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Video: How Crayons Are Made

Ever wonder how crayons are manufactured?

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.

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Aerospace Engineer Discovers Speedy Shark Secrets

The shortfin mako shark, one of the ocean’s swiftest predators

Biomimicry seems to be popping up all over the news recently, and this week is no exception. While John Dabiri is busy modelling the complex mechanics of jellyfish, another engineer has taken on the study of a different, more dangerous resident of the ocean: sharks.

The shortfin mako shark is known as the “cheetah of the ocean” for its ability to accelerate rapidly and to reach speeds of around 30 miles per hour in the water. One mako shark has even clocked in at over 45 miles per hour (the world’s fastest human sprinters swim at about 5mph)!

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The Physics of Football

NBC and the National Science Foundation have done it again. That’s right – the team that brought you the Science of the Olympic Winter Games has produced a new series of videos, and this time they’ll be “tackling” even more fun physics, math, and engineering concepts.

The Science of NFL Football, a new 10-part series, covers topics like vectors, projectiles, Newton’s Laws of Motion, and the Pythagorean Theorem. The production crew even went to some teams’ training camps, and filmed interviews with former and current NFL players and coaches. Our favorites after the jump.

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Engineers Study the Physics of Cats and Dogs

How do cats drink? Is the “wet dog shake” an effective drying mechanism? These may have fleetingly crossed your mind, but it took an engineer to get to the bottom of such creature curiosities.

The ability of felines to lap up an entire bowl of liquid may seem to defy gravity. But four engineers at MIT, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and Princeton have proven that it’s not so. Their study was inspired by observing one of their cats, Cutta Cutta.

The team used high-speed photography to capture and analyze the mysterious cat lap’s fluid dynamics. Since a cat’s tongue is not large enough to create a ladle that can “scoop” water into its mouth, kitties lightly touch the tip of their tongue to the surface of the water, and then quickly dart it back, drawing a column of liquid into their mouths.

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Neptune: A New Prosthetic Fin

Fit and athletic amputees – like sprinter/long-jumper Aimee Mullins – have proved over and over that the loss of a limb is no reason to give up sports. Earlier this year, Colombian Nelson Cardona became the first amputee to climb Mt. Everest, Earth’s highest peak.

But prostheses for swimmers have remained clunky, at best.

That’s why Richard Stark, an industrial design student at Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design, was inspired to create Neptune, a specially-designed prosthesis that helps amputees swim.

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