Popular Mechanics July/August 2022

DAVE LUCAS, 70 TV News Anchor / Washington, D.C. Change is constant. Get used to it. My Role Model Growing up, my idol was Arnold Palmer. When I was in high school, he won the first PGA tournament at The Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. I tagged along with a local station’s sports director. When Arnie held the post-match news conference, we were the only TV crew there. The sports guy shot it and told me to ask the questions. I did. Arnie was so kind and not at all condescending. MY FRIEND FAUCI In the early 1990s, I anchored a weekly health and medical news magazine program. As HIV/AIDS emerged, the CDC recommended Dr. Anthony Fauci as the nation’s leading expert. He agreed to do our Healthline program and ended up…

Milwaukee M12 Cordless 3/8-inch automatic ratchet A lifesaver when you can’t swing a manual ratchet in a tight space. Sony LinkBuds Truly Wireless headphones They allow me to hear any call for help. Streamlight Strion flashlight The only flashlight I want with me when I’m working in dark spaces. Klein Tools MM400 multimeter It performs just as well as any $200 multimeter out there. COURTESY ISMAEL RIOS (PROFILE, CATERPILLAR); COURTESY MILWAUKEE (M12); COURTESY SONY (LINKBUDS); COURTESY STREAMLIGHT (STRION); COURTESY KLEIN (MM400)…

POPMECH PRO It’s easy to lose track of all the perks that come with your PopMech Pro membership, like exclusive features, detailed plans for DIY projects, and a weekly members-only newsletter. Here are some of the best recent Pro stories you might have missed. (Not a member? Head to popularmechanics.com/join.) WHAT’S THE MATTER? Service and news editor Manasee Wagh made members’ heads spin when she revealed a forthcoming science experiment that could change what we know about the universe. Physicist Melvin Vopson is aiming to prove the existence of information as the fifth state of matter, along with gas, plasma, liquid, and solid states. If info does have mass, it could explain mysterious phenomena like dark matter—and even confirm the theory that we’re living in a simulation. Really. THE BURNING ROPE RIDDLE This simple puzzle…

For the first time, scientists recorded the brain waves of a dying person. The researchers noticed an 87-year-old man’s brain experienced high-erorder cognitive functions immediately following cardiac arrest, possibly indicating active memory recall. We asked Dr. Sam Parnia, an expert on near-death experiences, what this study reveals about our brain activity at death. For decades now, people have reported episodes of paradoxical lucidity and heightened consciousness in relation to death…although in the past, it had been assumed that these may simply be anecdotes. What is most intriguing is that this seems to be occurring when the brain is shutting down at the end of life. This study supports these descriptions and certainly raises the possibility that a marker of lucidity at the end of life may have been discovered. Already a print subscriber?…

Topic WE CAN SEE THE FUTURE For 120 years and counting, PopMech editors have dared to predict the future. Prognostication, of course, is a tricky practice: Informed speculations about tomorrow’s technologies may seem perfectly reasonable in the present, but can look laughably erroneous over time. Indeed, for every accurate bet we’ve made in these pages over the last century-plus—in 1932, a plucky contributor named Winston Churchill predicted a telephone-plus-TV combo that basically foretold the internet—we’ve had a dozen printed misses. (The less said about our ’51 pitch for the personal family helicopter, the better.) Still, as science enthusiasts, it’s our job to make sense of how today’s new innovations and looming challenges might transform the lives of generations to come, for better and worse. Here, our in-house experts reveal what they’re most excited—and…

WHEN IT COMES TO BLUETOOTH SPEAKERS, THERE are hundreds of options ranging in price from around $12 to more than $1,000. But why buy when you can build one that not only blends in with your décor but also will impress your friends? With a little imagination, just about anything can become a Bluetooth speaker. Lunchbox? Broken ukulele? Jewelry box? Busted antique radio? An old Tonka truck? How about a desk, or a bookcase? The answer to all is yes. The parts for this 50-watt Bluetooth speaker project aren’t expensive, and the process isn’t very difficult. If you have basic supplies like speaker wire and solder, it’ll cost just under $100. Small circuit boards for Bluetooth receivers with built-in amplifiers are relatively easy to find. The biggest challenge people usually encounter…