of motor assist or range you need. The eMTB mode automatically adjusts the assist to match the terrain. >> HELMET: The Bontrager Quantum MIPS helmet (Trek’s brand) is equipped with…

For the past few years, Anthony Putorti, a fire protection engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a former fire investigator, has been working on a test series examining facepieces from the respirators firefighters wear to prevent smoke inhalation. The lenses, which firefighters look through as they work, were melting under certain extreme conditions. The original goal was to create new stress-testing requirements for those facepieces – but the data Putorti gathered turned out to also be useful for determining fire characteristics after exposure. Now, researchers are working on ways fire investigators can use the findings of his study to reverse-engineer, based on gear damage after a firefight, the conditions of the fire they’re fighting – which will help them fight it better.…

1. WATER MONITORS – high-powered water guns – follow the gaze and direction of remote pilots. 2. EXTERNAL SPRAYERS douse the treads in water, creating a rolling wet-blanket effect of smothering and cooling action as the Sentry moves across a fire scene. 3. INTERNAL SPRAYERS douse the entire inside of the vehicle with a 50/50 mix of glycerin and water, cooling components, scrubbing the air of hazardous particulates, and preventing rust. 4. THE BRAIN BOX houses the computers that run the Sentry’s sensor package and remote-control apparatus. 5. A suite of TANKS house 3 800 litres of water, 380 litres of flame-retardant foam, and 380 litres of diesel fuel (for running the engine, not firefighting). 6. CAMERAS – including infrared for sighting heat as well as visible flames – live…

MOST OF US appreciate that electrical appliances and bathtubs don’t mix, and in the same way, swimming pools and lightning storms are best kept apart. But, aside from these examples, there are many ways in which water and electronics clash, including in vehicle electrical systems, outdoor motors, and even 4×4 winches. But is water really the problem? Well, yes … and no. Let’s take a closer look. CONDUCTIVITY Although water may seem to be the culprit, pure water is actually an excellent insulator of electricity. In theory, an electrical appliance tossed into a bathtub of pure, distilled water should be harmless. But before you test this theory, let’s look at why ‘impure’ water has the opposite effect. Calling tap water ‘impure’ is probably not the best description, but the crux…

WEEKS BEFORE I passed my test for my motorcycle licence, my wife, Jess, and I bought matching helmets, jackets, gloves, and boots. We had already decided that she was going to ride with me. A friend of mine refuses to go two-up. ‘I’ve crashed plenty of times,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for the passenger if something bad happens.’ Personally, I wouldn’t get on the back of his bike. He’s kind of nuts. But I love sharing the experience of being on a bike, and if you follow a few guidelines, then you can handle that responsibility. The first rule should be a given, but you see people wearing shorts and flip-flops on the backs of bikes all the time: Your passenger needs the same protection as…