Gregory Mone

After a motorcycle crash, Nic Case found a safer, but still thrilling, hobby: building radio-controlled cars. At 161 mph, his latest just smashed the world record.

Today's featured Invention Award winner kills two birds with one stone: providing a simple and cheap alternative energy source while widening the market for delicious fried foods. Everybody wins!

The nondescript six-foot-tall box behind Finz restaurant in Dedham, Massachusetts, looks like a tool shed, but actually it's a self-contained grease refinery and five-kilowatt generator. Engineer James Peret's Vegawatt is the first all-in-one device that processes grease to continuously provide a building with electricity and hot water, heralding a significant change in alternative-fuel applications. "It's a brilliant idea," says Josh Tickell, author of Biodiesel America. "A waste stream to an energy source, with no intermediary."

Remember that awesome scene in Minority Report when Tom Cruise just wiggles his hands in the air to sift through information? Today's featured Invention Award winner brings it to life.

When he's wearing the SixthSense, a combination miniature projector, webcam and notebook computer, Pranav Mistry can snap photos just by making the shape of a frame with his fingers.

This fall, Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard and his team will begin test flights of a prototype of Solar Impulse, a sun-powered plane designed to circumnavigate the globe without burning a drop of oil. Piccard wants the project to demonstrate the potential of green technology, and he’s feeling the pressure. "We still have to prove that this plane will fly," he says.

Summer is coming, and that means robots, teleportation, antimatter bombs, dinosaurs, an elite high-tech fighting force, fictional metals with unearthly properties ... we love it!

Here’s a look at the Hollywoodified science hitting the big screen this summer, complete with our highly scientific Expected Gibberish Quotient (EGQ).

Snakes can slither through tight spaces, swim across lakes, scale trees, and even glide through the air. Their mechanical doubles won’t be flying anytime soon, but thanks to technological leaps in climbing ability, snakebots could soon tackle a few notoriously dangerous jobs.