Cool Stuff Being Made: Products Made by Heat Treating
This week’s Cool Stuff Being Made video – heat treating! “You will see on this 18-minute video the many things that we use every day that are heat treated. As they say, heat treating puts the spring in springs. It also strengthens the metal used in axes, knives, saws, aircraft landing gears, jet engines, space ship launchers, computers, agricultural implements and oil drilling and refining equipment, to name just some. There’s also a scene toward the end that shows how many everyday things are heat treated. You see form one of the scenes the difference between a drill bit that is heat treated and one that is not. The former works while the latter fails.” Link.
Mitch writes “The following is the basic pattern for building cantilevered structures with Pennies. Although it looks trivial, we can build amazing structures with these pillars. All penny columns are ten high, a “stack”. Two side-by-side pennies held in place by a penny above them is called a “triad”. Below is a stack with two triads resting on top.” Thanks Tim! 
This is a great Google map project – when you’re out and about in New York City and spot something cool destined for the dump, take a photo with your phone, send a description and an address! The photo and location will show up on Garbagescout.com, there’s also a RSS feed! Dumpster diving just went Web 2.0 – [
John writes “Here’s how to make a device that is useful for visualizing the movement of small particles and for demonstrating slip planes, dislocations, defect holes, and the three states of matter. If you would rather not create your own, you can buy one for $50, but this DIY version costs about $8”. 
Dhruv writes “This page has great animations that break down the complicated process behind creating a single transistor (the basic building block of almost all computer chips).” 
This little robot car from Nakamura-san at Himeji Soft Works in Japan drives around then it transforms into a real robot and walks around. I want to build one of these or buy one immediately. [