Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2014 i Popular Mechanics

Data Visualization by Ben Willers Hazardous asteroids are 10 times more likely to hit Earth than previously thought, according to new research by Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario. The physicist crunched 20 years' worth of data on meteor airbursts instead of using only telescopic surveys and lunar-crater data to make the new assessment. He also studied videos from last year's blast in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Here's what the threat looks like. — SARAH FECHT FEB. 15, 2013 CHELYABINSK EVENT, RUSSIA Exploded in an airburst with the force of about 500 kilotons of TNT, 20 to 30 times more than that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima. JUNE 30, 1908 TUNGUSKA EVENT, RUSSIA 80 million trees knocked down over an area of 830 square miles. 66 MILLION…

Making movies has always been the most technology-intensive of art forms. It takes a small army of artisans to convince us that an actor in a mirrored box is tumbling through space, or that two humans with a mind-melding brain link are controlling a 250-foot-high robot. We continue PopMech's century-long coverage of the film industry's modelmakers, FX artists, and other specialists with our second annual roundup of outstanding sci-tech achievements. Our panel of experts debated the merits of contenders (very little blood was spilled), tallied the votes, and selected winners in categories that appeal to the film geek in all of us. SCI-TECH MOVIE OF THE YEAR GRAVITY Was there another choice? Alfonso Cuarón's story of two astronauts' incredible battle for survival 220 miles above Earth is intense, fresh, and…

Imagine two homeowners: One is a wealthy investor building a vacation house near Lake Tahoe in California. The other owns a middle-class home outside Burlington, Vt. Both are interested in keeping their energy costs under control—and helping the environment while they're at it. The owner of the Tahoe ski palace installs an expensive solar-energy system to power his lights and appliances, covering his roof with photovoltaic panels. (He uses natural gas for heat.) The Vermonter invests in a clean-burning wood-pellet stove, cutting his consumption of heating oil by about 80 percent. Our Tahoe homeowner enjoys the virtuous glow of being seen as an alternative-energy pioneer. He also enjoys something else: Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, he is entitled to a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the…

Airmen who launch nuclear missiles are called key turners. From left: 2nd Lt. Evan Fay, 1st Lt. Lucas Rider, 1st Lt. Nathan Larson. SECRET LANGUAGE OF A MISSION PATCH: A Glory Trip (GT) is a ground-based missile (GM) test launch; this is the 209th. GT-209's missile came from the 91st Missile Wing (MW) in Minot, N.D. The 576th Flight Test Squadron (FLTS) runs the show from a control room at Vandenberg Air Force Base. This mission, launching three demilitarized nuclear warheads, takes its name, Cerberus, and imagery from the mythological three-headed hound that guards the gates of hell. THE BURGERS AND HOT DOGS ARE SIZZLING OUTSIDE THE MISSILE SILO. A dozen airmen in green one-piece flightsuits gather around a portable barbecue, slathering ketchup and mustard on buns and relaxing in…

Your car's technology is usually frozen in time on the day the vehicle leaves the dealer's lot, which makes factory navigation systems difficult or impossible to upgrade. Load the right apps on your mobile device, however, and you'll soon be avoiding traffic, locating speed traps, and finding the nearest cup of coffee with greater speed and accuracy than your in-car system can provide. INRIX, the world's largest traffic- data company, gets most of its information from sensors installed on commercial vehicles—long-haul semis, taxis, even cable-company service trucks. Factor in the intel generated by INRIX's mobile app and the recent addition of private vehicles that automatically (and anonymously) stream data to the cloud and it all adds up to petabytes of road information every day. Apps such as Waze that don't…

A CORDLESS RIGHT-ANGLE DRILL helps you easily do work that would otherwise cause considerable frustration. For example, it can be used in confined wall and ceiling cavities to bore holes or drive screws. Sound like drudgery? Not to us; testing these eight machines was a blast. We bored into a Douglas fir 2 x 8 using a ¾-inch spade bit and drilled through ¼-inch steel. We even subjected our top contenders to a nasty bathroom-remodeling job before declaring a three-way tie among drills at three price points. Each succeeds for different but equally valid reasons. MILWAUKEE 2615-21 RANKING Price: $281 Volts: 18 Amp-hours: 3 ¾-inch holes: 170 Likes: Milwaukee equips its tool with a 10-position clutch for improved performance driving wood screws. But the drill…

Gaming drives off the screen and into the physical world with Anki Drive ($200), which pits iPhone-controlled, artificial intelligence–enabled robotic cars against one another in a weaponized demolition derby. Designed by grads of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, the game plays out on a portable mat encoded with digital markers. As the Hot Wheels–size racers zip around a track, the markers map the vehicles' patterns, allowing the other cars to learn the most advantageous places and moments for firing shots at opponents. A competitor senses a hit when his phone/controller vibrates. As players rack up points, they earn upgrades they can use to customize their cars—for instance, more armor and greater destructive powers. This game won over the PopMech staff but made us miss a…

For the past three decades cruising has been the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry. Eleven new ships were christened last year, and almost 21 million people went on a cruise. Statistically, cruising is relatively safe, but recent failures in seamanship, emergency response, and engineering should sound an alarm. Introduce bad weather or remote surroundings into the equation and an incident like the Costa Concordia shipwreck, which made international headlines two years ago, could result in hundreds of deaths. Compared with other areas where technology and human behavior impact passenger safety—notably, aviation—the cruise industry is poorly regulated. It has no clear equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration, which has a broad mandate to ensure air safety. The U.S. Coast Guard conducts prescheduled, biannual inspections of ships that embark passengers at…

RENDERINGS BY SINELAB Part car, part airplane, and part spaceship, the Bloodhound SSC aims to shatter the land speed record set in 1997 by the Thrust SSC. To make the record count, the Bloodhound won't just have to go 1000 mph. It'll also need to stop, turn around, and do it all again within an hour. How to Build thE world's Fastest Car in 12 Tortuous Steps. 1. Break the sound barrier first. On Oct. 15, 1997, high in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, a sonic boom cracked the air as Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green raced past 747 mph, the speed of sound, at the location's 4000-foot elevation and ambient temperature. The Thrust SSC jet car's twin Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans—also used in the F-4 Phantom fighter—produced 40,000 pounds of…

MOBILE-PAYMENT APPS 4K TVS OLD SETTINGS IN NEW LAPTOPS THE ONE THING ALL GADGETS WILL DO IS BREAK.If your device is under warranty, that's great. But as soon as it's not covered, the bills can add up. Learning to fix your own gadgets can help extend their lifetimes so you don't end up tossing them into the back of a closet or, worse yet, a landfill. The three repairs detailed here require only basic tools and skills—any beginner can tackle them. Opening up your own gadgets can be intimidating at first, but the process can be more rewarding (and affordable) than taking the damaged device to a shop or buying a replacement. 1 Broken Headphone Jack Plug DIFFICULTY: TIME: 30 minutes to 1 hour DIY FIX: $41…

You might be thinking of older batteries, which need to be periodically checked and topped off with water. Most new batteries are maintenance- free, so you can't mess with the components inside. Older battery designs lose water in the electrolyte—a mixture of about one part sulfuric acid and two parts water—from evaporation. If you have this kind, check it twice a year and add distilled water only as needed. Adding acid actually makes a battery deteriorate faster. It comes down to how batteries work and eventually lose their ability to hold a charge. In a typical wet-cell design, a lead plate (negative) and a lead oxide plate (positive) are immersed in the electrolyte. A porous separator keeps the plates from touching and shorting out. Each pair of plates generates a…

These receptacles are great—they eliminate the need for bulky USB adapters that hog valuable outlet space. They are especially useful by the bed, where many of us stash all kinds of USB-equipped devices, such as phones, tablets, and e-readers. That stuff competes for space on a standard duplex outlet that may already be serving a desk lamp or a clock. But to answer your question: Yes, USB receptacles are fairly easy to install, but there are a few things you should know before you switch off the breaker and remove your old outlet. First, these receptacles are generally available in two basic configurations: One is a combined 120-volt and DC-charging device (like the one pictured here); the other is for USB charging only. The latter may be fine next to…

Hydrogen Rising? AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL IS CAUSING A STIR—AGAIN. The basic principle behind hydrogen fuel cells is fairly simple: Hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons to generate electricity and then combined with oxygen to form water as a by-product. Mainstream deployment of fuel-cell vehicles, though, has proved to be complex. Compared with liquid fuels, hydrogen is tough to transport and store. And without a meaningful number of vehicles on the road, there's been no incentive to build hydrogen fuel infrastructure. Now new initiatives in California and across the U.S. are pushing for a long-awaited expansion of the refueling network. And with the debut of three promising hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles from Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota, consumers will have new options beginning in 2014. Are we finally seeing the dawn of the…

Moniker Guitars cofounder Kevin Tully builds one-of-a-kind instruments for people with a knack for self-expression. Kevin Tully was in Syracuse, N.Y., studying for the bar exam when a friend came pedaling up to his apartment on a bicycle. Not just any bicycle but a one-of-a-kind machine she herself had created on a hip, design-it-yourself website owned by Republic Bike. "She went online and picked out all the colors and parts," he says. "She was really enthusiastic about the bike because it represented her sense of style." As a lifelong guitar player, Tully identified with that sense of pride. He was no Jimi Hendrix, but the two instruments in his home ranked among his most prized possessions. How great would it be, he wondered, if they could truly reflect his personal…

MAKERBOT I used a MakerBot Replicator 2 printer to manufacture a small arsenal of launchable rockets, albeit with varying degrees of flight worthiness. The work I've done on spacecraft got me hooked on 3D printing. When I was an electrical engineer for RCA Astro (now part of Lockheed Martin), I helped design, build, and launch the Mars Observer and other interplanetary probes. Back then I had dreams of building my own spacecraft and rocket engines but was discouraged by how expensive and time-consuming it was to fabricate even the simplest space-grade hardware. You can imagine, then, how exciting it's been watching aerospace companies put 3D printers to work in screen-to-machine manufacturing systems that dramatically cut the time and cost of printing flight-worthy parts. Considering how quickly once-primitive home-brew machines have…

3 Busted Laptop Fan DIFFICULTY: TIME: 20 to 40 minutes DIY FIX: $30 to $50 (depending on the cost of the fan) OUT-OF-WARRANTY FIX: $60 to $100 per hour (part not included) LAPTOP FANS COLLECT DUST and overheat with use. The result is a fan that whirs loudly or one that won't work at all. I dealt with a broken fan inside an old Lenovo ThinkPad T400. When I tried to turn the laptop on, a message—fan error—popped up during startup, then the com puter immediately shut down. I turned to the manufacturer for advice, as Lenovo posts guides for its machines online. Following the directions, I removed the keyboard, trackpad, keyboard bezel, and speakers. For this repair, a magnetic mat came in handy…

Installing USB outlets Shaping tile Weep holes right-angle drills INCANDESCENT ERA, RIP. Like it or not, it's time to move on. Traditional incandescent lightbulbs are gone—not banned, precisely, but phased out because the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), passed in 2007, requires them to be about 25 percent more efficient. That's impossible to achieve without decreasing their luminous flux (brightness), so, instead, manufacturers have shifted to more energy-efficient technologies, such as compact fluorescents (CFLs), halogens, and LEDs. Of course, not everyone is embracing these next-gen lightbulbs. Some wonder why we need a mandate to use them, if they're so great. The fact is, after more than a century of incandescents, we've become attached to them. They're cheap, they dim predictably, and they emit a warm and familiar glow. Weaning…

Dalmatians become firefighters' best friends in the late 19th century, when they are used to protect fire-carriage horses. THIRD CENTURY B.C.: Ctesibius of Alexandria, a Greek inventor, designs the first hand-operated fire-extinguisher pump. Similar pumps surface in 16th-century Europe. 1648: New Amsterdam governor Peter Stuyvesant appoints fire wardens to patrol and enforce fire codes. In 1658 men begin using wood rattles to alert citizens to a fire. 1672: Dutch painter Jan van der Heyden develops the first fire hose, made of leather with copper fittings. 1721: British inventor Richard Newsham patents the first fire-engine pump, a twin-cylinder single-acting pump on a wheeled cart. A bucket brigade fills the cistern while a few men work the cross handles to shoot water as far as 135 feet. 1736: Benjamin Franklin organizes Philadelphia's…