While this spacey-looking disk will not allow your car to time-travel, it might replace its internal combustion engine
Here’s a new approach to decreasing the environmental impact of cars: a new auto motor could make them 20 percent lighter and reduce emissions by 90 percent.
Michigan researchers have built a prototype of a disk-shaped shock wave generator that could replace the current internal combustion engine in cars. The generator is about the size of a saucepan and does not need a transmission, cooling system, or emissions regulation fluid, which would reduce the weight of a vehicle by 1,000 pounds.
Every hour, the sun beams down more energy than the whole planetconsumes in a year. Although solar cell technology has advanced considerably in recent years, many challenges related to reliably capturing and storing the sun’s energy still remain.
Sossina Haile, a professor of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering at CalTech, is developing a new approach to solar power. Using cerium oxide (or ceria), a metal most commonly found in self-cleaning ovens, Haile and her research team have created a prototype reactor that has the power to transform sunbeams into clean fuel.
We all brush our teeth in the morning, but what if our toothpaste did more than just fight cavities?
Engineers at MIT’s Media Lab are working on a prototype toothpaste called “Tastes Like Rain” that will tell you what the weather is like outside. They came up with the idea while working on super-mechanicals, the process of taking a basic object, such as toothpaste, and giving it dynamic properties.
This clip from the Science Channel show How It’s Made provides a fascinating look at the complex processes and machinery behind everyone’s favorite coloring tools.
