VW Design - From sketch to scale prototype

Winds of change - wind power

Octopus escaping through a 1 inch hole

From the description: "Octopuses have an amazing ability to squeeze through tiny crevices, cracks and holes. My fall BIOS independent studies student, Raymond Deckel is investigating just how small a hole Octopus macropus can fit through as well as how long it takes them to squeeze through different sizes of holes. CAABS intern Rowena Day, NSF-REU intern Jared Kibele as well as teaching assistant Abel Valdivia help wrangle the 232 g octopus, Ray times it’s escape through a 1 inch hole while I shot video clips for later analysis. Location: Whalebone Bay, St. George’s, Bermuda. Dr. James B. Wood - BIOS The Cephalopod Page"

What is string theory?

Fun with physics 2

RPI Geotechnical Engineering Centrifuge

Learn How To Juggle 3 Balls

The english is very bad, but here are some instructions for 5 balls: To begin and improve the 5 balls

Car pole vault

The 5 Ghz Project

Here's a 13 page article that explains what is happening. Briefly: Most microprocessors today run at somewhere between 2 and 3 GHz. By supercooling the processor with liquid nitrogen, they were able to roughly double its clock speed (and therefore its processing power). The only thing keeping mainstream chip manufacturers from increasing clock speed is the fact that, right now, a chip running that fast generates too much heat.

How paintballs are made

Green cars

Nice video on hydrogen cars:

Green cars

The human raised by animals

For more information on feral children, see this page and this page. The Wild Child is a movie that deals with this topic.

Monster truck breaks floor

This article explains what happened. The show was being held in an arena that normally houses a hockey/skating rink. The truck broke through the concrete slab and ruptured one of the pipes that freezes the ice for the rink.

Crushing cans

Baja trucks

These trucks are amazing - like any race car they have big engines, but the thing that makes them unique are the shock absorber systems. This article talks about the science of Baja trucks.

Supercooled water

There are a lot of videos like these on YouTube that show supercooled water. Here is what is happening. If you take very "clean" water (water with very few impurities, like bottled water) and have it inside a very "clean" container (like a plastic water bottle), and you lower its temperature slightly below freezing (like -6 or -7 degrees C), the water will sometimes supercool: It stays liquid even though it is below the freezing point. When you bump the water, a seed crystal forms and then the whole thing freezes in just a few seconds.

If it is -6 or -7 degrees C one night, you might try leaving several bottles of bottled water outside. Some of the bottles will freeze on their own, but normally a few will supercool and stay liquid.

Supermassive blackholes

My hovercraft

How to win the crane games at the funfair

Freezing water in a vacuum

Fun with gravity

Dolphin boat

Big model rocket

ASIMO running

Mission to Mars

Surfing massive waves

Humpback whales feeding

How to make your own silly putty

OK, it's not really silly putty... but it is a putty-like substance:



So what is REAL silly putty like? According to this page, "During World War II, while looking for a cheap substitute for rubber, an engineer for General Electric, James Wright, accidentally developed Silly Putty®, now a famous toy.* Silly Putty is an organosiloxane polymer made from silicone oil and boric acid. Unlike home-made "play putty" it will not dry out, because it's not water based. Silly Putty has flexible molecules that, when 'smooshed' by fingers, slide over each other and cause the material to flow." See the page for lots more information and a second play putty recipe.

See also this video for how silly putty is made.

Scuba Diving in Thailand and Burma

A very nice look at the reef life of the area:

Human powered car

81-way world record skydiving parachute formation

How did they do it? click here.

Bubble rings

See also: How do humans create bubble rings with their mouth?

Ejection seats

Jet man

Expansiveness of the universe 2