Looking for something to do this Friday the 13th that has nothing to do with Jason Voorhees and Crystal Lake? Check out the latest IMAX film, Under the Sea in 3D and dive deep without getting wet. Attach the crazy looking glasses to your head (someday they'll figure out a way to ditch the specs) and be transported to off the coast of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Great white sharks, garden eels and Australian sea lions seem to swim right off the screen, leaving the viewer wondering, how did they do that?
Rome was neither built nor disassembled in a day. While historians point to September 4, 476—the overthrow of the last emperor—as the date it all fell apart, the fall really began decades earlier and continued for decades afterwards.
Motorcycles are the epitome of the phrase "form follows function." And nowhere is that more evident than at the 2009 International Motorcycle Show. Kicking off this morning at the Jacob Javits center on Manhattan's west side, Popular Science braved the blistering cold to see what's new and what's next. Here is a sampling.
3-D started its comeback at CES about two years ago when Samsung first showed capable rear projection TVs. At the time, 3D was just for video games, with only the vague promise that movies would be coming. On Wednesday in Vegas, Panasonic announced plans to push for technical standards that could show up in TVs and Blu-ray discs and players in less than two years.
Combining images of signs taken by a camera on the rearview mirror with navigation-system data about your route, the latest European BMW 7 Series figures out your current speed limit and displays it on the instrument cluster and projects it on the windshield. The technology, developed with Siemens VDO, could arrive in the U.S. in the next year or two. bmw.com
The 2009 Nissan GT-R is the sports-car value of the year, if not the decade—a car under 80 grand whose performance matches that of a $200,000 supercar. Engineers scrutinized every component to squeeze out more performance while saving weight and money. Inside the twin-turbo, 3.8-liter V6’s aluminum engine block, the walls surrounding the pistons receive a coating that dissipates heat better than the typical, heavier cast-iron linings. The engine produces 480 horsepower and hurls the GT-R from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds—quicker than a Lamborghini Gallardo.
Forget the carbon-fiber bike that costs more than your house. How about one made of plastic? The Innervision bike is a design concept by industrial designer Matt Clark that ditches high-cost complex materials for pre-molded plastic parts.
Martin Montesano had been captivated since childhood by enormous walking machines like the ones in The Empire Strikes Back. A few real-life versions have been built before, but they never lived up to his vision. He wanted his to be huge.
From horseshoes to cornhole to bocce ball, every red-blooded American enjoys some form of lawn game during a summer barbecue. Each generation, innovators and entrepreneurs attempt to capitalize on a family's desire to relax outside, with a cold beverage in one hand, while competing in a game that doesn't require breaking a sweat. There is perhaps no more notorious failure in fulfilling these requirements than lawn darts. While the foot-long spears satisfied our need to compete, they ignored the fact that flying sharp objects, running kids, and that aforementioned beverage don't mix well.
A new type of charger called the Green Plug aims to replace the pile of power bricks under your desk with a hub that powers multiple devices at once, but only when they need it. The idea behind the system, due out early next year, is that software in gadgets would let them tell the hub exactly how much power they need. When its battery is full, the device tells the Green Plug to cut the juice. Current chargers keep drawing a small amount of power as long as they’re plugged into an outlet.
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In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
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