Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2022 i Popular Mechanics

POPMECH PRO It’s easy to lose track of all the perks that come with your PopMech Pro membership, like exclusive features, detailed plans for DIY projects, and a weekly members-only newsletter. Here are some of the best recent Pro stories you might have missed. (Not a member? Head to popularmechanics.com/join.) BUILD THE PERFECT PIZZA OVEN Pizza ovens have exploded in popularity in recent years. We’ve tested a bunch of them and can see why. “A good pizza oven can cook a fantastic artisan pizza in less than two minutes—and you can make it any way you like,” says gear editor Brad Ford. Want to add your own flair? Check out our step-by-step instructions for building the best DIY pizza oven: popularmechanics.com/diy-pizza. INSIDE THE AIR FORCE’S “PROJECT MAYHEM” Today, stealth is…

Japan is dropping a massive 330-ton turbine power generator onto the ocean floor just off the country’s coast in a bid to source theoretically limitless renewable energy. Over the past decade, IHI Corporation has been developing “Kairyu,” a 100-kilowatt-class generator that can utilize the power of ocean currents. In February, the Tokyo-based engineering firm successfully completed a 3½-year-long test of the subsea turbine in the waters of southwestern Japan. You can expect to see it up and running sometime in the 2030s. To make it all work, IHI devised an airplane-like structure, complete with a main fuselage, as part of an array of three cylindrical float pods. Both the right- and left-side pods feature a 36-foot-long turbine blade; each blade rotates in the opposite direction from each other to cancel…

IN WHAT IS ARGUABLY HIS MOST SIGNIFICANT contribution to science, Stephen Hawking suggested that black holes can leak a form of radiation that causes them to gradually ebb away and die in a massive explosive event. This “Hawking radiation” causes a problem at the intersection of general relativity and quantum physics—the former being the best description we have of gravity and the universe on a cosmic scale, while the latter is the model of physics that governs the very small. This issue only compounded in the mid-1970s when Hawking took the principles of quantum physics and applied them to the edge of black holes. Physicists have been working to solve the paradox for nearly 50 years, but we may finally be on the verge of a solution, thanks to a…

THE EXPERT Joseph Truini is a former carpenter and cabinetmaker who writes extensively about remodeling, woodworking, and tool techniques. He’s a longtime contributing editor to Popular Mechanics and author of eight DIY books, including Lighting Solutions, a homeowner’s guide to lighting installations. Joe writes from his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. Winter’s approaching, and with each passing day, it gets darker earlier. But there’s a bright spot on the horizon: It’s time to decorate your home with festive holiday lights. Before you’ve hauled out the holly, grabbed your ladder, untangled light strands of holiday seasons past, and risked unleashing your inner Grinch, consult our guide to lock in your game plan. Not long ago there was just one way to illuminate the outside of your home: string lights with large incandescent…

PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS NEED A CAMERA THAT effortlessly captures their subjects without any interference. On a job, things can happen quickly, leaving little time to react—and just one chance to capture those magic moments. This need for speed and precision makes Canon’s new flagship EOS R3 camera body an excellent contender for capturing fast-paced action. But what’s the big deal when most people have a phone in their pocket that can shoot video at 240 FPS (frames per second)? Thanks to a firmware update, the R3 is able to capture a 195-FPS burst of up to 50 high-quality RAW photos at the equivalent of 6K resolution. These files also offer much more dynamic range than your iPhone, giving you a lot more headroom to adjust exposure in post-production. Motorsports photographer Larry Chen—who…

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OVER THE SUMMER, A FISHERMAN IN northeastern Cambodia caught the world’s largest freshwater fish in the Mekong River: a giant stingray that measures about 13 feet long and weighs 660 pounds. The stingray beat out the previous freshwater record-holder, a 646-pound catfish found in Thailand in 2005, also in the Mekong River. But how did the new record-holder become so enormous in the first place? “The Mekong is one of the largest and most productive rivers in the world,” says Zeb Hogan, a research biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, and director of the Wonders of the Mekong project. “Over 2 million tons of fish are harvested from the Mekong River each year. So, historically, the Mekong has been a great place to be a big fish. John Janssen, a…

DRIFTING IS ONE OF THE MOST SPECTAC ular forms of high-performance driving. It’s also diffcult to master. Toyota Racing recently hosted an event at the Old Bridge Township Raceway in Englishtown, New Jersey, to teach drivers how to properly slide its rear-wheel-drive GR86 sports car. Contrary to other forms of motorsport, drifting doesn’t require all that much equipment, or even space, to get started. All you need are a rear-wheel-drive car, tires, and a safe (and legal) practice area where you won’t be annoying anyone. Here are the fundamentals of how to drift, making you able to slay tires just like I did. STEP NO. 1 Initiate the Slide Modern tires are designed to stay planted to the road during cornering. Behind the wheel of Toyota’s GR86, I was using…

POLICE SKETCH OF THE CRASH SCENE a.) Skull Fragments b.) Body Final Resting Location c.) Hairbow d.) Circular Blood Splatter e.) Turnaround Tire Impressions f.) Wheel Well Liner SHAWN HARRINGTON STARED DOWN THE ROAD BEFORE HIM, his yellow safety vest reflecting any glints of sun the winter sky had to offer. The forlorn street, flanked by woods and a creek and devoid of any lights, had been repaved in the years since the little girl’s death, but not much else had changed. Stillness enveloped the terrain, and Harrington grew haunted by how dark it was that early morning—how fearful the girl must have been before the fatal collision. Did she attempt to flag down help while traversing the tight shoulder? he wondered. Did she cower as cars whizzed by with poor…

This smartwatch is equal parts robust and stylish. I’ve spent the past three months using it as my everyday timepiece, banging up its stainless-steel body while sleeping, swimming, and working—and it still looks as sharp as it did out of the box, save for some light scratches on the clasp. The ScanWatch Horizon ditches the digital touchscreen display found on most smartwatches for a traditional round, 43mm face made up of durable sapphire glass, complete with analog hands. Its luxury look isn’t too far off from a $10,000 Rolex Submariner. This subdued design discreetly pushes notifications, health stats, and functions into a compact monochrome OLED display. Rotating the physical dial navigates the smart interface—cycling between tools like the built-in activity tracker, daily metrics such as steps walked, and FDA-approved clinical…

WOOD TRIM IS SUPPOSED TO PROVIDE A FINISHING touch to a room. But it doesn’t always work out so neatly. And if you’ve ever tried to install trim and been frustrated by a poor fit where two pieces meet, say in an open miter or open cope, you’re not alone. With 40-plus years of experience cutting trim, I can name at least a couple dozen reasons why those pieces won’t join up so nicely. And I’ve developed these solutions—for joints that are mitered and coped—to solve most of your problems. Now, before you commit to cutting the wood trim itself, make a trial run and adjust the saw, change the blade, or simply practice your technique. You need to get your head and your eye into the job first. A warmup…

WHILE FIRE MAY BE AMONG humankind’s oldest technologies, building a bonfire—and arranging your fuel source for optimal burn—isn’t always a simple task. According to Adrian Bejan, a professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University, there’s only one surefire way: Stack your fuel as high as it is wide, like a pyramid. It’s no coincidence, Bejan says, that a pyre and a pyramid are so linguistically similar. Bejan first laid out the mathematical formula in a 2015 paper in Scientific Reports. “Thermodynamics is the science of power, [in this case] power from fire,” Bejan says. “Which then is used to move things [like air]… This airflow is feeding the combustion reaction and then the generated heat is convected away by the airflow.” You can think of the perfect pyramid fire kind…

IN JULY, THE PENTAGON PUT OUT A CALL FOR blended-wing body aircraft that could be capable of hauling huge cargo or fuel loads with greater range and fuel efficiency than ever before. The Air Force and Department of Defense will spend $56.9 million on an initial design study, with an emphasis on nailing down expected fuel savings if the design is adopted for tanker and transport use. The result is a plane that, at least in concept art, often looks like a cross between a wide-bodied passenger jet and the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber. BLENDED-WING BODY VS. TUBE-AND-WING AIRCRAFT The blended-wing body has benefits over tube-and-wing aircraft. A blended approach creates one large, continuous wing that helps lift the aircraft and minimizes drag, resulting in the need for less fuel. It…

A legendary debate took place in Brussels in 1927 between Niels Bohr and the celebrated theoretical physicist Albert Einstein during the fifth Solvay Conference (the most important annual international conference in physics and chemistry). Einstein insisted that quantum states had their own reality independent of how a scientist acted upon them. Bohr, meanwhile, defended the idea that quantum systems can only have their own reality defined after the scientist has set up the experimental design. “God does not play dice,” Einstein is remembered as saying. A system can behave as a wave or a particle depending on the context, Bohr said, but it’s impossible to predict which it will do. He pointed to the concept of wave-particle duality, which says that matter may appear as a wave in one moment…

Throughout the early 1970s, the Soviet MiG-25 streaked through the nightmares of America’s military and intelligence communities. If the Cold War ever turned hot, they feared, this seemingly unstoppable fighter, codenamed Foxbat, appeared poised to sweep Western aircraft from the skies. The first hints of the existence of this Soviet super-plane had begun to materialize in 1965, when a Russian prototype jet, designated Ye-155, set a world record with an impressive speed run of 2,319 kilometers per hour (1,441 mph). In the years that followed, the West nervously watched as updated versions of the Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau’s quick-climbing, high-flying, ultrafast jet continued to shatter records. Observers knew that the Ye-155 would soon be more than an experimental testbed. In the summer of 1967, the U.S. military obtained clear…

BY THE NUMBERS 9 Testers 50+ Hours Used Members’ Favorite Features: Lightness & versatility Least Favorite: Lack of power on the switch side (for metal surfaces) WORX NITRO SWITCHDRIVER 2.0 2-IN-1 DRILL-DRIVER (MODEL WX177L) Type: Cordless drill-driver | Voltage: 20 | Weight: 3 lb | Price: $130 EARLIER THIS YEAR, WORX DEBUTED ITS Switchdriver, a unique drill-driver designed for rapid changes between those two functions. There’s no other cordless tool like it. The Switchdriver 2.0 has a chuck with dual heads, each with a ¼-inch opening to receive the end of a hex-shank drill or drive bit. Pull the chuck collar forward, insert the bit, and release the collar. This locks the bit. One head on the chuck can take a drill bit for a pilot hole; the other takes a drive…