Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2023 i Popular Mechanics South Africa

THE PROCESS OF PUTTING together this issue of POPULAR MECHANICS and sending it off to the printer has been bittersweet. Since being appointed editor of this fine publication, back in 2018, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed creating every single issue. I’ve learnt a great deal, through the interesting array of stories, features and articles that we’ve run; I got to know many of our loyal advertising clients, as well as you, our cherished readers. I’ve had the privilege of working with a devoted team of co-workers and contributors, who’ve always strived to create the best product possible. And I’ve been lucky enough to drive and test some amazing vehicles along the way, and try out some brilliant gadgets and tech. The reason why this production cycle in particular has been bittersweet, is…

THE FUTURE IS nothing like we predicted… If we’re honest with ourselves, science fiction has given us a lot of baggage. Just consider for a moment Arthur C Clarke’s brilliant novel (and the movie adaptation), 2001: A Space Odyssey. There we read about how, in the year 2001, humans would be heading to Jupiter. And yet, here we are, two decades on from then, and we’re still not living in spaceships that look like cruise ships, flying around with jetpacks, and getting to know alien cyborgs which may or may not be trying to kill us. While there have certainly been unbelievable technological innovations, many of the more outlandish ideas speculated by futurists remain nothing but fiction. And that is what The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future is all about.…

ADECADES-LONG QUEST TO FIND quasicrystals – a crystal-like material with a seemingly impossible structure – has led researchers to an unlikely location: the site of the Trinity test, the first atomic bomb blast. When the US military detonated a plutonium bomb over the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945, sand fused with copper cables that stretched to the top of the bomb’s detonation tower, forming a glassy mineral called red trinitite. From a sample of this mineral, Luca Bindi, PhD, a mineralogist at the University of Florence in Italy, and his colleagues were able to isolate a previously undiscovered quasicrystal. The discovery, announced earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed light on how these unusual grains form. It’s the oldest anthropogenic quasicrystal…

LET PEOPLE KNOW YOU’RE LOOKING A report from the analytics company GeoTab counts more than 3 800 ghost towns still standing in America. But they don’t usually receive much attention when they hit the market, says Underwood. Weird property news generally travels fastest by word of mouth. Before he discovered Cerro Gordo, for instance, Underwood told people he was looking for a challenging hospitality project. One day, out of the blue, a friend texted him the listing along with a note: ‘LOL, this might be up your alley.’ The friend was correct. GO ALL IN After contacting the broker, Underwood discovered that a hundred or so people had already expressed interest. So he entered a bid he couldn’t afford: $1.4 million, all cash. It was 50% over asking price, and…

AS NEW TECH SHRINKS EACH YEAR, essential ports such as USB-A, HDMI, and ethernet are being replaced by the slimmer USB-C. A hub (often referred to as a dongle) is a small, port-laden gadget that plugs into a single USB-C slot on devices such as laptops, transmitting advanced data and power signals to stand in for those disappearing inputs and restore functionality. Befitting a tool that connects many others, these hubs are versatile, sometimes in ways that aren’t always apparent. Through them, many electronics you already own can connect to peripherals and displays. With some experimenting, you can turn a streaming stick, gaming console, or phone into fully functioning computers. SWITCH BETWEEN A LAPTOP AND A DESKTOP → You probably know how to use a USB-C hub to add external…

EYE PROTECTION Use it. Take it from someone who had a tiny bit of hot metal fuse to their eye that needed removing. Aside from that not being fun, the risk of losing sight is just not worth the time it takes to don eye protection. While there are all kinds of fancy types, an ordinary set of goggles is all you need. GLOVES They seem like a good idea, but grinding wheels – as well as wire wheels found on many grinders – can grab gloves, pulling them, and hands, into the machine. So skip them. LONG HAIR AND LOOSE CLOTHING Just like gloves, anything long and loose – hair and clothing, for example – can get caught and pull you into the machine. Tie your hair back, and…

In the last six decades, more than 600 astronauts have travelled into SPACE. Surgical equipment is one of the top exports of Sialkot, Pakistan, but that’s not the only thing the city mass-produces. Sialkot alone manufactures 70 per cent of the world’s soccer balls – 40–60 million per year. The origin of soccer is widely debated, but it can be traced back almost 3 000 years to China, where cuju, a game using balls made with leather and stuffed with feathers, was played by imperial soldiers for fitness training and then as entertainment for emperors. Astronomers in ancient China were expected to predict the time of lunar eclipses. Often, royalty had them beheaded if their predictions were incorrect about events in SPACE. In 1995, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his…

SCIENTISTS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY have created the world’s smallest microchip, which can be implanted into the body and may eventually be able to detect medical conditions such as strokes. The chips, called motes, are the size of dust mites, measuring less than 0.1 cubic millimetre, and can only be seen under a microscope. Motes operate as a single-chip system, complete with their own electronic circuit. They’re implanted via hypodermic needle, and the data they collect is read using an ultrasound machine. And though the chips have only been tested in lab rats, the Columbia team hopes that one day they can assist in monitoring everything from glucose levels to oxygen saturation. ‘These devices can be designed to sense things and communicate this information back to the ultrasound image, which also…

ENCRYPTION – THE PROCESS OF SENDING A scrambled message that only the intended recipient’s device can decode – allows private and public sectors alike to safeguard information. Traditional encryption uses schemes based on complex mathematics such as factoring (breaking an integer down to its prime factors) or discrete logarithm. Classical computers would require billions of years to crack these codes. Quantum computers, however, won’t be stumped by such hard problems; their exponential leaps in processing power will render classical cyphers obsolete, potentially exposing troves of sensitive data across commercial entities, healthcare providers, government institutions and billions of individual users. Experts are working to devise cryptographic schemes that can run on today’s computers, but that can also be used in ciphers to protect data against quantum attackers. Quantum computers can perform…

Landing a plane on a runway is simple. A backward-pushing force, such as friction, between the tyres and the ground, or the engines’ reverse thrust, slows the plane, while lift from the wings and the natural reaction force from the ground counter the downward forces of gravity. A water landing is similar, but pilots must also account for frictional forces from the water that can rotate – and wreck – the plane. If the plane’s nose contacts the water first, the force will rotate the nose downwards and flip the plane. If one of the wings hits the water first, the plane can rotate in a spin. So a pilot needs to have utmost control over a plane’s pitch, yaw, and roll – in addition to speed – to keep…

THE HUMBLE BENCH GRINDER IS A STAPLE of the handyworker’s home shop, largely due to its versatility. But, while you can employ one to remove metal from just about anything, the traditional kind may not provide the precision you need for every grinding operation. Here, we shed light on the best ways to use the different types of grinders, gleaned from our testing. Bench grinder → What could be simpler than using a bench grinder? Step up to the machine, turn it on, and press an offensive bit of metal into the spinning, abrasive wheel. Right? Well, yes, and no. There are some things to keep in mind to grind both successfully and safely. Heat is your enemy. It builds up very quickly, can damage metals, and makes things too…

Many backyard gardeners start their plants indoors in late winter or early spring, before the weather is warm. But the best way to jump-start plants for spring gardening and also extend the growing season into winter is with a backyard greenhouse. Our design is a 1.8 m × 2.4 m (6 × 8 foot) structure, large enough to accommodate dozens of plants but compact enough to fit into the smallest garden. It’s also easy to build, requiring only basic carpentry skills and easy-to-use tools. You can finish it over a couple of weekends. The cost of the materials to build our greenhouse was about R20 000. That’s higher than some preassembled greenhouses, but our materials are more reliable than any ‘snap together’ model; plus, this one is customisable. We include…

FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER DUBBING ITS most powerful non-nuclear weapon ever developed ‘the Mother of All Bombs’ (MOAB), the US military finally found an opportunity to test the ordnance on the battlefield. In April 2017, intelligence officials had located a large cell of Islamic State Khorasan, the terrorist group also known as ISIS-K, hiding in a cave complex in Nangarhar province on the border with Pakistan. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, to use its official name, had shown promise during demonstrations in testing grounds, such as Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, since its unveiling in 2003. But the Pentagon had never deployed it in actual battle, over concerns about civilian casualties. This cell, however, was believed to be remote enough for a Moab deployment. According to the initial assessment…

THE WORLD’S LARGEST AND MOST POWERFUL magnet, the ‘Central Solenoid’, is finally here – or at least, the first piece of it is. Fully assembled, it will be 18 m tall, 4 m wide, and weigh about 910 metric tons, meaning the decade-in-the-making magnet will be truly massive. Appropriately, it will find a home in southern France at the world’s largest fusion reactor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), this year. Constructing a magnet of this magnitude is one huge job. Engineers and technicians at General Atomics in San Diego have spent more than half a decade designing, fabricating, and testing the various components of the Central Solenoid in its production facility – and that’s only half the battle. Transporting each piece of the magnet is a Herculean endeavour in…

THE HEART OF NASA’S SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM ARRIVED AT KENNEDY SPACE CENTER LAST APRIL AS THE AGENCY’S FIRST HUMAN-RATED DEEP SPACE ROCKET IN 50 YEARS. The 65 m core stage rocket, along with a pair of solid rocket boosters, and the Orion crew module largely make up the Space Launch System (SLS), which NASA is counting on for its Artemis programme’s 2026 return to the Moon – a feat the agency last accomplished with Apollo 17 in 1972. Despite the decades between manned lunar launches, the SLS relies on a workhorse from the shuttle programme. Mounted at the bottom of the core stage are four RS-25 engines – formerly called the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) – supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Originally designed in the 1970s, the engines are seasoned,…

Grinding is messy – grit flies everywhere. While it may be tempting to use a traditional shop dust-collection system, don’t. Particles of metal coming off grinding wheels are hot and could ignite fine, dry sawdust in a dust collector, causing a fire. There are dust-collection systems specifically for grinding, but they’re usually geared towards commercial use, quite expensive, and not practical in a home. Try these strategies to deal with the grit flying around in your shop. 1. Wear an N95 mask or respirator to prevent inhalation of dust and grit (along with eye protection or a face shield). 2. Bolt your grinder to a pedestal or small stand so you can orientate it away from other work surfaces or in an area of the shop where dust and grit…

Watch the complete MADE HERE video series on YouTube: youtube.com/popmechshow SIALKOT, PAKISTAN, has been a worldwide hub of football, or soccer ball, production since the late 1800s. British colonials paid local cobblers there to recreate the balls they used at home, and production has never stopped. I established Forward Sports in 1991. In our first year, we manually produced 1 000 hand-stitched balls per month. I consider this form most effective – due to the strength of each hand stitch – but I explored new materials, panel shapes, and ways of production. By 2004, we implemented lean manufacturing principles that reduced waste and modernised production with automatic lamination, printing, and panel-cutting machines. Now, we make hand-stitched, machine-stitched, thermal-bonded, and even airless mini balls (which never deflate), and gradually have grown production…