In the future, motorcycles won’t be cool.
in Physical Science, Scientific Enterprise, Motion, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
A motorcycle race...: In the future!
Courtesy Private CustardA student in the transportation program of the < a href=http://www.artcenter.edu/>Art Center College of Design has invented a brand new paradox: a concept-motorcycle that is somehow simultaneously totally awesome and utterly, hopelessly dorky.
It’s a mega future tri-moto electro cyber transporto THX laser blade runner terminatrix rideable machine.
I guess they call it the conceptual exoskeleton motorcycle, Deus Ex Machina. But I think my name for it is still less dorky.
What? You want an actual description of the vehicle? Well, you could just click on the long link above, and leave Science Buzz forever, but we like you here. So at least read the rest of the post before you go.
The Deus Ex Machina is sort of a wheeled tripod, with straps and an integrated helmet to secure the rider. It parks in an upright position, but once it starts moving, the “arms” of the tripod extend forward, so the rider is in a sort of superman position. The motorcycle steers according to the rider’s body position, translating movement to 36 pneumatic muscles. Like, um, Robocop, I think.
The whole vehicle is powered with electricity, using fancy lithium ion batteries and ultracapacitors (check out ARTiFactor’s post for more on ultracapacitors), and is capable of reaching speeds of around 75 mph.
The Ultra Deus Mega Electromachina motorcycle is still very much conceptual, however. That is to say, while all the technological components exist (in some form) the vehicle itself only exists as a computer rendering at the moment. So it’s probably not very fun to ride. The designer maintains that it’s not a fantasy: “It’s a green vehicle,” he says, “and all of the numbers are based in the real world.”
The design itself seems more based in the Minority Report world, but whatev.
There’s a video here, too.
Tags : Stopping skyscraper shaking during earthquakes
730 ton "mass damper": This 730 ton mass damper helps stabilize the building against swaying.
Courtesy jaaronOne of the world's tallest buildings is only 600 ft. from a fault line. The recent Sichuan Earthquake in China shook the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan—a whole eight minutes after the quake originated.
One way to stabilize these tall builds from swaying too much during earthquakes or from high winds is to install enormous pendulum weights. When the building sways sideways the pendulum doesn't want to move (inertia) and exerts a pull in the opposite direction.
These gigantic suspended weights are called tuned mass dampers. The world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, has nine mass dampers. The mass damper in the Taipei 101 building has a mass of 730 tons.
Watch the 730 ton mass damper in action
Sources: Popular Mechanics and Gizmodo.
Biomechanical Energy Harvester: In the very near future, taking a brisk walk may not only recharge your batteries but will also recharge your cell phone and iPod batteries.
Courtesy Simon Fraser UniversityOur man Thor recently posted a story about an energy-producing fabric that in the near future will enable you power an iPod or other electronic device just by wearing it, like as a shirt or maybe underwear. But it sounds like you’d have to do a heck of a lot of moving around just to get it to power a single phone call. And to tell you the truth, it looks pretty itchy to me, and would probably shrink in the wash. So personally, I’d much prefer having something strapped to my knees that harvests the energy created by my walking or running, and use that to charge my favorite electronic gizmo.
Well, now I guess some engineers in Canada and the U.S. have developed just such a device: a modified knee brace that harvests energy expended while you walk. And instead of a measly 80 milliwatts of electricity (like a square meter of the fabric would produce), this device can produce something like 5 watts! The team, which included researchers from the University of Pittsburg and the University of Michigan, published their findings in the journal Science.
The device is called the Biomechanical Energy Harvester, and what's cool is the way it captures the energy. While a person’s walking, it turns itself on and off at critical moments during the stride in order to gather the energy while the user’s leg is involved in what’s termed negative work. That’s when the leg has completed its swing forward and its foot is on the ground decelerating while the other leg is beginning the positive work of swinging forward.
"If you want power, go where the muscles are," said Max Donelan, professor of kinesiology at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia. "We thought, maybe there's a smart, selective way to do energy harvesting when muscles are normally decelerating in the body."
The brace then switches off just as the leg begins its positive work again. If it didn’t do this the device it would hinder the forward motion of the leg.
“That engagement and disengagement happens once the stride is at the region where your muscles need the help at the end of the swing phase. It actually assists them in decelerating that extra resistance,” Donelan said.
At the same time, the gadget is also producing electricity. It’s similar to how a hybrid automobile charges its batteries while braking. You can see the brace in action here.
Right now the prototype is cumbersome and weighs in at about 3.5 pounds but a lightweight version could be available within the next 18 months. Donelan, who led the research, thinks the brace could have applications in the medical field, and also be used by hikers or soldiers to power GPS devices or satellite telephones where no other source of electricity is available.
With a brace on each leg, the user could generate up to 13 watts of electricity depending how fast they moved. To put it in more practicable terms, a one-minute stroll wearing the bionic knee brace could harvest enough energy to power a ten-minute cell phone call.
New energy source?: Wildcatters may soon be turning their attention to kneecaps.
Courtesy euthmanGoodness gracious, just think of all the megawatts of electricity that could be harvested at the Boston or New York Marathons each year. It could mean the antiquated term “horse power” may soon be replaced by “knee power”.
LINKS
SFU press release
Research lead Max Donelan explains device (Large file - may take a little while to download)
It's very pretty: Perhaps the new invention is for performance art.
Courtesy US NavyOn the last day of January, the United States Navy tested a strange and remarkable new machine, the purpose of which remains unclear to the writer.
The powerful new machine uses electromagnetic energy to hurl an object (something pointy and metal, it looks like) over 230 miles. The flying object can obtain airspeed seven times the speed of sound.
A demonstration of the device can be seen in thisvideo released with the story. It seems the machine was inadvertently aimed at a solid wall during the demo. The wall, lamentably, was demolished by the sheer kinetic energy of the flying object. Despite this embarrassing mishap, the navy seems very pleased with the invention, and hopes to have a “full-capability prototype” working within the next ten years.
Any ideas what this thing-launcher could possibly be used for? It looks like it could be awfully dangerous, should someone find themselves in the path of a launched thing – whatever they want it for, the Navy will have to be very careful with the new device.
Window washers: Remember, guys: belly down.
Courtesy PoagaoOn the subject of falling from great heights (and surviving), the New York Times reported a couple days ago on a man who fell 47 floors from a New York apartment building and lived.
The man and his brother were washing the windows of the building when their platform gave way and plummeted into the Manhattan air. When emergency services arrived, one of the men was dead, but the other was already sitting up and conscious (though seriously injured). Authorities are still uncertain as to how he could have survived.
Their best guess, however, is that the man followed his training for such a situation. In the event of a high scaffolding collapse, apparently, one is supposed to flatten his or her body against the platform, belly down. The idea is that the greater surface area of the material should generate some small wind-resistance, slowing the fall. The lightweight material of the platform may also absorb some of the shock upon landing. The main thing is to be lucky, though.
Anyway, they think that the surviving man probably did something like this, and that his brother either did not have the chance to do so, or panicked, and leapt from the falling platform (which, I guess, is what instinct dictates).
The article briefly mentions two other similarly baffling fall-and-survive stories; an amateur sky-diver whose parachute failed to open, and fell from a mile up into a three-foot-deep duck pond, as well as the slightly less amazing - but closer to home - story of a drunk man falling seventeen stories in a Minneapolis hotel atrium (Twin Cities represent! Our drunks fall way better than anyone else’s!)
For a fun and slightly less horrifying lesson in density, gravity, and acceleration, come check out the SMM’s Science Live “Free Fall” show, where we drop stuff from the top of our own fifty-foot atrium (usually water balloons instead of drunks, though).
A swarm of humans: The sky is full of human gliders in the flying-squirrel-like outfits. The winged suits are the newest trend in sky diving, giving jumpers the chance to glide at up to speeds of 140 miles per hour.
Courtesy Matt HooverWorking on the museum floor the other day, one of the volunteers in my gallery was telling me all about human gliding. He’s big on aviation and had some interesting stuff to share on things he’s heard about and seen (but not actually done).
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any notes at the time, but it got me curious enough to Google around and learn more about human gliding. It appears to be just the thing for the sky-diving veteran who’s looking for a bigger adrenaline buzz.
How does this work?
The wingsuit that human gliders wear essentially turns them into a parachute. The flaps between the wearer’s limbs create an airfoil that generates lift as they inflate with air. Gliders can then manipulate their bodies to control the direction and speed of their descent. Jumping from a moving aircraft like an airplane or helicopter also gives the human glider forward speed that translates into lift potential which slows down the fall rate of gliders and gives them a higher glide ratio.
Here’s an awesome YouTube video of a human glider in action. (Warning: The video itself is unobjectionable, but the comments posted to YouTube contain profanity and other strong language.)
Human gliders, when keeping their bodies parallel to the horizon, can reach speeds of 110 to 140 miles per hour. Many human gliders, however, find it a bigger challenge to see how slow they can glide while maintaining their aerodynamics, sort of, but not completely like, stunt pilots stalling out their engines when they’re doing tricks. Some human gliders have slowed themselves down to speeds as low as 25 miles per hour and have lived to talk about it. A more conventional slow speed, however, is about 60 miles per hour.
A closer look: From above, here's a closer view of what's involved with human gliding.
Courtesy Matt HooverWhile it’s still a pretty new technology to be used in the sky diving realm with experiments going back about 10 or 15 years, man has been striving to glide through the air for ages.
In the modern era, between 1930 and 1961 there were 71 reported deaths of people attempting to glide or fly with wings attached to their bodies. There were also four successful flights in that same time.
And it appears that human gliding advancements aren’t going to hit the wall any time soon. Experiments are now underway in attaching jet burners to the shoes of human gliders, giving them more thrust and speed to play around with in the skies.
It should go without saying, but nevertheless, don’t try this at home kids, Jackass actors or any others who are easily tempted to display poor judgment. Human gliders are very experienced skydivers who have studied up on this type of aerodynamics.
That all said, is this something that you’d want to try? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
Here are some links if you’d like to learn more about human gliding.
Isaac Newton: Public domain image.Do you consider yourself well-versed in scientific thought? Can you recite all three of Newton’s Laws of Motion? In Latin? Are you one of those people who can prove a direct link between Albert Einstein’s hairdo and the Chaos theory? Oh, yeah? Well, how about you try to figure out these problems smart guy:
1) You fall into a swiftly moving river and are in need of a floatation device. You see a life preserver bobbing three yards downstream of you and another one three yards behind you. Which preserver should you swim toward?
2) A bullet is fired into one end of a spiral tube. When it comes out of the other end (forgetting here about the effects of gravity) will the bullet follow a trajectory that
(a) is a straight line.
(b) begins as a slight curve in the same direction as the spiral tube before gradually straightening out.
(c) begins as a slight curve in the opposite direction of the tube before straightening out?
3) A plane flying into a headwind will have a lower speed, relative to the ground, than it would if it were flying through still air, while a plane traveling with the benefit of a brisk tailwind will have a comparatively greater ground speed. But what about a plane flying through a 90-degree crosswind, a breeze that is buffeting its body side-on? Will its ground speed be higher, lower, or no different than it would be in calm skies?
Okay, how do you think you did? Do you think you did better than a ninth-grader? Probably not if he or she attends the Academy of Science in Loudoun County, Virginia. These are exactly the kinds of questions that Faye Cascio’s physics class has to tackle there.
And not only can her ninth-grade students solve these kinds of problems in Newtonian mechanics with flying colors, but they can explain the reasoning behind their solutions. If you’re like me, you guessed on one or two of them, but in Ms. Cascio’s class no one gets away with such nonsense. She insists that her students understand what they’re explaining.
“It’s called dipsticking,” Cascio said. “It’s really important to make sure the kids are picking this information up, and so I ask, Is this clear to you? Do you really understand it? and I won’t go on until I get a positive, satisfying answer.”
Cascio’s students are expected to learn to think like scientists and start doing experiments from the get-go. And they are required to design the experiments themselves, and even wear cool, white lab coats while doing so.
This could be good news for the perceived state of science education in our country, which for various reasons has been rather dismal. American students have not fared well in international science and math competitions as of late.
But the trend seems to be swinging in the opposite direction, according to the American Institute of Physics. Special programs in math and science for “gifted and talented” students are increasing. This year the percentage of high school students enrolled in physics classes is at an all-time high, and bachelor’s degrees in the subject have increased more than 30 percent in the last seven years.
This is really good news for science education, and it will be interesting to see how things pan out in future competitions.
But in the meantime, how about those three physics problem? How well do you think you did? Post your answers as a comment, and we'll see how everyone does before I post the correct answers. By the way, I missed them all. I’m so ashamed.
A wild tornado searches for prey: If only we could tame them! (image courtesy of the NOAA photo library)Techno-magician Louis Michaud believes that he can summon a tornado, “tame” it, and use the entity to generate electricity. And he intends not to simply summon a miniature steam vortex, such as can be seen in the Science Museum of Magisota’s Experiment Gallery, but a full-sized wind monster, as featured in the documentary “Twister.”
As bizarre as the idea might seem, councils of air and wind magicians at learning institutions across the country say the theory is sound. It would simply require a sorcerer of the most audacious kind. Perhaps the wizard Michaud is just that person.
The idea is based on the simple and well-known principle that tornado beasts feed and grow off of warm air. Michaud proposes summoning the tornado into a “vortex engine” using a source of hot air such as the waste heat from a nearby nuclear generator (or even, depending on geography, heat from warm tropical water). The hot air would be directed up from the vortex engine’s base in a spinning motion, and would gather momentum as it rose, eventually becoming a tornado several kilometers high. The air sucked into the tornado would spin turbines and generate electricity. The normally chaotic and destructive tornado beast would be content to stay above the vortex engine, feeding off the hot air provided. The wizard Michaud also claims that the stationary, summoned tornados could have the added benefit of combating, in some small way, the powers of That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named (Global Warming, as it likes to be called). The vortex engines would propel hot air high into the atmosphere, where it could more easily radiate energy back into space – an interesting idea, although it seems like there would have to be countless such tornado summoning stations to have any measurable effect. Who’s to say?
However, there is a price to pay for all this, as is always the case with magic. While universities have been experimenting with the summoning spell on a small scale – luring tornados not larger that a meter or two into this realm – the facilities for commercial-scale summoning would cost somewhere on the order of $60 million. This price would be offset somewhat if the generator were built in conjunction with a nuclear power station, as the station would no longer need a $20 million cooling tower. Michaud has formed the corporation AVEtec to seek investor funding. High wizards from Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT have joined AVEtec’s advisory board.
Those of you less experienced in the magical arts might be well served by this article, or this one, both of which offer a more scientific perspective.
Nice hovercraft, dork: Get a flying saucer, then we'll talk. (photo by Mark Bridge on Flicker.com)Moller International has finished development on a flying saucer-like hovercraft, called the M200G.
The M200G is held aloft by eight small rotary engines, and is capable of carrying a payload of about 250 pounds. The craft is stabilized by an on-board computer system, and is piloted using a joystick. Although the vehicle could potentially fly much higher, its computer system limits the maximum altitude to 10 feet. This way, anyone who has $90,000, but no pilot’s license can still legally fly the M200G.
The M200G conveniently burns either gasoline or a mixture of ethanol and water, although it isn’t frighteningly fuel-efficient – it can travel at 50mph for about an hour, and during that time it will use 40 gallons of fuel (that’s 1.25 mpg). Also, the hovercraft emits approximately 85 decibels of sound while operating, which is about the same as a freight train running at high speed.
When asked who would likely purchase such a vehicle, a Moller spokesman gave the peculiar answer, “I don’t know,” but added the probably people who are unable to access and use land they already own - where the terrain would be prohibitive to conventional hovercrafts - might be interested.
Moller’s imagination for potential markets is woefully limited. I think the true future of the M200G lies with socialites, pro athletes, and pop stars. They certainly can afford their own flying saucers, and it seems like the sort of thing a lot of celebrities would be in to. Some of your pro football players might be slightly out of the weight range, but I for one love the idea of, say, Lindsay Lohan hovering down Hollywood Boulevard at about shoulder height in her own M200G. She could call it “Mean Girl,” or “The Decapitator.” I’m just throwing ideas out, but I can see potential there. And if there are any DUI loopholes for flying saucers, I’m sure it could be a hot seller in that crowd.
Man, why didn’t I invent this thing?
Here are some of the most interesting perspectives on the 35W bridge collapse that I have run across in the last few days:
Cell phone network sends ominous signals - Engineers at T-Mobile were alerted that something had gone wrong right after the bridge collapse. They hadn't heard the new yet but saw a sharp change in cell phone activity on their network.
Government spending collapsed as well - A graph of US government spending on infrastructure over the last 55 years.
Historians and engineers have a thing or two to learn from each other - An editorial from 2006 of the history of engineering disasters.
Bridges made from glass - A prescient report from the National Science Foundation on poor infrastructure and the future of bridge technology.
Science Buzz and all related activities
Add a new comment