Amateur Radio Operators Detect Signals from Voyager 1
At the time of its construction in the 1950s, the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory was the largest rotatable telescope in the world with a dish diameter of 25 meters. It was quickly overtaken in the...
View ArticleChaotic System Cooks Meat Evenly
For better or worse, a lot of human technology is confined to fewer dimensions than the three we can theoretically move about in. Cars and trains only travel two dimensionally with limited exceptions,...
View ArticleApple Newton Gets Rebuilt Battery Pack
We all carry touch screen computers around in our pockets these days, but before the smartphone revolution, there was the personal digital assistant (PDA). While it wasn’t a commercial success, one of...
View ArticleA Portable Chainsaw Sawmill
Unless you’re running a commercial logging operation, with specialized saws, log grapples, mills, transportation for the timber, and the skilled workers needed to run everything, it’s generally easier...
View ArticleAn iPhone Case Study
Way back in 2008, Apple unveiled the first unibody Macbook with a chassis milled out of a single block of aluminum. Before that, essentially all laptops, including those from Apple, were flimsy plastic...
View ArticleRainwater From the Road to the Garden
Most small-scale, residential rainwater harvesting systems we’ve seen rely on using an existing roof and downspout to collect water that would otherwise be diverted out into the environment. These are...
View ArticleA Compass That Looks to the Stars
Although a lot of tools have been digitized and consolidated into our smartphones, from cameras, music players, calendars, alarm clocks, flashlights, and of course phones, perhaps none are as useful as...
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