World's Lightest Material

The worlds lightest (ahem, least dense) material is about 100 times less dense than Styrofoam. That's just a little bit absurd. It consists of a microlattice of metallic tubes that are only about 100nm thick and the rest is just air. It is pretty tough, too. It can deform by 50% and still spring back to its original shape, unlike aerogels, which just shatter if you squeeze them too hard. I'm sure there will be many applications for this stuff, but super light electromagnetic shielding for is the first one that comes to mind.

PSY-YUNG

Do you ever wonder what to get people for their birthdays? I'm not really a fan of buying gifts, I would much rather make something. So, it's PSY-YUNG's birthday today so I decided to make him some fan art. I used a Taijitu (a.k.a. yin yang), because it looks cool and because it shows up a lot more often than people think. I also immediately thought yin yang yung. There were Roman infantry shields in 430 A.D. that used the symbol. Bet you didn't know that, huh. Don't feel bad, I didn't either before I started writing this post. I decided to make a blending thing in the middle, just because I thought it would be cool and I couldn't find any images like it. Ummm... Music below, fan art below-er. All Dat Azz by PSY-YUNG World's greatest sinner mix by PSY-YUNG

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

Designed by Jonas Pfeil, this ball has 36 cell phone camera sensors that allow it to take pictures a full 360 degrees (or 4*pi steradians for the nerds out there) around the entirety of the sphere. Meaning from ground to sky and everything in between. Pretty impressive. Just throw it in the air and it has a built in accelerometer that it uses to sense the when it's at it's highest point and then snaps the picture. It makes for some pretty neat shots that software can mesh together so you can fly through the area you took a picture of. And it foam padded so you don't have to worry about dropping it.

Imma just leave this here...

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.

Acrylic/PMMA

Acrylic a.k.a. PMMA a.k.a. poly(methyl methacrylate) a.k.a. that plastic that disguises itself as silica glass. It's just as clear as glass but doesn't shatter when you drop it (from a reasonable height). It's easier to machine than glass, so it's used for more complicated designs. That's not to say it's easy to machine, because it's not, but it is a lot tougher than glass.

A little bit of history: developed in 1928 and commercialized in 1933 it was hailed as a shatter proof replacement for silica glass. It was first branded as Plexiglas by the Rohm and Haas Company and has since been sold under names such as Lucite and Perspex. Its chemical structure is shown below.  

Why is PMMA so cool? Well, it can be easily cast to make basically any shape you want. And its clear, and you can add dyes to make sweet translucent objects, and you can embed stuff in in (kind of like how amber embeds bugs).