Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2014 i Popular Mechanics

WHAT YOU WROTE ABOUT A highly scientific, fully comprehensive look at your response to our June issue, in helpful pie-chart form. "The 25 Skills You Should Teach Your Kid" Blade Orientation on Circular Saws Godzilla "What Your Phone Says About You" "In Defense of Jargon" The bad taste of bitterant LETTERS OCULUS RIFT MAY NOT CAUSE MOTION SICKNESS. SORRY? Thanks for the article on the Oculus Rift ("Total Immersion," June). I was presenting a lecture to CAE, a Canadian company that builds airline-training simulators, and they let me try out a new simulator where they re-created the effects felt by the inner ear when a plane moves. The entire cockpit enclosure was mounted on hydraulic pistons. If the "airplane" changed altitude, the cockpit moved to make you feel like you…

When Superstorm Sandy nearly sank New York City two years ago, we knew it was going to happen. Same with snowmageddon in 2010: D.C. got more snow than a Saskatoon Christmas, and, again, we knew it was going to happen. Those were both devastating storms, but we were as prepared for them as we could have been, thanks to two very important satellites. Now, however, as superstorms become more frequent, those two very important satellites are running out of time. To pull together your five-day forecast, meteorologists rely on two types of satellites. The first sits 22,000 miles up, capturing basic information on a fixed location. The second orbits the poles, 500 miles up, filling in crucial image gaps and, more important, providing essential information about cloud formation, surface temperatures,…

Twenty miles north of New York City, something loud and historic is happening. For the first time in a half-century New York is building a new bridge—a 3.1-mile, $3.9 billion span over the Hudson River. And, this being New York, it's gotta be big. Real big. If you count the 40-foot gap for a possible future commuter rail between the spans (and we do), this will be one of the widest bridges in the world. It will be an accomplishment and a centerpiece—and, best of all, it won't need major repairs for at least 100 years. The same can't be said of the current bridge, the Tappan Zee. It was lucky to make it this far. Every day 138,000 vehicles drive over it, even though it was meant to handle…

We are drawn to conspiracy theories because we're drawn to explanations—the cause and effect that brings us, even temporarily, certainty and order. Ben Mezrich knows this. He also knows the power of the chase—the perilous trails hewn by risk-embracing adventurers. His previous books include nonfiction thrillers that have been made into big movies—The Accidental Billionaires became the 2010 Oscar-winning movie The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House became 21, starring Kevin Spacey. In Seven Wonders, his first novel, he gives us slick archaeologist Jack Grady, hot botanist (and possible love interest) Sloane Costa, and conniving billionaire Jendari Saphra, all of them on a quest for the unknown: the Garden of Eden. To get there Mezrich's characters jet around the globe, making stops at each of the seven wonders of…

This is the thirteenth September since 9/11. Earlier this year, deep beneath the ground where the World Trade Center towers once stood, a museum chronicling the events of that day opened to great fanfare, mixed reviews, and long lines. It cost more than $700 million to build. Admission for one is $24. There's a gift shop. Out in western Pennsylvania, in a field 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, another memorial is under construction, just as important and on its way to being astonishingly beautiful. It is the Flight 93 National Memorial, commemorating the 40 passengers and crew who gave their lives there so that others might be saved. But this memorial is strangely unpublicized, the full $70 million to complete it hasn't been raised, and it's not due to be…

THE HARDWARE LEXICON ACE VS. TRUE VALUE IMPACT DRIVERS CLEAN HANDS Mean Hardware Guy worked fasteners—screws, nails, bolts. Probably still does. Back in the late '90s and early oughts, Mean Hardware Guy was my favorite staffer at my favorite hardware store, Clark-Devon Hardware in Chicago (where the latter word is pronounced "de-VAHN"), and certainly not for his personal effervescence. He was, and inevitably still is, brusque, wearily but quickly turning from one weekend bumbler to the next, almost seeming to enjoy the cluelessness of the questions, always setting things right with the answers. He saw me through the renovations of two turn-of-the-century heckholes, generally opening the dialogue with, "What are you trying to do?" He dispensed his wares from bins, not blister packs, counted out the exact number you needed…

The 12-volt impact driver is a versatile mighty mite. Driving small fasteners at low speeds and low torque, it operates like a drill driver. But its impact mechanism kicks in automatically for big fasteners such as lag screws or hexhead sheet-metal screws. This feature makes these drivers invaluable for building a deck from pressure-treated lumber or even assembling metal duct. We evaluated nine tools by driving lag screws into a 4 x 4 until the batteries ran out. One product dominated the field, but we were surprised by the feisty performance of some of the more inexpensive machines. BOSCH PS41 PRICE: $120 WEIGHT: 2.14 lb LAGS: 167 BATTERY TYPE AND SIZE (AMP-HOURS): Li-ion/2 Ahr LIKES: We like the Bosch's stubby size—it's nearly an inch shorter than the Milwaukee. We also…

A RALLYING CRY: We live in an age of resurgent self-reliance. The only limit to our creativity is our determination, and that doesn't appear to be running out anytime soon. So consider this a call to action. We hope the projects in this issue—some of which you could make in your basement today, some of which are being made by engineers and craftsmen around the country—stir in you an urgent desire to build something. Anything. It's what we humans do, after all. Plus, it's fun. All you need is a little guidance and some inspiration, which, with the help of many experts, we've provided in the massive special section that sprawls over the next 36 pages. Oh, and you might want a few tools too. And always wear safety goggles.…

Like horror-movie sequels or species of beetles, the potential varieties of lamps are nearly infinite. There are chandeliers that look like jellyfish, and sconces that look like bowler hats. If you can imagine something, assume someone has made it light up. Your actual project is probably simpler—a wood box, a vase, an old kerosene lantern. What it is doesn't matter. What you do to it does. A high-quality lamp relies on its electrical structure. Whatever you're converting, you'll need something hardy to support the bulb socket and the harp. "Don't just stick a cord in a bottle, wrap it with electrical tape, and try to make that work," says David Huter, custom lamp builder and owner of The Lampmaker in Louisville, Kentucky. You can get anything you need at a…

The box is the most elemental structure: Furniture is boxes with hardware. A house is a large, waterproof box. Once you can make a box, you can create far greater things. We asked three expert woodworkers to build a simple box to see how each would approach the task. Very differently, it turns out—despite giving them similar design briefs. The outside dimensions had to be 16 x 12 x 8 inches, and they could only use tools and materials found at their local home center. We ended up with three boxes with three distinctive joints, all equally awesome. HOW TO MAKE A NIGHT OF IT // Start with a main event. A concert is good. Or a group dinner. Parent–teacher conferences, even. Something to make it to and eventually leave.…

Bread has nourished mankind for more than 30,000 years. It is the simplest thing you can eat, and yet the complexity of the biochemical reactions zinging through a ball of rising dough at any given moment is astonishing. Andrew Sean Greer bakes with his mother, a professor of food chemistry, and with Chad Robertson, a famous baker, to discover how bread—chewy, crusty, warm, comforting, everyday, miraculous bread—works. 1 THE STARTER Chad's starter is better than mine. That much I can tell at a glance—a bubbling, luscious, fawn-colored batter. A starter is a baker's pride, grown from airborne yeast, flour, and water, carefully fed and tended over time, sometimes years. "We're going for yogurty," Chad Robertson, famous baker, tells me, shrugging. I smile appreciatively, not mentioning that mine, yesterday, seemed a…

About $30 in materials and a couple of power tools are all you need to build this stylish—and comfy—American classic. Tools and Supplies: Circular saw / rafter square / bar clamps / cordless drill / two 1" x 10" x 10' boards of cedar or other weather-resistant lumber / 48 1½-inch exterior-grade wood screws Okay, we'll admit that although last month's CNC-milled chair was awesome ("Create Your Own Flat-Pack Chair," July/August), the project was out of reach for many readers. So here's something you can build that doesn't require access to a $25,000 CNC machine. In fact, you'll need little more than a circular saw and a cordless drill. My design is based on the rustic-but-comfy Westport plank chair, which evolved into today's Adirondack chair. Thomas Lee built the original…

STUNT PLANES! WEATHER! A NEW CAMERA! DETROIT SOFT PADDING THAT HARDENS ON IMPACT AIR-FILLED SHOCK ABSORBERS A CHIN STRAP THAT CINCHES AROUND THE BASE OF THE HEAD Cross section of the new Xenith Epic For the past couple of years it's been hard to ignore: Football hurts football players. And not in the sore-knee, it'll-take-a-little-longer-to-get-out-of-the-lounger-when-I'm-retired kind of way. More in the way of Jermichael Finley, who had one hit end his 2013 season—and almost his ability to walk. Or worse, in the way of Junior Seau, whose chronic brain damage is widely suspected to have led to his suicide in 2012. But there is hope. Last year was already big for the NFL in terms of safety. The league put independent neurologists on sidelines, banned high-risk tackles, and pledged more…

If you've been to an upscale bar or restaurant lately, you've probably noticed that bartenders are paying a lot more attention to ice, from the size and shape of the cube to the ingredients. The so-called artisanal-ice movement is in full swing. The name is a little stuffy, but it's easy to get behind anything that improves your cocktail. So, what exactly is the point of those chiseled cubes and tennis balls of ice? According to Charles Joly, beverage director at the ice-obsessed Aviary bar in Chicago, you want artisanal ice for two reasons: density and dilution. "The way ice freezes in a typical freezer is basically from all directions, outside in," Joly says. Because of this, air and impurities get trapped inside the cube in the form of flecks…

POPULAR MECHANICS: The United States has 100 nuclear reactors in 62 plants, supplying over 19 percent of our electricity. Several more plants are scheduled to start operating within the next decade. How does nuclear fit within President Obama's "all-of-the-above" energy strategy? Ernest Moniz: We see every fuel and technology and efficiency as having a place in a low-carbon marketplace. As far as nuclear goes, I believe there are two issues. One will be the cost and scheduled performance of the new reactors being built in Georgia and South Carolina. Second will be, on a slightly longer time scale—let's say early in the next decade—the cost– performance of the first small, modular reactors that we anticipate having online by 2022 or 2023. Those are very, very critical issues. You might note…

The cherry-red stunt plane tore off the runway as the tree line blurred beneath us. My life—and the location of my lunch—was entirely in the hands of Jeff Boerboon, the 2010 U.S. National Aerobatic Champion, who sat at the controls. It was practice day at the Bethpage Airshow in New York, and we were strapped into the cockpit of his two-passenger Extra 300L—an aerobatic aircraft that can reach speeds of 253 mph. Boerboon asked if I was ready, then, before I could respond, yanked the stick to one side. Here are some of the stunts we tried that nearly killed me. LOOP What it is: Vertical loop at 180 mph. How it works: We were pulling close to 4 g's at the top of the loop, which would…

YOU HAVE QUESTIONS. Everyone does. Questions about the world—great, important questions, or questions that are inconsequential but just kind of interesting—that fly through your head before vanishing a second later. This is the place to ask those questions. (Start writing them down, please.) Don't be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Q Exactly how deep can a human being travel underwater using current technology? The deepest point ever reached by man is 35,858 feet below the surface of the ocean, which happens to be as deep as water gets on earth. To go deeper, you'll have to travel to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, a section of the Mariana Trench under the Pacific Ocean 200 miles southwest of Guam. And you're going to need a shovel. Two expeditions…

The bad news is, new technology is altering Homo sapiens' evolution such that, in one generation, few of us will know how to change a tire, a basic skill man has been performing for millions of years. Still, the technology shows progress in our species. The spare tire is disappearing, and standard equipment nowadays is more likely to be a canister of tire sealant—or a cellphone to call for roadside repair. Unless, of course, you have run-flats. Wait, what are run-flats? A run-flat tire will run, uh, flat for 50 miles at 50 mph, enough to get you to a repair shop. It's built with stiff sidewalls so that even when deflated it can support the car. Though the technology has been around since the 1980s, the Bridgestone Drive Guard…

I bought my dad a new toolbox for his birthday and swapped him for the metal one that he's had since I was a kid. I want to restore the old box to its former glory. Any advice? The process is actually pretty simple. Paint won't stick to a dirty surface, so wipe the box with a clean cloth and mineral spirits, or, if it's really nasty, something powerful like Castrol Super Clean. Follow that with a damp cloth and wipe the box dry. Next, remove any rust with a drill and a 60- to 80-grit sanding disc. If that leaves swirl marks, hand-sand them away. Your primer should be a high-build type, like what they use for auto repair. It's thicker and will do a better job of hiding…

* WHO CAN MAKE A BOAT THIS IS THE DAY THE STUDENTS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR, AND IT'S PERFECT. The sky over the Bronx is a clear, cool blue, with white sponge clouds drifting here and there. The traffic on the Bruckner Expressway, a massive eight-lane highway that chokes off this neighborhood from the rest of the borough and the rest of the world, is a dim wash in the distance, and the dark Bronx River ripples with expectation. In some neighborhoods of New York City—like this one—it's possible to live life without much awareness that this massive city grew up on one of the greatest natural ocean ports in all the world, and that it's laced with rivers besides. Many city kids don't even know how to swim, which…

A Free Throw By Kevin Ollie, head coach, 2014 NCAA champion University of Connecticut Huskies men's basketball team I owe Coach Jim Calhoun a lot. We run a practice drill I inherited from his staff in 2012. It's called the Nash Drill, after Steve Nash. When the guys are getting tired, we have them shoot rapid-fire from the free-throw line for 60 seconds. Make fewer than 17 and you run sprints. I believe that's what helped us shoot 87.8 percent during the tournament. We also try to teach our players to find a routine and fall in love with it. Do the same thing time after time and there are no distractions. When I played for the Huskies in the early '90s, I would find the nail in the floor…

AT FIRST AMY PRIETO DIDN'T KNOW WHAT SHE WAS LOOKING at. The video on the laptop screen showed a pair of hands attaching a battery to an LED, which immediately lit up. This was in March of this year, and Prieto, a chemistry professor at Colorado State University and CEO and cofounder of Prieto Battery, was sitting in an Italian restaurant in northern Colorado. Derek Johnson, the company's other cofounder, sat beside her. "He asked if we could meet somewhere on his way home, which was highly unusual," says Prieto, whose modest, soft-spoken demeanor seems unlikely for someone who runs her own company. She'd worked with Johnson for eight years, starting when he became her first post-doctoral fellow at CSU and then later the director of engineering and technology development…

Those mass-market charcoal briquettes at your local grocery store provide a cheap, reliable flame, but they're also made from compressed, burned-up wood scraps ("char") and chemicals. That's fine for most people, but barbecue purists prefer the hot, all-natural burn of hardwood lump charcoal. It's made by burning wood in a furnace with very little oxygen—inside a ceramic grill like the Big Green Egg or a cast-iron smoker. The smoldering cooks off all the water and impurities, leaving you with the wood's fuel-rich carbon core. Sure, you can buy it, but you can also go buy your steak at Outback. Here, Adam Perry Lang, a classically trained chef and unparalleled BBQ innovator, shares his method for making lump charcoal at home. 1. BUY OAK, HICKORY, MESQUITE, APPLE, OR PEACH HARDWOOD; cut…

A Napkin in the Shape of a Bird of Paradise 1. Fold a cloth napkin in half twice to form a square, then fold it diagonally to form a triangle. 2. Rotate the napkin so that the open tip of the triangle points away from you. Fold the right corner down against the center line of the napkin. Repeat with the left corner. You should have something that looks kind of like the shape of a diamond. 3. Tuck the overhanging edges underneath to form a triangle again, then fold the triangle in half so the lower two corners meet. 4. Pinching the folded corners together, pull up the four flaps of napkin tucked inside the open corner of the triangle. GUNPOWDER FROM YOUR OWN URINE      • Fill a 300-gallon…

Outdoor-gear manufacturers make big bones of their latest high-tech fabrics, going so far as to give them names that would be better suited to Spider-Man villains: Climalite, Spylon, Omni-Freeze. But there's only so far fabric itself can take an all-weather jacket. So they had to start messing with the seams. Over the past decade seams have come a long way. The technology that protects them from wind and water became so nearly perfect that the only better option would be to have no seams at all. That's pretty much what The North Face has done. The Fuse Uno alpine climbing shell ($399) is constructed out of a single piece of fabric, like a really expensive origami crane. Instead of affixing sturdier fabrics at stress points, the company uses different threads…

Everyone, or at least some people, has wanted to be a DJ. Not a radio jock or a sweaty guy in a vest who spins vinyl at bar mitzvahs but a turntablist, wearing giant headphones and spinning records as a throng of beautiful people dance. A scratcher who puts the needle on the record and flicks it with his fingertips to make that cool wickawicka sound. Well, now you can be, kind of. (Turntablist is a word, by the way.) In the '80s and '90s the great DJs took two turntables connected by a mixing board and played them like a musical instrument, creating an aural montage of beats, guitar hooks, vocals, and other recorded samples, and added layers of scratching. A new invention called sonic paper removes the need…

Lytro is the most exciting thing to happen to cameras since Maria Sharapova shot her first Canon commercial. Instead of forcing you to pick an aperture (the setting that determines how much light reaches the camera sensor, and therefore how many levels of an image can be in focus), Lytro cameras capture light from all angles. This means you can focus a picture after you take it. And then you can focus it again somewhere else, as many times as you want, on any point that you please. The first iteration, which came out in early 2012, looked and functioned like a kid's toy—a tube with a grainy, 1.5-inch display and finicky digital zoom. But this summer, Lytro introduced the Illum ($1,499), a camera you wouldn't be embarrassed to be…

Even when you're flying around the freeways that encircle the desolate city, you can see them: shadows of homes looming vacant along the same arteries Detroit's former residents used to exit the place. You head into the actual neighborhoods, and there's maybe one occupied house on any given block—the rest fester in abandonment. Blight has crept over the landscape in the 60 years it has taken the city's population to dwindle from 1.8 million to less than 700,000. When Detroit was booming—from the 1920s through the 1950s—these structures were middle-class dream homes for the new Americans working the city's factories. They were built as tough as the people themselves, framed out with old-growth Michigan forests. Oak with growth rings that count back to the 300 years before it was cut.…

The Ringer 2015 BMW M3 AND M4 PRICE: $62,000/$64,200 AVAILABLE: NOW MPG (city/hwy): 17/26 Unless you're in a dragster, going fast in a straight line is actually pretty boring. The fun kinds of speed happen on back roads, through twisty corners that knock you around like a rickety carnival ride. And for that, there's the M3. A product of BMW's motorsports performance division, the M3 has always been the alpha of the 3 Series line, with more power and increased cornering capabilities. And, thankfully, this fifth generation adheres to the basic criteria of the 1980s original: a rollicking thrill machine without a supercar price tag. Not everything is perfect, though. Both the M3 and its coupe version, the newly coined M4, are heavier and more complicated, thanks to modern regulations…

IF YOUR HANDS ARE … … GREASY Orange hand cleaners work wonders, but those grease-dissolving petroleum distillates and bits of pumice strip nutrients from your skin and dry it out. Save [1] Gojo ($8) for extreme grime, and other times try a natural product like [2] Fieldworks Supply Company Good Clean Mud ($14). It uses citrus, olive, and coconut oils to break down the film, then volcanic ash to absorb it. … DIRTY If you think ahead, a pair of gloves will help you skip the deep clean completely. You can also apply an invisible coating such as [3] Blue Magic Invisible Glove ($8). It works fine but turns slimy when it gets wet. Or you can just put on a little moisturizer. It fills the tiny fissures in your…

FIVE BILLION DOLLARS. That's the amount of money regular people had removed from their bank accounts and given to crowdfunding campaigns as of the end of 2013. Five b-b-billion, a $3.5 billion increase from two years earlier. And what's amazing isn't just the raw number or the exponential upward trend. What's amazing about the evolution of crowdfunding—the process by which people ask strangers for money to help fund a project, but the strangers only have to pay if all the money is raised—is the asininity, dubiousness, and sometimes even fraudulence of some of the projects. Let's take a look, shall we, at Esther the Wonder Pig, the poster beast of crowdfunding frivolity. Two Canadian guys adopted her a couple of years ago, thinking they were getting a mini pig. She…

A Turkey Call The slate-and-striker is the simplest turkey call to create, and very effective. Champion call maker Don Bald, of Lebanon, Illinois, starts by cutting a piece of slate (he uses chalkboard salvaged from a school wrecked by a tornado) with a band saw and smoothing out the edges with fine-grit sandpaper. The piece should be ?-inch thick and fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. The striker consists of a handle and peg. Use oak or another hardwood for the peg. Bald turns his pegs on a lathe, making them just under ½ inch in diameter at the top and gently tapered down to the tip, which he rounds off like the business end of a pool cue. All you need for the handle is a piece…

SCRAMBLED For years I scrambled eggs the traditional French way: low and slow. Stir, stir, stir. The result was loose, almost runny scrambled eggs with tiny curds (1). Over time I realized I liked a less runny but still creamy scramble—I wanted to cook the eggs longer but end up with the same texture. The solution was to add cheese at the end. I usually use Land O'Lakes American (it melts perfectly) (2), but any cheese will work. Then cream cheese is the final touch. It's the perfect smoother-outer because it's engineered to do that. It's not like it's aged in a cave in Philadelphia (3). So, over to the stove. This process moves quickly, so get your ingredients lined up and your equipment ready: Deep saucepan with rounded sides…

How to Make The World a Safer Place As the science advisor for risk reduction at the U.S. Geological Survey, Lucy Jones is the expert on natural disaster preparation and response. She and Keith Porter, research professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, have laid out a comprehensive government plan for what needs to be done the next time something really bad happens. What we can do to be ready: SECURE YOUR SPACE Live in a hurricane zone? Install storm shutters. Earthquake country? Attach your bookcases and cabinets to walls. READ THOSE EMERGENCY TEXTS ON YOUR PHONE Even a few seconds' warning can be enough time to pull over, seek shelter, or get out of an elevator. BUILD BETTER STRUCTURES The international building code doesn't require buildings to be usable…

THE EXPERT: Adriaan Gerber, bladesmith THE EQUIPMENT: Combination waterstone with a grit of 1000/4000, and an 8-inch, single-cut flat metal file in a fine grade. THE GENERAL RULE: Work standing up so that you can use your body, not your arms, to slide the blade. With elbows pinned at your sides, rock your body back and forth with each stroke to maintain a steady sharpening angle. CHISELS, PLANES, AND OTHER SINGLE-BEVEL BLADES If the back of the blade is scratched or pitted, run it in small circles on the coarse stone (1), then rinse and repeat with the fine stone. Otherwise, press the bevel crosswise against the coarse stone with one hand, supporting the rear of the blade with the other. Slide the bevel up the length of the stone…