Indice dei contenuti per October 2013 in Popular Science

THE HISTORY of automobiles in this country is the history of upheaval. During the Great Depression, the rise of V8 engines made it possible for bank robbers to leap onto the running board of a getaway car and roar away from the local constabulary's Model A. Today, every highway, cul-de-sac, curb, and shopping plaza is directly influenced by the speed, turning radius, wheel height, and fuel range of the average automobile. American life is intertwined with cars. A change in one means a change in the other. Now we're on the verge of more upheaval, and this issue is about those revolutions. This year, at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a storied time trial up one of Colorado's tallest mountains, a series of electric vehicles, such as the Latvian…

Blade size 4.5 inches Weight 5 pounds Price $99 When it comes to circular saws, amateur woodworkers have to deal with a frustrating compromise: Overspend on a burly contractor tool that can cut nearly anything, or settle for a smaller model that can scarcely cut a two-by-four. The Rockwell Compact Circular Saw puts an end to that aggravation. To squeeze more power out of a small frame, Rockwell designers did two things: First, they overhauled the gearing. Typical circular saws have large parallel gear sets, which would have sat too low on the saw and interfered with deep cuts. So designers added a set of smaller in-line gears to transfer the motor's 3,500 rpm to the blade. Second, they used thinner 1.2mm blades that generate less resistance when cutting, allowing…

Anyone who's worn waterproof boots knows that although they shed moisture, they're magnets for grime. Most water-repelling treatments still allow for surface friction, so particles of mud, soot, oil, or wine stick right where they land. Over the next couple of months, UltraTech, a Florida-based company, will roll out Ultra-Ever Dry, a coating that repels most muck. Instead of a single layer, Ever Dry is two coats. Engineers first spray a surface with a solution that consists mainly of xylene and butyl acetate. Once that coat dries (about 20 minutes), they apply an acetone solution with small amounts of silica and other proprietary additives. As it dries, the top coat reacts with the base coat to form a layer of microscopic peaks and valleys. That structure reduces surface friction so…

EVERY NEW COMPUTER comes with one guarantee: There will be a faster, shinier, newer model in short order—and you will fawn over it. It's hard not to. Processors double in power every 18 months, and other parts turn over even more quickly. Memory gets faster. Screens pack more pixels. Hard drives grow larger. And so on. Like it or not, the product cycle is also a cycle of dependency. We don't just want the newest thing—we actually need it in order to run the latest programs. But there is a way out, and it starts with a return to computing's roots. The first commercial computers of the 1950s were mainframe systems. In a mainframe, a central terminal—sometimes as large as a room—houses processors, memory, and storage. Individual workstations connect to…

The $100 bill is the most widely circulated U.S. denomination abroad and, because it's almost universally accepted, the most counterfeited one outside our borders. A new Benjamin goes into circulation this month with security updates: a ribbon with images that move when the bill is tilted and a drawing that changes colors depending on its angle (these in addition to more than six other anticounterfeiting features). But the U.S. isn't the only nation concerned about the sanctity of its currency. Bills from around the world combine complex technologies to make notes harder to copy and fakes easier to spot. Because of Earth's spin, wind blows more often from West to East (red) and East to West (blue) than from North to South. A scientist at Princeton University made this model…

Last year, the Catlin Seaview Survey completed the most detailed picture of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Using underwater vehicles with 360-degree cameras, the survey's scientists and divers captured more than 100,000 panoramic photographs. Panoramas save precious time—experts think the reef could disappear entirely in the next couple of decades. The team hopes the comprehensive look at the ecosystem will provide insights about how to save it and others around the world. Next, the crew, led by scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland, will shoot reefs in the Philippines. POPSCI: Why take photos? Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: We can extract enormous amounts of info, like the health of coral reefs, the number of organisms, and so on. PS: How do you get data from 90 miles of pictures? H-G: We use…

EACH YEAR, POPULAR SCIENCE seeks out the brightest young scientists and engineers and names them the Brilliant Ten. Like the 110 honorees before them, the members of this year's class are dramatically reshaping their fields—and the future. Some are tackling pragmatic questions, like how to secure the Internet, while others are attacking more abstract ones, like determining the weather on distant exoplanets. The common thread between them is brilliance, of course, but also impact. If the Brilliant Ten are the faces of things to come, the world will be a safer, smarter, and brighter place.—THE EDITORS “Always test your ideas in the lab. Doing the experiment tests your knowledge and surprises you with unexpected results, which usually leads you to new ideas.”—NICOLAS FONTAINE Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent ACHIEVEMENT Saving the Internet…

While various companies are developing self-driving-car technology, Google's is the most advanced. Once a driver activates the autonomous mode, the vehicle's drive-by-wire system transfers control of the brake, gas, and steering to an onboard computer. The vehicle's roof-mounted lidar (or light detection and ranging) unit probes 360 degrees with 64 laser beams, taking more than a million measurements per second. This data forms a high-resolution map (accurate to about 11 cm) of the car's surroundings. Prebuilt navigation maps indicate static infrastructure, such as telephone poles, crosswalks, and traffic lights, which enables software to quickly identify moving objects, like pedestrians and cyclists. These targets are clustered together and tracked so that algorithms can process the traffic situation and plot a path safely through it.…

The Department of Transportation recently defined this range of vehicle automation. Level 1: Function-Specific Automation This includes at least one standard safety feature, like electronic stability contol, available in cars today. Level 2: Combined Function Automation A car integrates at least two primary control functions, as with Mercedes Distronic Plus with Steering Assist. Level 3: Limited Self-Driving Automation Like the Google car, the vehicle drives under certain traffic conditions and occasionally hands back control. Level 4: Full Self-Driving Automation This is basically KITT from the TV series Knight Rider. The driver isn't expected to be in control at any time.…

WHEN I WAS A KID, my father's Kettering, Ohio, auto shop was often my daycare center. Grease-stained mechanics wielding hefty tools the size of my arm knelt down and explained their work. Some showed me how to perform an oil change and diagnose a leaky head gasket, others how to align a timing belt and replace a busted windshield. Years later, as a Boy Scout, I earned my Automotive Maintenance merit badge with ease. I should be someone passionate about cars and their storied place in this country's culture. A wrencher who dreams of red Mustangs and racing stripes. The guy who strolls onto a lot and names a make, model, and price before a salesman can utter a single slippery word. I can fake any of these things, but…

WARNING: Wear proper safety gear, including gloves, a facemask, and protective glasses. Cement is an irritant, hot plastic can scald skin, and utility knives are sharp—be careful! The Greek polymath Archimedes is said to have solved the mystery of buoyancy in a bathtub. Even if the story is apocryphal, his principle isn't: If an object weighs less than the water it displaces, it won't sink. Even concrete can float. Materials scientist Joseph-Louis Lambot built a concrete dinghy featured in the 1855 World's Fair. And to conserve steel during World War II, the U.S. made 24 concrete ships. Today, college teams race custom boats at an annual concrete canoe competition. A team from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for example, used concrete mixed with tiny air-filled glass spheres to build a…

SHORT ANSWER It would burn a hole through you—and then some. LONG ANSWER The scientists at the LHC would like to make two things very clear. First, it's just a horrible idea to put any part of your body in front of the collider's two proton beams. Each beam comprises 320 trillion particles, so the total energy delivered is a blazing 362 megajoules, enough to melt about half a ton of copper. Second, it would be really hard to get in front of a beam, even for someone with a death wish. “if you tried to open any of the access doors to get into the LHC—even though the lights are flashing et cetera—the collider automatically turns off,” says Steven Goldfarb, a physicist at the LHC in Switzerland. That said,…

We enlisted a few NASA scientists to help us round up the most inhospitable places in the universe. Here's a sample from the top 10: The planet has the most volcanoes in our solar system, is covered in lava, has a surface pressure equal to being a half-mile underwater, and a temperature hot enough to melt lead. Nicknamed the Styrofoam planet because it's large and light, Kepler-7B is extremely reflective. Couple that with its 2,800°F surface temperature and you've got what one scientist describes as a “disco inferno.” Though it appears blue, HD 189773B's color comes from its rain. Which could condense to glass. And flies around the planet in 4,000mph winds.…

1 The Veloce 13.3″ gaming laptop has both an Intel Haswell processor and a 1080p screen—a first. It also includes a Nvidia GTX 765M graphics card and eight gigabytes of memory, making it the most powerful laptop in its class. Digital Storm Veloce From $1,284 2 With its latest software update, the LG Optimus G Pro plays video only when someone's paying attention. The phone uses its front-facing camera and eye-tracking software to determine when you're looking away and then pauses the video. LG Optimus G Pro $100 with two-year service agreement 3 With the MirrorCase, an iPad can shoot photos or video while horizontal, something it can't ordinarily do. An adjustable mirror on the case directs light to the camera. An app then flips the images, which are received…

More winter adventurers than ever before are wandering off trails and deep into the backcountry. But hiking or skiing on the wrong side of a mountain, where safety teams might not patrol, comes with a higher risk of getting trapped in an avalanche. The Halo 28 JetForce pack features an airbag system that can keep a user on top of a slide—and still have enough juice left for three more rescues. Before heading into questionable terrain, a user unzips the trigger handle from a pocket on the left strap and powers on the pack by pressing a button. In a slide, the user would yank the handle downward to initiate inflation. A two-inch-wide fan on the left side of the pack spins at 60,000 rpm, filling the pack's 200-liter balloon…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, scientists published a study of whole-body CT scans of 137 mummies: ancient Egyptians and Peruvians, ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and Unangan hunter-gatherers of the Aleutian Islands. They reported signs of atherosclerosis—a dangerous artery hardening that can lead to heart attacks or stroke—in 34 percent of them. What struck the research team, led by Randall Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, was that it afflicted mummies from every group. Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, also sees the condition in about 30 to 50 percent of the adult specimens he studies. The breadth of these findings suggests that atherosclerosis today may have less to do with modern excesses such as overeating and more with…

In the film Gravity, which opens this month, two astronauts are on a spacewalk when an accident hurtles them into the void. So what would actually happen if you went, in NASA's terminology, “overboard” NASA requires spacewalking astronauts to use tethers (and sometimes additional anchors). But should those fail, you'd float off according to whatever forces were acting on you when you broke loose. You'd definitely be weightless. You'd possibly be spinning. In space, no kicking and flailing can change your fate. And your fate could be horrible. At the right angle and velocity, you might even fall back into Earth's atmosphere and burn up. That's why NASA has protocols that it drills into astronauts for such situations. You would be wearing your emergency jetpack, called SAFER, which would automatically…

Researchers subject cadavers to laboratory scenarios—an impact into a simplified car's steering wheel and seat, for instance—and record the resulting forces and injuries to help design crash-test dummies and heads, which, unlike real flesh, can be standardized for controlled evaluations of cars and safety gear. Forensic researchers use cadavers to study decomposition, including that caused by flesh-eating insects, which can help law enforcement better pinpoint a victim's time of death and the cause of certain injuries. Sometimes they re-create crime scenes to test hypotheses about specific murder cases. In basic anatomy class, new medical students dissect bodies to gain their first hands-on experience with the human form and observe variation (everyone is a unique size and shape). Cadaver parts also provide models for practicing doctors to learn new surgical techniques.…

THE CAR IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE CAR. PG 54 Traffic Pattern Self-driving cars replace humans on the highways. BY ADAM FISHER PG 58 Peak Car The typical American drives less every year. BY JEFFERSON MOK PG 64 Supercharged Electric vehicles (EVs) outperform gas-powered racers. BY EZRA DYER PG 67 Fuel Boom An explosion of charging stations allow EVs to travel far and wide. BY KATIE PEEK PG 70 Why You Can't Sell Me a Car Millennial become Detroit's toughest customers. BY DAVE MOSHER The automobile is in the midst of profound changes—and so is our relationship to it. These five inflection points are just the beginning.…

Since the country hit “peak car” in 2005, Americans are now driving the same number of miles they did 15 years ago. That's the longest downward trend recorded. A weak economy, growing urban populations, rising fuel prices, and lower interest in cars among younger drivers have all contributed to the decline. Worldwide, the number of miles driven per person is still growing fast in China, but developed markets such as Australia, France, and Japan have also peaked and fallen. “The trend has been pretty dramatic,” says analyst Doug Short about the U.S. data. “But I think we are eventually going to see it level out.”…

ROD MILLEN FLIPS DOWN THE VISOR ON HIS HELMET, INCHES TOWARD THE FLAGMAN, AND SIGHTS DOWN THE STRIP OF TARMAC THAT LEADS TO THE STARTING LINE. The road ahead bends right—the first of 156 turns over the next 12.42 miles—and climbs quickly out of sight. The finish line is the 14,110-foot summit of Colorado's Pikes Peak, an unforgiving mountain that's tempted racecar drivers with both glory and disaster for the past 91 years. Millen has won the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb nine times, and he set the course record in 1994. His son, Rhys, set another record last year, reaching the summit in a scorching 9 minutes and 46 seconds; Millen thinks he can beat it. He gets the green flag and rolls onto the throttle. For a split-second,…

We review all our projects before publishing them, but ultimately your safety is your responsibility. Always wear protective gear, take proper safety precautions, and follow all laws and regulations. TIME 5 months COST $2,350 Justin Beckerman was walking to high school with some friends when one of them spied an abandoned soda fountain in a parking lot. “Dude, you should go and get that,” his buddy said. He knew Beckerman was collecting parts to build a one-man submersible, with the hope of piloting around New Jersey's four-square-mile Lake Hopatcong. After school, Beckerman dismantled the soda fountain, harvested several pieces from the machine, including a compressed-air regulator, and rushed home to get to work. The 18-year-old's love of building took off at age two, when his dad started taking him to…

Warning: Capacitors that power a camera's flash can deliver a dangerous shock even long after batteries are removed. Attempt at your own risk. Members of Public Lab, an online civic science community, wanted to build an inexpensive tool to measure plant health. Their solution: convert an obsolete camera into a photosynthesis detector, called the Infragram. During photosynthesis, leaves soak up blue and red light but reflect invisible near-infrared light. The Infragram blocks red light and—because it's missing a thin glass filter common to digital cameras—can detect near-infrared light. This way, the camera sees only blue, green, and near-infrared [top image], and Infragram.org can convert the photos into colored maps of photosynthesis [bottom image]. If a farmer attached the Infragram to a drone, for example, he could get a read on…

SHORT ANSWER Yes, but only for junk food. LONG ANSWER Much of what scientists know about stress eating comes from cramming animals into Plexiglas tubes. When researchers subject lab rats to this particular discomfort for several hours every day, the rodents lose their appetites for healthy pet food. But if given access to junk foods, such as a high-sugar or high-fat treat, the rats pig out. “Sometimes an animal's calorie intake actually doesn't increase overall, but the kind of foods it's eating shifts,” says Kevin Laugero, a physiologist at the University of California at Davis who has studied stress eating for more than a decade. “We think it's a selective focus on these highly energetic or energy-dense foods.” When animals are stressed, they need additional energy to fight of a…

The ground-dwelling jumping spider is a fearsome beast. It can scale vertical surfaces with ease and spring 25 times its body length to nab prey. Its legs are the eight crucial tools responsible for the pounce, but until recently, the evolutionary origin of some of their structures was misunderstood. By comparing the legs of 330 species, German biologists determined that the sticky feather-like hairs at the end of the leg, called setae, evolved from hairy pads that originally helped the spiders wrangle food. Now, the hairs provide 32,000 contact points per leg, enabling the arachnids to walk up walls. Other appendages also help with the hunt: two claws for grasping and bristles that detect air currents, tastes, and smells. To jump, the spider directs its hemolymph to the legs. The…

Range Up to 140 miles Available 2014 Price From $32,499 Two years ago, engineers at Mission Motors, a California electric-vehicle manufacturer, set their prototype loose at the 2.238-mile Laguna Seca Raceway. The bike clocked a lap time of 1:31.3, nearly 13 seconds faster than any other electric bike and almost as fast as a 600cc gas guzzler. In 2014, the company will release the street-legal version of that bike, the Mission R. Despite its massive battery and thanks to a custom chassis and motor, the bike is both compact and powerful enough to chase down its conventionally powered competition. Engineers kept the 550-pound bike about the same size as a gas-powered one. The motor doubles as the rear swingarm mount, which holds the axle and suspension, and the battery anchors…

With the Passport door, pets can let themselves in and out—without leaving the house vulnerable. The door opens only when the right quarter-size RFID collar tag passes within one foot. The system can remember settings for multiple pets; for example, it could let a cat in and out multiple times a day, but a dog only once. Passport Pet Access Smart System From $230 The Dart automatic laser toy keeps pets occupied. Animals chase an eye-safe laser through 16 randomized patterns that shine in a 50-foot circle around the toy. Just set the timer for up to 20 minutes and let Fido loose. FroliCat Dart $35 The Rollo Collar is also a leash. A 4.5-foot cord winds into a compartment built into the collar, and magnets hold the handle securely…

LOST: Groundwater In the last 100 years (1900–2008) the United States has lost some 240 cubic miles of groundwater—enough to fill Lake Erie twice, says a recent report from the U.S. Geological Survey. And our rate of groundwater depletion has roughly doubled over the past two decades. FOUND: Oldest Water Deep inside a Canadian mine, researchers discovered pockets of extra-salty water, some of which are 2.6 billion years old—the oldest on the planet. The site is similar enough to places on Mars that scientists wonder whether both may be home to unique microbes.…

“We built a telescope into a contact lens. It is similar to a hard contact lens, but embedded inside are four tiny aluminum mirrors. These mirrors magnify the light, like a telescope, making images appear 2.8 times bigger. You can switch between magnified and normal vision by wearing modified 3-D television glasses. A button on the glasses changes their polarization. And polarized filters on the contact lenses determine whether the light passes through their magnifying part or their non-magnifying part. DARPA, a funder of our research, is interested in super vision. But the lenses may also work for people with macular degeneration, a disease that degrades the central part of the retina. Magnification makes it easier for those people to decipher small things, like text, with the healthy areas of…

THIS SUMMER, government health officials in the United Kingdom made headlines by announcing that they will let scientists create babies with DNA from three different people. The procedure is a type of in vitro fertilization (IVF) that would allow women with mitochondrial diseases to have healthy babies. If approved by British Parliament, the method, known as mitochondrial replacement, would lead to a historic event: the first genetically modified humans who could pass down those genetic tweaks to their children. Some bioethicists and media commentators have voiced concerns about the technique's safety because so far it's only been tested on human cells in the laboratory. More broadly, they fear it's a step toward designer babies and eugenics. The method would lead to the first genetically modified humans who could pass down…

EVERY MORNING, at about 8 a.m., Anthony Levandowski walks out of his house in Berkeley and folds his six-foot-six-inch frame into the driver's seat of his white Lexus. Levandowski is embarking on his daily commute to work. It's the most ordinary, familiar moment there is. Most of us perform this ritual five times a week, 50 weeks out of the year. Levandowski's commute, however, is decidedly different. He's got a chauffeur, and it's a robot. Levandowski backs out of his suburban driveway in the usual manner. By the time he points his car down the street, it has used its GPS and other sensors to determine its location in the world. On the dashboard, right in front of the windshield, is a low-profile heads-up display. manual, it reads, in sober…

With dozens of Google's self-driving cars plying California highways in a beta test, sightings have become common. So far, the reviews on Instagram are mixed. 8:26 p.m. 5/15/2013 There is no way I could ever fully trust this thing!!! #selfdriving #accidentwaitingtohappen 7:44 p.m. 4/8/2013 The #future is here, and I'm tailgating it. #google #selfdriving 10:56 p.m. 7/14/2013 I love living in the Bay Area! #technology #amazing #google #selfdrivingcar 1:53 a.m. 7/11/2013 A #Google #SelfDrivingCar would never do anything as dangerous as take a picture of a Google SelfDriving Car 6:22 p.m. 4/22/2013 #google #selfdrivingcar #paloalto imagine a day with no car crashes, amazing!!! 7:35 p.m. 5/16/2013 This scares me and excites me at the same time. #selfdrivingcar 4:44 p.m. 5/28/2013 The robots are taking over #google #selfdrivingcar #terminator #transformers 2:25…

In May, Aston Martin's Rapide S completed the 24 Hours of Nurburgring endurance race while earning an unusual distinction: For more than 11 laps—about 182 miles—it didn't burn a drop of gas. Instead, it consumed 59 pounds of hydrogen, becoming the first hydrogen-powered car to compete in an event sanctioned by the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile). “It would've been easy to build a road car, run it on hydrogen, and say we've done it,” says Dave King, Aston Martin's head of motorsport. “But we wanted to push the boundaries and run at least a full lap at a time at race speeds.” The company found that, in terms of cost, packaging, and range, hydrogen could effectively substitute for batteries in hybrid cars, enabling useful emissions-free range before fossil fuels…

A 30-foot-long umbilical of hoses and cables connects the sub to an emergency float. Beckerman can dive no deeper, as the Nautilus can't pull the float's buoyant Styrofoam down with it. Computer fans circulate fresh air through the sub via the hoses. The cables, meanwhile, lead to an antenna that allows Beckerman to chat with his parents by radio and wireless video. Four plastic water containers and an air compressor make up the ballast system, which controls the submarine's depth. The sub still wasn't heavy enough to sink, so Beckerman added 13 sandbags and 250 pounds of weights too. Five different clusters of super-bright LEDs, including this cluster of four lights on the stern of the sub, help illuminate the lake's murky waters on deeper dives. A compressor stuffed into…

Web developer Nathan Broadbent loved automating everyday tasks. He also loved frozen dinners and wanted to program his microwave to prepare them. He suspected an oven could harness universal Product Codes—the bar codes found on almost all food packaging—to download and execute cooking instructions all by itself. “We're at this point with technology that we have everything we need to make this possible, but no one's doing it,” he says. To prove it, Broadbent took apart a 1990s-era microwave, studied its circuitry, and integrated a Raspberry Pi mini computer (and a custom circuit board) to hijack the oven's electronics. Next, he attached a Wi-Fi adapter, a microphone, a speaker, and a barcode scanner. When the scanner identifies a food, the Pi downloads cooking instructions from an online database that Broadbent…

Not long after interstate highways began snaking across the U.S., engineers started searching for ways to ease congested commutes. In the October 1967 cover story, Popular Science featured a potential solution: the Urbmobile, an electric mass-transit and personal-car hybrid developed by Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. Motorists would steer this driverless concept car into a special lane, where an automated system would take over and guide it along a track. Commuters could then relax and read the newspaper until they reached their destination. While Urbmobiles never made it onto the road, a new fleet of driverless cars has already logged more than half a million miles on American highways in beta tests. To read about how modern self-driving cars navigate the open road, turn to page 54. 1939 — GM introduces its…