Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Popular Mechanics

YOU’RE PROBABLY READING this in February. Everyone can stop saying Happy New Year now. But I just took our Christmas tree down recently. We left it up longer than usual this year, because we didn’t get it until almost Christmas Eve, because— Well, I’ll tell you. We’d had to have some work done on the house, which required that we move out for a few months. Three weeks before Christmas, our contractor said we probably couldn’t move back in until late January. We begged. It would mean a lot to be able to spend the holidays at home, we told him. And our kids wanted to have a party at the “new” old house—before Christmas, we told him. He shrugged and said he would try. He sent a swarm of…

Shortly after World War II, a British veteran raised funds to build the Mayflower II, a full-scale replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock in 1620. The vessel was gifted to Massachusetts’ Plimoth Plantation museum in 1957 to celebrate the U.S.–U.K. wartime alliance; in 2016, it sailed down to the Mystic Seaport Museum, an authentic re-created whaling village in Connecticut, for the ship’s first major restoration. The two museums spent several years scouting suitable timber to replace planks and framing members that had deteriorated: Most of the wood needed for the lower frame was salvaged from trees damaged by Hurricane Katrina or donated by homeowners in the South, where live oak is most abundant. “This project is catapulted into a place where true traditional methods are…

IN THE OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE, I tested a bunch of big, expensive gaming PCs. These are the tools of millionaire Twitch stars and eSports champions, and they were powerful and cool. They were also the size of a dorm refrigerator, and as loud. There’s no other way to fit the board, graphics card, and cooling systems required for all that processing power. Since then, I’ve been playing the same games on an Nvidia Shield, a box the size of a paperback. It has USB ports for my keyboard and mouse, and HDMI for a monitor. Through an app called GeForce Now, the Shield connects to a distant warehouse of computers that do the work of those big gaming PCs. It feeds the graphics and sounds over the internet, giving me…

FOR ATHLETES AND DOCTORS, understanding how the human body moves through space is essential. But the nuance and complexity of human motion defies modeling. (And photos or raw video aren’t easy to analyze.) So a team of MIT researchers created MoSculp, an A.I. system that processes video to create 3D “motion sculptures.” MoSculp starts by detecting a human body in a video. Then, an algorithm identifies points of reference—typically knees, elbows, and hips. It creates a 3D model of the body and stitches a series of models together, creating one extended visual representation of the entire sequence of movements—which can even be 3D printed. The MoSculp team sees the tool as a resource for training: a budding tennis player could more easily spot the hitch in her backhand, or compare…

A drill with a ½-inch chuck is meant to drill big holes or tough holes, in thick steel, for example. But not everybody who needs outsize hole-drilling capability has an outsize budget. So we gathered a group of corded ½-inch drills, all of which cost less than $50 (some quite a bit less). We knew these weren’t high-end tools, but we were still surprised by how unimpressive some of them were when we put them to work with spade bits, twist drills, and drill taps. A few drills passed the various tests, but only one was excellent, especially for the money. Ryobi D620H WEIGHT: 4.4 lb AMPS: 6.2 LIKES: It’s more than twice the tool of any other in this test—and the only drill that could reliably punch holes in…

1. BOOK A COURSE Go to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s (MSF) site and find a RiderCourse nearby. It’s totally worth the price—I paid $150 for mine. 2. GO TO CLASS One night in a classroom reading and talking through counter-steering, equipment requirements, typical causes of collisions and how to avoid them. The stuff you’ll need to pass the DMV’s written test. 3. GET OUTSIDE A few days later, you’ll go to a big parking lot and get on motorcycles. It’ll start with the basics, like opening the throttle while releasing the clutch, then turning and shifting gears. Using a motorcycle that’s not yours is reason enough to pay for the class: You will drop the bike. 4. PASS THE RIDE At the end of the parking-lot sessions, instructors will watch…

THE SPORT OF ICE CLIMBING, in its truest expression, traverses the frozen waterfalls of Hyalite Canyon outside Bozeman, Montana, or the face of Mt. Pisgah overlooking Lake Willoughby in Vermont: Climbers use crampons and ice axes to ascend forms sculpted by precipitation, wind, gravity, and other natural phenomena. But for competition, nature is far too unpredictable. So for this month’s world championships in Denver, the American Alpine Club is building the largest ice-climbing structure ever made in the U.S. It will be 48 feet high and 80 feet wide and support two types of climbing routes. Lead routes, which use angles and overhangs to test technical ability, ascend to the structure’s high point. They’re made mainly of plywood, covered sparingly with handholds like those at a climbing gym. But they…

MARCH 1902 For the Madam “Deftness of a woman’s hand has opened up for her a new field of livelihood—marble cutting. Many women in the United States and Canada are engaged in the trade and some of them have acquired a skill which, it is said, can scarcely be equaled by the masculine marble cutter.” FEBRUARY 1926 1 Where Women Learn the Way “Back to the Farm” “Women have an instinctive love for growing things and get a keener enjoyment from cultivating them than men.” AUGUST 1937 2 Body Energy Tester Finds Women Are Hardier Than Men “That women are hardier than men is the conclusion reached by Dr. Jakob A. Stekol after tests with an instrument which measures the creation of body energy and the giving off of heat.…

THE INTERNET is at a crossroads. Rather than surfing the Net, many users find themselves wading through the mud, frustrated by delays. Is this a permanent issue? Or are remedies being found in “internet time,” where changes occur overnight? Considering the demands that have been placed on the internet—the number of users is growing at an annual rate of about 200 percent—it’s remarkable that it has managed to keep up at all. In addition, the range of services that the internet is providing was never envisioned by the people who developed what has grown into today’s Net. The internet began in the late 1960s as a project by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA. The main goal of the ARPAnet was to experiment with ways to link university research…

When I wrote this article as the electronics editor of Popular Mechanics, the Web was just six years old. Dial-up connections ruled. There was no Google, no Facebook, no Wikipedia, no YouTube, no Twitter. There was no Hulu, no Spotify, no Instagram. There was no Cloud computing. There were no smartphones. Netflix was founded that year, but as a rent-by-mail DVD company, not the internet behemoth it is now, slinging trillions of bits over the Net every day—hundreds of thousands times the total internet traffic of 1997. Back then, the internet was used mainly for email, news groups, and to access the relative handful of websites that were around, like book-seller Amazon, eBay, and the Yahoo, Lycos, and Excite portals. Was the internet dying? No. That was hyperbole. But it…

YOU SEE THINGS—a tennis ball flying at your racket, a lion at the zoo, a funny video—because your eye is absorbing the light in front of it. All of that light goes through a part of your eyeball right near the middle called the lens, where it’s slowed down and bent in a process called refraction, then passed on to the part of your eye called the retina. Your retina is at the back of the eye. It translates the light into information your brain can understand, and your brain tells you what you’re seeing. Here’s a fun experiment you can do with Jell-O that shows you how refraction works. It uses lasers, which can be dangerous if you look directly at them, so get an adult to help you…

LADDER SAFETY There are at least seven errors in the way these guys are using a ladder. Identify as many as you can and email them to us at editor@popularmechanics.com with the subject line “Ladder Safety.” We’ll run the answers in the May issue. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE LAST ONE? ANSWERS TO NOVEMBER’S CHAINSAW SAFETY ANSWERS: • Chainsaw is above head • Cut is too high • Open-toed shoes • No ear/eye protection • No back notch • Escape path is blocked • There’s a cat up there. Our favorite list of mistakes came courtesy of Joe Courtney in Hermiston, Oregon: “According to Charles Darwin, absolutely nothing.” TOTAL RESPONSES 749 ITEMS ON MOST NITPICKY LIST 32 PLAID-HATERS 18…

Pro-Lite Seat Mountain sleds need a long track, but use a short seat so it’s easy to move from one side to the other. Dashboard A GPS-linked speedometer automatically logs top speed. Check it later, when you’re bragging back at the cabin. Carbon-Fiber Reed Valve Petals Reed valves, particular to two-stroke engines, allow the air–fuel mixture into the cylinder without blowing back into the intake. The petals flex millions of times over an engine’s life cycle, so they need to be light, springy, and durable. The 850 Patriot engine’s reed valves use carbon fiber—expensive, but the perfect material. SLS Springs The front suspension stance is adjustable from 36 to 38 inches, so riders can tailor the degree of lean in deep powder. The Walker Evans Monotube Impact-Extruded Shocks use steel…

1. RUN WINDOWS ON A MAC Got a game that only runs on Windows? Does your school use Windows-only software? The easiest method is an application like Parallels ($80), which runs a fully functional Windows operating system on your Mac like any other app. To sound cool, use the technical term for this: virtual machine. 2. LIE FOR CHEAPER HOTELS Virtual private networks (VPNs) are apps that route your internet connection so that sites think you’re somewhere you’re not. I pay $40 a year for Private Internet Access’s VPN. Hotel- and flight-booking services are known to change prices according to a customer’s location. Compare prices with the VPN set to the origin and the destination. When you’re ready to buy, use a browser in Private or Incognito Mode. Go into…

ONE OF A NEW FAMILY of materials invented by Drexel University’s Nanomaterials Group, composed of carbides and nitrides and called MXenes, is conductive enough to reflect electromagnetic waves and transmit and direct radio waves. It also has a paint-like consistency in layers only a couple atoms thick—so it could be used to put antennas almost anywhere. “The goal is to do things traditional antennas cannot do, or place them in locations they cannot be placed,” says Yury Gogotsi, who leads the lab. The university has already licensed the technology—Gogotsi couldn’t name the company, but said a “major international corporation” is already scaling up production. What Gogotsi could share: MXene is a very practical material—in the lab, his team painted antennas on surfaces using a spray gun they bought at Home…

1750 The Electric Fly British scientists construct a pinwheel-like device that turns when charged, thanks—unbeknownst to them—to ion flow. Leading thinkers debate the cause for centuries. 1929 How I Control Gravitation Thomas Townsend Brown publishes “How I Control Gravitation” about ion wind, which he interprets as an interaction between electricity and gravity. The article contains grandiose claims about rounding out Einstein’s theory of relativity. 1964 The Ionocraft Popular Mechanics publishes a story on Major de Seversky’s Ionocraft, which we describe as “the incredible magic carpet of the future.” It goes up and down, and that’s about it. 2012 Ionic Cooling Apple is granted a patent for a method to use an ionic wind system to cool its devices. Why no one had done it before: Ionic wind only flows in…

April 2016 April is a prime mower-shopping month, thanks to discounts and deals offered by retailers. June 2002 Frame the roof trusses for a shed after the floor is framed and sheathed but before putting up the walls. The flat surface provides a flat work area that speeds accurate layout and construction of the trusses. April 1976 If you lean too hard on a push broom and break the handle, don’t panic. Coat the broken ends with glue, insert in a ¾-inch conduit coupling, and tighten the screws. It’ll be as good as new. August 2012 Camaro and Mustang aftermarket parts are so plentiful, you can almost build the car from scratch. September 2000 The sound of your toilet flushing itself is caused by a deteriorated flapper valve that allows…

MAY 2016 Open a Bottle of Wine with a Shoe If you find yourself with a bottle of wine and no corkscrew, and you are the type of person who wears shoes, you are wearing a solution to your problem. Remove one shoe and place the bottle of wine inside, so its bottom rests where your heel would go. Find a sturdy wall that will not scuff—brick is best. Holding the shoe and bottle so the bottle is parallel to the ground, repeatedly bang the flat of the heel against the wall. The cork will work its way out of the bottle; when enough has protruded, pull it out manually. Return your shoe to your foot. (Note: won’t work with synthetic corks.) NOVEMBER 1931 Egg White Polishes Leather and Loosens…

WHEN I’M IN CHARGE of a car company, we’re going to have one strict rule about interior design: Make it so it doesn’t cause you to crash the car. You’d think this would already be in effect everywhere, but no. Ever since the arrival of the iPhone, car designers have aspired to replicate that sleek, glassy aesthetic within the cabin. And it never works, because you tend to look at a phone while you use it. In a car, you have this other thing you should be looking at, out there, beyond the high-resolution panoramic screen that separates your face from the splattering june bugs. If a designer came to me with a bunch of screens, touch pads, or voice-activated haptic-palm-pad gesture controls, I’d trigger a trapdoor that caused the…

PAGE 47 Carhartt Grain Work Gloves Tough but supple leather, insulated and very warm. $24 Patagonia Silent Down Shirt Styled like a shirt, somehow doesn't “swoosh” as you walk. $229 Levi’s Draft Taper in Old Weller Jeans When you need a pair of jeans with a bit more style. $228 PAGE 48 Dickies Snap-Front Shirt Jacket Snap buttons for easy closing in the cold, sherpa-lined. $50 Levi’s 502 Stretch Jeans A work-worthy classic, now with added stretch for full movement. $60 PAGE 49 Flylow Ellie Hoody Light, four-season pullover, 50+ UPF, soft. $100 Skida Alpine Hat Moisture-wicking, fleece-lined. Killer patterns. $36 Filson Mackinaw Field Jacket Wind- and water-resistant 24-oz wool. Like wearing your favorite blanket. $395 Duer No Sweat Pants Cotton feel, spandex stretch, antibacterial, and cut to fit right.…

In 2012, I’d been working Ecuador cases for a while when we received information on an individual named Jorge Guerrero, a lost-luggage handler at JFK, who was importing parcels of narcotics into the U.S. from Ecuador. His organization used several methods. It was smart. One package was cocaine-stuffed empanadas. There was cocaine concealed in candy bars, which I’d seen before. The nuts were creative, too—they put heroin in nuts. When we seized a box of scuba-diving diplomas, we didn’t know what we were looking at. There was a certain smell to them, which I recognized as cocaine. I’d seen liquid cocaine before, but this organization had soaked the diplomas in over three pounds of it and then let them dry. That’s the first time I’d seen that. There are dozens…

IT WAS A CENTER JAM—a potential man killer. Huge 16-foot saw logs, weighing up to 2,000 pounds, crunched against one another like shoestring potatoes in a crazy man’s skillet. The wooden carpet that had been slithering, jostling, and churning toward the sawmill stopped dead. Logs were jammed up for half a mile back. The river boss was all over the place, trying to find the key log. When he spotted it, a dozen men set their peavey hooks into it and strained. No go. Then the river boss ordered a charge of dynamite. “Whoomp!” went the explosion and a white plume of water shot skyward. That did it. “She’s a-pullin’!” went up the cry. As the grumbling logs began to move downstream like half-submerged alligators, the men scrambled to safety.…

MARCH 1927 Finger-Twis ting Machine to Aid Musicians APRIL 1914 He Makes Christmas Trees with Goose Feathers and Wire NOVEMBER 1957 MARCH 1947 A BACK YARD FLOCK WILL SOLVE YOUR MEAT PROBLEM APRIL 1943 Stove Made of Revolvers MARCH 1908 She’s No Beauty, But Owners Say, ‘Look Beneath the Skin!’ MAY 197 1 FUNERAL PROCESSION ON SK AT ES MARCH 1908 Twenty-Two Minutes Over Topeka… MARCH 1967 The Slug Stops Here AUGUST 1994 NOVEMBER 1915 RAT PHOTOGRAPHS HIMSELF NOVEMBER 1911…

JULY 1912 1 Boxing on Horseback “A new sport novelty recently introduced in Germany.” NOVEMBER 1921 2 New Life Preserver Makes Sinking Impossible “When effort ceases, the body assumes a perpendicular position, with the chin above water.” SEPTEMBER 1922 3 Map Holder for Motorcycle Fastens to Handlebars “The road map is folded to show the route to be traveled and then inserted in the holder, which has a transparent celluloid cover.” FEBRUARY 1932 4 Sun Glasses Cover the Nose and Prevent Burns “Tender noses may now be protected from sunburn.” JANUARY 1951 5 Car-Trunk Soda Fountain “A container filled with CO2 gas supplies pressure for a four-way dispensing head that delivers two kinds of soft drinks and two pressures of soda.” JANUARY 1965 An Axe Can Shoot Tear Gas “A…

WIND TURBINES ARE super-aerodynamic windmills. They’re one of the easiest ways to create electricity. When the wind blows, air pushes the blades of the turbine fast enough to crank a generator, a tool that turns motion into electrical energy. Lego just introduced its own working version of a wind turbine, called the Vestas. It’s named after the biggest wind-power company in the world. Real Vestas turbines are 410 feet tall and can generate enough electricity to power 1,500 houses for a year. The Lego Vestas is three feet tall when it’s fully assembled and has 826 pieces. Another cool thing about it is that all of those Legos are made out of plants! Most plastic is bad for the environment since it requires a lot of chemicals to make and…

1 / Porsche’s Electric Vehicle The Taycan will have a range of 310 miles and go from zero-to-60 mph in under 3.5 seconds. But the spec that has my attention is the 350-kilowatt charger that, Porsche says, gives 62 miles of range in four minutes—a Tesla on a Supercharger takes ten minutes to do the same. That’s the difference between having to kill a little time at a rest-stop Starbucks and having enough range before your drink is ready. 2 / The Freewrite Traveler This distractionfree writing tool is basically a key-board and e-ink screen, similar to what you’ll find on an Amazon Kindle. It shows you nothing except what you’re typing, then sends copies of that to your Drop-box, Google Drive, wherever you want to stash what you’ve written.…

WE DON’T GET hurricanes or tornadoes, but we do get snow. I supervise sign fabrication, sign installation, and pavement markings for the Monroe County DOT in upstate New York. We are in charge of more than 80,000 signs. The problem in the winter is when a sliding car or plow hits one. By law, we have to get that sign back up within 24 hours. Especially if it’s a stop sign or school crossing. Last year we had 770 downed signs. We averaged two-hour responses. We have to be careful. Downed signs are in dangerous spots—that’s why cars were sliding. So we position our trucks to shield us. We then dig through the snow to the curb. You don’t want to accidentally put a sign in the road. We also…

In November, Cleveland businessman and blockchain evangelist Bernie Moreno paid his state business taxes in Bitcoin using Ohio’s new OhioCrypto.com service. As its first user, he is the first American to pay taxes—state, local, or federal—with a cryptocurrency. I FIRST HEARD about cryptocurrency from my son. He came home one day and told me to sell everything and invest in Bitcoin. And he did—four years ago, when I want to say it was at about $300. So he did very well. I did not. What I did do is start studying block-chain. Now we’re trying to reposition Cleveland as a critically relevant tech city, and Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel is saying, Ohio’s going to lead. Paying taxes was easy. You go on OhioCrypto.com. You enter your tax ID number. You…

I patched and painted two holes in my walls, but the patches still show up as shiny spots. What did I do wrong? Ian K., West Lafayette, Indiana It’s a common problem called flash, as in the patch “flashes” through the paint. It’s caused by unequal absorption of the paint on the patch. Sometimes a second coat of top-quality paint solves the problem. If large areas of the wall have been repaired, prime the entire wall. When selecting a primer, it’s wise to use a product with high solids content, one labeled “high hide,” or both. Those solids are less likely to be absorbed into the patches, and they’ll stop the paint from being absorbed too. If aluminum is a soft metal, why is it so difficult to cut? Jennie…

Before there’s a patent, there’s an idea. Before that, there’s a person with a problem to solve. (5) I’ve been in the energy conservation business since 1979. I started in renewables and whatnot, and I got into apartment buildings, because at the time only a small company could really service them properly.(6) We were very good at fixing what was broken. And that’s kind of the way I look at what I do. I hate things that are broken, and when people use more energy than they should, I consider it broken.(7) If you looked at the total energy consumption of an apartment building, most of the energy was being used in the units. And the renters pay the bills. But the owner of the building is the one who…

But…Why? By Don DeClerck, camp operations director for Seneca Waterways, registered New York State trail guide, certified Voyageur, and longtime Boy Scout troop leader WINTER OPENS UP a whole new avenue of transportation. You can ski, snowshoe. It’s actually easier than in the summer. There are no rocks, no mud. You’re on snowshoes or micro spikes or crampons. Snow is a durable surface, too. Just keep your body temperature regulated. Sweat is deadly. You want a sunny, high-pressure day. You can see forever. The main thing is: You need a goal. You want something to accomplish. You want to climb something. My scouts always have a goal. I took my troop out camping once and it got down to minus 20. Even though they were absolutely frickin’ miserable, they never…

BABY CARRIAGE IS DRIVEN BY GASOLINE AUGUST 1922 APRIL 1914 Fun with a Chainsaw JULY 1974 Avoiding Upset Garbage Can SEPTEMBER 1939 Big Shovels and Why MARCH 1930 JUNE 2002 Dog “Laundry” Is a Money-Making Venture NOVEMBER 1935 NAVY DOLPHINS ON LEAVE APRIL 1995 NOVEMBER 1957 LIGHTWEIGHT BICYCLE WEARS METAL “PANTS” NOVEMBER 1935 MAY 1940 How to Foilan Alien Abduction JUNE 2003 APRIL 1943 GIANT THUNDER LIZARD THAT SHOOK THE EARTH IN BYGONE AGE IS MOUNTED FOR WORLD TO SEE NOVEMBER 1931 Football Dodge Dummy Trains Ball Carrier NOVEMBER 1935 MARCH 1966 Health “Lighthouse” Peps Up Workers in War Plants JUNE 1944…

(WITH A FEW FOOTNOTES FROM ALEXANDER GEORGE, POPULAR MECHANICS TECHNOLOGY EDITOR) THE INTERNET’S DEMISE has been repeatedly forecast by any number of storm crows over the years. There is the 1997 prediction based on an increasingly loaded network spurred by the rapid growth of users, servers, websites, and content. There were earlier predictions of a “Gigalapse”1 by Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe. Others thought ATM or Frame Relay would replace TCP/IP.2 Then came Multi-protocol Label Switching. Of course, there were many years during which it was expected by many, including governments, that the Open Systems Internetworking (OSI) standards would prevail over the internet’s TCP/IP. Interestingly, as the 2000s arrived, high speed, broadband cable, and fiber modems,3 along with digital subscriber loops,4 promised higher capacity in the core and access components of…

YOU’VE MADE SNOW ANGELS and snowmen. You’ve had plenty of snowball fights. But have you ever built an igloo? Originally used by Inuit, the native people of Canada and Greenland, igloos are domes of snow that get warm inside using body heat. In fact, the inside of an igloo can be as warm as 60 degrees, even when it’s minus 50 degrees outside! Inuit have long knives called snow knives that they use to cut blocks from the snow on the ground. Each block is about one foot wide, two feet long, and 18 inches deep. With each new row, the blocks lean in a little more, eventually coming together at the top. The most important thing about making an igloo is that the blocks are built on a continuous…

1 When using power tools (or hanging around someone who is), what protective equipment should you wear? A. Safety goggles B. Kneepads and shin guards C. Helmet D. Safety goggles, gloves, and ear protection 2 When using a level, how do you know that your surface is straight? A. When the level can be pressed flat against the surface B. When the level is against the surface and the air bubble is between the two lines C. When the air bubble reaches the top of the tube D. When the air bubble disappears 3 What is a washer? A. A machine that washes your clothes or your dishes B. A screw with a wide, flat head C. A long tube used to connect two objects D. A thin doughnut-shaped plate…

p. 8 launch: Getty Images; p. 9 rocket: SpaceX; car: Greg Bryan; pp. 14–15 boxes, Groucho glasses: Getty; p. 17 sculpture: MIT CSAIL; researcher: Drexel University; Bitcoin: Getty; p. 18 video still, CAD plane: MIT; p. 20 Martin Parr/Magnum Photos; p. 24 lawnmower: Getty; Camaro: Chevrolet; Mustang: Alamy; p. 27 prop styling: JJ Chan/Halley Resources; p. 28 man with shoe: Kagan McLeod; plunger: George Retseck; p. 36 SR71 cockpit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; infosystems: Volkswagen, Tesla, FCA, Acura, Cadillac, Lexus; p. 39 climber: Purple Orange; p. 40 aquavit: Nick Wagner/Devil’s Head Distillery; orange peel: Getty; p. 52 Getty; p. 54 legs in tent: Alamy; skis: Kevin Sweeney/Studio D; p. 55 Adirondacks, Crater Lake, Pictured Rocks, Great Sand Dunes, Ice Age Trail: Getty; p. 62 3: Joe Miloto; 4:…