Made from an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish, it is covered in about 5800 3/8″ (~1cm) mirror tiles. When properly aligned, it can generate a spot the size of a dime with an intensity of 5000 times normal daylight. This intensity of light is more than enough to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant. It stands at 5’9″ and is 42″ across.
I am normally immune to high-design tomfoolery, but if I lived in a universe where I could justify spending hundreds of dollars on a set of nesting kitchen knives, I would snap these up in a second.
In this video, Steve Norris of Norris Labs presents his low-cost implementation of Cornell’s jamming-skin-enabled balloon gripper using a Handi-Vac as a vacuum source. [via BotJunkie]
If you can’t find a reasonably-priced LED replacement for that burned-out appliance bulb, you might do what Andy Brockhurst did: Wire up an LED cluster, yourself, and embed it in resin cast into a mold taken from the original bulb. Looks like he even painted it to match. Check out the Flickr set.
Clever idea from Thingiverse user jmne. I like the art he’s chosen to represent each of the various resources. He’s also produced a version in transparent red acrylic. I’ll be interested to see how this idea evolves.
Craig Smith (South Milwaukee, WI) writes: With all of the junk I accumulated, I thought it would be neat to make a crystal radio as a low impact project in the evenings. I unwound the coated wire from a small useless 115V brushless motor that I almost tossed out several times, and wound it about […]
A Penrose tiling (Wikipedia), named for British mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, who investigated them in the 1970s. A Penrose tiling is “aperiodic,” or, simply put, produces a pattern that does not repeat itself no matter how far you extend it across the plain. All Penrose tilings are aperiodic, but not all aperiodic tilings are Penrose tilings.
Lots of bright creative folks have installed custom Penrose tile floors. Here’s a selection of a few of my faves from around the web. I couldn’t find anybody online who’s selling pre-cut Penrose prototiles, so it looks like anybody who wants to do it themselves has to cut their own. Or, if somebody is feeling entrepreneurial…
