Thursday, August 25, 2011

Ke$ha meets Sophistication


Friday, August 19, 2011

Walking Table

I kind of really like furniture, but not the normal kind. Of course, I like all the collapsible stuff, because, well, I'm a little bit obsessed with things that collapse, except buildings that do so, especially if I'm in it. I digress. This is a pretty cool table that can walk on four legs when you push it. Wheels? Nah, that's to simple.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Sophistication Luxury Tap Water


Everybody wishes they invested in bottled water, but when it first came out, the question on everybody's mind was, "Who on earth would buy bottled water? How silly." Now it pervades our society and even the Coca-Cola Company has its own bottled water brand (Dasani, in case you didn't know). The bottled water industry is extremely wasteful, producing tons and tons of plastic that ends up in a lot of land fills. There is also a large amount of fuel wasted by transporting water around in trucks (water is very heavy, so heavy in fact, if you were to fill an entire tractor trailer car with it, the suspension wouldn't be able to handle it).

Sophistication Luxury Tap Water sets its satirical cross hairs on the bottled water industry by branding good ol' tap water and adds a filter just in case there's anything nasty in your local tap, though that's unlikely because tap water is more regulated than the bottled kind. Visit www.luxurytapwater.com for more info.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Flying Car

A flying car? Huh? Nope, it's just a balloon, but it looks super realistic. And it's full scale. I just wish I knew how they made it look so real.

Friday, August 12, 2011

BMW Kinetic Sculpture

I generally like abstract sculptures, but kinetic abstract sculptures are even better. Its also nice to see a company that puts a lot of effort into engineering put some effort into art. Art and science/engineering are really not all that different, though the people that study them might be. Well, this video gets pretty neat after about a minute. Its a bunch of metal balls suspended on wires from the ceiling making 3D sculptures.



Thursday, August 11, 2011

Foam/Poppin' Possibilities

 This is quite the amazing video if you like patterns. My favorite part: thinking about the quantum length scale as a foam. Interesting because I had been thinking about this for the past couple of years and I'm glad to hear others may have thought of it too. My theory: Poppin' Possibilities. Infinite possibilities are arranged in a foam structure, and you can pop each of those possibility bubble just by thinking of that possibility. The world around you is the result of popping all other possibilities. Crazy? Probably...pop.


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Soft Body Physics- Ripples in a Water Baloon


This video shows the way waves are transferred through a soft body. I used to poke my dad's belly in the swimming pool and I would see the same thing. Some parts of the video look almost like they were computer generated. Freaky how similar real life and virtual life are becoming. And that's one tough water balloon.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Panspermia and Exogenesis


Panspermia translated from Greek as "all seed" (Pan = all, spermia = seed), is the theory that forms of life exist throughout the universe and are just floating around waiting to hit something that provides the right conditions for them to grow on. Generally, it's thought that this would happen in the form of dormant bacteria on asteroids that hit planets that allow the bacteria to wake up and multiply. This is where exogenesis comes into play. Exogenesis is the theory that life on earth was started somewhere else in the universe and was brought here either randomly or on purpose by aliens. Neither of these theories are supposed to explain how life started, just how it might have spread/will spread.

Today there was some evidence found on a meteorite that two of the four nucleic acids that make up DNA might have come from space along with some related molecules that are not used by life on earth. Neato, I want some synthetic space DNA.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Magnetic "Micro-robots"

These magnetic particles are manipulated by magnetic fields to open and close their pincers and pick up a glass bead to move it around. The particles lie at the interface between layers of oil and water. A magnetic field perpendicular to the interface causes the particles to form the clumps/"micro-robots" and a magnetic field parallel to the interface causes them to swim. So the next step is obviously to filter different beads from a mixed bag of them. And then, world domination.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Nerdy Jokes

Make the world go 'round.