• Technology

    The Flying Car Gets Real

    By Gregory Mone Posted on 10.8.2008 45 Comments

    The Transition is not a flying car. The vehicle, set to go on sale next year, will cruise smoothly on the road and through the sky. It will have four wheels, Formula One–style suspension, and a pair of 10-foot-wide wings that fold up when it switches from air to asphalt. And when the engineers at Terrafugia in Woburn, Massachusetts, let me sit inside their just-finished proof-of-concept vehicle and grab the steering wheel, it’s easy to imagine piloting this thing up and out of traffic, into the open skies.

    Article Rating:
    10.9.2008 at 10:55pm - Comment by ajbarber9

    It seems to me that the only people who would buy these are the folks with more money than sense. Great idea, but it just seems like there are too many hoops for the owner to have to jump through for a product that expensive.

  • Science

    The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind

    By PopSci Staff Posted on 8.22.2008 9 Comments

    PopSci reader Dave wants to know: "Hello, if the earth spins east to west why does our wind blow west to east? The wind has to be blowing faster than the earth spinning. Yes?" Feel free to tackle this one in the comments section. Submit your science and technology questions to fyi@popsci.com.

    8.22.2008 at 11:45am - Comment by ajbarber9

    The rotation of the Earth doesn't effect the weather patters or wind directions in our atmosphere because the atmosphere is spinning in the same direction and speed as the Earth. The Earth, atmosphere, and everything in between (including us) are all spinning in the same frame of reference so as the Earth moves so does everything else on it. Weather systems and wind speeds are based on other factors in the atmosphere, including pressure systems, temperatures, and land formations. Earths rotation, in no way, directly influences wind direction, at least to my knowledge.



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