All lawn mowers have one basic flaw. Get rid of it and it’s much lighter, goes faster, goes under low branches and between bushes, turns on a dime, saves gas, mows in the rain and lets you have fun to as well. That flaw is the rider. So we made radio-control mowers. Here’s a good resource for making your own remote controlled lawnmowers. Link. Thanks Ken!
Here’s a site that shows how Mike made a working jet engine built from junkyard parts. The engine presented here is based on a used automotive turbo charger, lots of off the shelf parts, and only a few custom made components. Anyone with a little knowledge of engines, access to a reasonably well stocked workshop, some free time, and some excess cash should be able to make an engine…Link.
Carlo wrote in and said “Went to a bachelor party at a lake house Friday night. One of the guys brought a margarita that was made out of a gatorade cooler and a garbage disposal”. I’m curious how well this works. Seems like an interesting way to make a lot of margaritas. View image.
Mad Physics Dot Com is a site created by a couple students/researchers to show how things work, some experiments and demonstrations. The experiments include: The Physics of Glowsticks, GIANT Hooke’s Law Demonstration and The Science of Fire Extinguishers. They also have a neat section called “Ask Mad Physics”. [Via MeFi] Link
Taser upgraded via Fark…Lightning On Demand is a volunteer organization of engineers, artists, scientists and machinists. Our key objective is to produce a controllable discharge of lightning at the greatest physical scale imaginable using modern technology. One of the projects is a 110,000 Volt Taser Cannon. The Taser Cannon can direct a 15,000 Ampere plasma channel through the air along a straight trajectory, at grounded targets up to 35 ft downrange. Link.
This is a pretty sweet looking project- Mavromatic has made a DIY weatherproof outdoor camera rig to take time-lapse photos of a house being built using an Axis Cam, Linksys WET11 and a super circuits heated camera enclosure. As an added bonus the entire neighborhood got free wifi, part II of the article is supposed to be up next week. Link.
Here’s how you change the Phone Book Widget on Apple’s new Mac OS X Tiger to use Google Maps instead- Hes Nikke on macoshints says…“Mapquest is an aging mapping system and doesn’t fit in with the new shinyness in Tiger. Thats why I made the phone book widget use Google Maps instead”. Link.
