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_This article originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of _Popular Science.
Mission Bicycles Lumen
Biking at night means extra accessories—unless you’re riding the Lumen. Mission Bicycles worked with reflective-coating company Halo to turn an entire bike frame into a reflector. Like a cat’s eye, it looks dark gray until light hits it and bounces it back to its source. $500
Drop
Cooking is an art; baking, a science. To remove the guesswork, the Drop kitchen scale pairs with an app to take stock of ingredient quantities and adjust the recipe accordingly. $99
Castakite
Merge a kite with a fishing rod and you’ve got Castakite, a device that eliminates snarl-prone spools of string. To launch, point the handle toward the sky, wait for the wind, and press the trigger to release the reel and let the kite fly. $30
Haiku with SenseME
Big Ass Fans is bringing the ceiling fixture into the 21st century. Temperature, humidity, and motion sensors on SenseME-equipped fans detect when someone enters the room and adjusts fan speed based on climate. $1,045
Smartsun
Developed at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, this waterproof wristband alerts wearers when they’re in danger of sunburn. An acid-release agent decomposes with sun exposure, changing the band’s color from yellow to pink. $8 for 7
Shocked
In his book, Dr. David Casarett chronicles the science of resuscitation. The eerie narrative wends from stories of drowned patients in 1700s Amsterdam to futuristic cryonics labs, with hints of humor in the retellings of extreme survival. $28
Query
There’s a strange poetry in search-engine auto-complete. A new card game called Query gives players the task of predictive text writing. The group then guesses which phrases were created by other players and which came from a computer. $28
mySleepButton
This app, developed by a cognitive-science professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, prompts you to visualize simple objects and scenes in random order, distracting your mind from thoughts that keep you up. Free
Lucy
What if you could tap into every reservoir of your brain and develop superpowers? In director Luc Besson’s latest film, Scarlett Johansson plays a woman whose drug overdose allows her to absorb knowledge instantly, mentally move objects, and more.
Worx AeroCart
Is it a wheelbarrow or a hand truck? The answer: yes. The AeroCart, in fact, does the job of eight carts in one. The two-wheel design adds stability, and a host of attachments lets you reconfigure it to carry propane tanks, yard debris, or planters. $160
