The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? @ 60 Minutes… In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that’s inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power […]
A new font? – Skinographie typeface made of skin using clothespins via NOTCOT.
Sometimes the most unusual ideas pop into my head, and this weekend I had the satisfaction of bringing one to life. My wish was simple: I wanted it to seem like the snow was falling into my hot tub. But snow is a rarity in the coastal redwood forest, so I substituted flowers for snowflakes […]
Our Make Space For Crafting series was a lot of fun last month, and it was very evident that seeing pictures of organized craft spaces was really inspirational for us all. Here’s another kind of organizing inspiration, this time in the kitchen. I loved seeing The Thrifty Knitter’s kitchen organization overhaul. She has some great […]
Along the same lines, a reader recently pointed me to this paper in the ACS journal Applied Materials & Interfaces that proposes using capillary action along ordinary cotton thread as a cheap and easy way to prototype, and perhaps even manufacture, microfluidic devices. Although the scale of even fine thread is quite a bit larger than normal for microfluidic research, the accessibility of the technique is pretty intriguing. Among other things, Wei Shen and co-workers at Australia’s Monash University demonstrate that fluids flowing along two thread “channels” can be effectively mixed simply by twisting the threads together, and that, when stitched onto an impermeable substrate, two channels can cross each other, without mixing, by the simple expedient of passing one thread over the substrate and one thread under it at the intersection.
Don’t let the elevator music distract you, this system can squirt water at 4 bars, or about 60 psi, as compared to a typical fire hose which packs a working pressure of 100 psi or more. [The] system consists of a number of rotating water jet guns installed on the shipside which provide a continuous […]
Fashion design students Naim Josefi and Souzan Youssouf created the shoes using a technique called selective laser sintering, and displayed them at the Stockholm Fashion Show. [via core77]
