Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i Popular Mechanics

Around 4.5 billion years ago, our solar system emerged from a violent cloud of gas and dust. That dust and gas collapsed, forming a spinning disk of interstellar material which, perhaps jolted by the shockwave of a nearby supernova, created the sun, the planets, and, of course, their moons. ¶ These natural satellites orbit and often influence their respective planets (and dwarf planets) in curious ways. In some cases, they are globs of rubble, commandeered by the orbits of planets they drew too close to. Others, like our own moon, are remnants from the primeval collisions of ancient objects. ¶ Ours was the “first” moon. Early civilizations clocked its myriad changes—its changing shape, its periodic absence, the wonder of its eclipses. ¶ Galileo Galilei’s subsequent discovery of Io, Europa, Ganymede,…

The Flexio 5000 is a well-engineered piece of equipment, one of the best I’ve seen in 35 years working at Popular Mechanics. It’s built and priced for the DIY painter, but it delivers pro-level results—if you keep it clean. And cleaning was tough in my case. The spray booth was downstairs, the kitchen sink was occupied, and there isn’t a utility sink anywhere in the house. Here’s what I did: I used a wash bucket, a plastic cup, a spray bottle with clear water in it, and some Simple Green cleaner. I washed the gun out immediately after shooting the primer, but not between topcoats. So, I primed, washed out the gun, shot the first topcoat, put the gun aside and just wiped off the spray tip with a clean…

WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT CON-sciousness, or the mind, it’s always a bit nebulous. Whether we create consciousness in our brains as a function of our neurons firing, or consciousness exists independently of us, there’s no universally accepted scientific explanation for where it comes from or where it lives. However, physicists working on these big questions are pretty sure of one thing: Our consciousness can connect with the entire universe. That’s according to a theory Nobel Prize–winning physicist Roger Penrose, PhD, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, first posited in the 1990s: the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (Orch OR). Broadly, it claims that consciousness is a quantum process facilitated by microtubules in the brain’s nerve cells. Penrose and Hameroff suggested that consciousness is a quantum wave that passes through these microtubules, or…

Civil aviation authorities around the world began rolling out the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) in the early aughts. ADS-B is a system of transponders mounted on aircraft that transmits a variety of information in real time, including the plane’s location, speed, direction, and a transponder code unique to every aircraft. This information, plotted on a map, gives pilots and ground controllers the ability to quickly get a sense of their local airspace (or the airspace of most places on Earth). The information isn’t just available to the aviation community. The website ADS-B Exchange collates aircraft tracking data and makes it available in real time, allowing anyone to watch aerial traffic anywhere the system is working. ADS-B Exchange merges ADS-B data with other publicly known data about military and civilian aircraft,…

Moons are far from simple celestial objects, so here are a few helpful definitions to guide you along your cosmic journey:…

YOU NEED A PAINT BOOTH to spray cabinet doors and drawer faces because spraying paint generates a lot of air movement, and that invariably raises dust that will stick to freshly painted surfaces. Also, you don’t want paint mist (known as overspray) to get loose anywhere in your house. Not only will it make a mess, but it can find its way into heating and cooling equipment and your refrigerator, which pulls in air from its surroundings. To make my paint booth in the basement, I used a 3M hand masker—a tool that rolls out masking film and masking tape at the same time. I applied the film and tape to floor joists, pipes, air-conditioning ducts, and the house’s foundation wall. The film is folded and partially hangs down from…

PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH EPIC MAGAZINE ROUND 3AM on April 29, 2007, a truck driver set off on a routine delivery from the Valero oil refinery in Benicia, California. The sky was dark and the roads were empty as he pulled out, heading to a gas station in Oakland, 40 miles away, at the wheel of a tanker containing 8,600 gallons of gasoline. The route took him down I-80 over the Carquinez Strait in Crockett before merging with the I-580 just outside Berkeley. There he rumbled onto a ramp and steered into the interchange where I-80 crisscrosses I-880 and I-580, a tangle of roadways known as the MacArthur Maze. Like most highway interchanges, the Maze was both exceptional and unremarkable. It was built in the 1930s, when the Bay Bridge was…

I knew of someone so annoyed by the loose end of a tape measure, that he hammered the rivets holding it on until it was satisfactorily secure. In doing so, he defeated one of the tape measure’s features. The “hook”—that’s what it’s called—is intentionally loose. This allows it to move about 1/16 of an inch, which is roughly the thickness of the hook. It lets you hook the tape over the end of a board, or push it flush against an inside edge of whatever you’re measuring, so you’ll get an accurate measurement in both cases.…

SITTING IN A TRAILER nestled behind the pit crew, Lucy Block is quiet and still. She figures she has one successful strategy for driving to the top of the mountain that day: Seal out the chaos for as long as possible. Quiet her mind. Hold back the flood of feelings threatening to spill over their dam at any moment—because feeling those things is not a good idea during the race, when any distraction could derail her. The stakes are too high. Sitting there in red-and-white Air Jordans, her eyes hidden behind oversize sunglasses, she tells herself: It’s just a Sunday drive. That’s all. But maintaining this Zen state won’t be easy. She’s been at the base of the mountain for more than eight hours, waiting for her call to the…

REMEMBER, SAFETY FIRST ▶ Invest in a cartridge respirator [1] to spray paint. Don’t use a dust mask; it won’t provide adequate protection from paint mist. PROTECT YOUR EYES AND HANDS ▶ I have a pair of beat-up reading glasses that I use for painting, and I protect them by wearing goggles over them. I wear disposable nitrile gloves to keep paint off my hands [2]. REDUCE AIR MOVEMENT ▶The sprayer turbine moves air, so you want to position it outside the spray booth where it will take in clean air—not air with paint mist in it. ADJUST THE VARIABLES ▶ To successfully spray-paint, you need to adjust several variables: VOLUME: This is the paint volume the gun will move. A dial near the trigger adjusts this. PRESSURE: This is the…