Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i Popular Mechanics

Until very recently, scientists who wanted to study sea creatures in microscopic detail usually had to remove those creatures from their habitats in order to place them on glass slides in a laboratory. This is one reason (along with vast size, crushing pressure, and darkness) why the sea is the earth’s final frontier: The bulk of the important stuff functions best in a place we don’t. Take coral reefs—they span miles of ocean, but are made up of millions of millimeter-wide individual coral polyps. We know that each polyp has a symbiotic relationship with single-celled algae called zooxanthellae, which provides energy for the coral. We know that warm water makes the algae leave, turning the reefs white. But we currently have no idea how to fix a bleaching episode, nor do…

SCENT MAKES THE MAN Some traditionally masculine scents contain ingredients that aren’t masculine at all. Stetson cologne contains lavender, jasmine, and vanilla. Original Old Spice contains carnations, geraniums, and heliotrope flowers. And Barbicide, that blue water from the barbershop, smells like violets. Before he became a New York City cabdriver, and long before he became an internationally lauded perfumer, Christopher Brosius visited his grandfather’s sawmill in Greenbriar, Pennsylvania, almost weekly, playing in the yard because he was forbidden to enter his grandfather’s workshop, full of lathes, grinders, and welding machines. What he remembers most is how the workshop smelled: hay, sawdust and thick axle grease, tobacco, damp concrete, and hands washed with Lava soap. When Brosius started his own scent company, called CB I Hate Perfume, he decided to turn…

Q Do fighter pilots ever puke during a dogfight? A IT’S TOUGH TO prove a negative— and, believe us, chundering in the cockpit just as some belligerent MiG jockey tries to sneak a missile up your tailpipe is a big negative. But generally speaking, the answer is no. Would-be pilots with weak stomachs don’t tend to make it through training. In fact, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Craig “Quizmo” Brown, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm who has flown F-111s and F-15Es and taught budding aces for six years, says that as many as 30 percent of the students in his class “washed out” of flight school due to an inability to overcome motion sickness. Today, thanks to better screening of trainees, that’s down to about 10 percent. Brown…

Birding is like hunting, but you don’t have to worry about eating everything you catch. Besides, it’s an excuse to go outside, which we all could use. Give it a shot. You’ll be amazed at the things you didn’t realize were right outside your window. Plus, your newfound knowledge will impress people. Anyone who can distinguish a pileated woodpecker from a downy woodpecker is someone others tend to trust. Did You Know? ➼ Hummingbirds eat more than twice their body weight in nectar and flying insects every day. And they’re the only kind of bird that can fly backward and forward, which must be useful. ➼ All of the 200 million European starlings that populate North America descended from a group of 100 that were introduced in New York’s Central…

The Twin throws enough horsepower to launch me off a 50-foot sand dune over a rally car and a terrorist. First, the name. It’s called the Honda Africa Twin ($12,999; above left) because it has a 998-cc twin engine. The Africa part comes from a grueling thing called the Dakar Rally, a famous off-road rally that originally ran from Europe through the African desert and that always devolved into a Mad Max movie. Hundreds of maniacs driving motorbikes, quads, cars, and trucks ripped through the desert for two weeks, hitting livestock and the occasional local, and often maiming the drivers themselves. The twin’s predecessor won the race four times—from 1986 through 1989—so it can definitely handle upstate New York, where I live. The 2016 model is a hell of a…

A Better Hockey Helmet Clara Wagner, 17, Saginaw, Michigan Her freshman year of high school, Wagner’s parents dragged her to a science museum with an exhibit about the mechanics of the woodpecker’s formidable head, which—thanks in part to a strangely spongy part of its skull—can withstand up to 1,500 g’s of force without getting a concussion. (Humans can barely withstand 100 g’s.) Surprised, Wagner launched a full-fledged investigation into concussion safety. She visited the lab of helmet researchers at Virginia Tech University. When a roughly twelvefoot pendulum they use for impact testing caught her eye there, she went home and built a full-scale replica in her garage, so she could test her own helmet designs. Inspired by the woodpecker, she’s working on hockey helmets that contain non-Newtonian fluids, which turn…

STUPID AMAZING IN 2010, MY ninety-year-old father called to tell me that the skin of his right ankle was dying. His doctor wanted him to see a vascular surgeon forty-five miles away. I’m just a transplant surgeon, but I was suspicious of the diagnosis. Dad and I connected via video chat and after helping him get his camera pointed at his leg and not the ceiling, I saw enough to identify his problem. I told him to stay away from poison ivy and to get a different doctor. That was a simple but effective example of telemedicine, the use of video communication to provide medical care over distance. It’s been around in force for about five years. But, paced by improvements in video quality and internet speed, and by the…

TUESDAY 10/4 HOW TO MAKE DEAD LEAVES USEFUL Shred your autumn leaves by running the lawn mower over them. Then put the mulch into black trash bags, moisten, and close the bags, poking a few air holes into the sides. After a year, you'll have leaf mold. Add it to your flower beds in the spring to improve the quality of your soil. TUESDAY 10/25 THE BOOK RECOMMENDATION Clive Cussler, the prolific novelist, owns more cars than books he’s written. And he’s written more than 70. His latest, Built to Thrill, showcases cars from his collection of more than 100 classic automobiles—a departure from the underwater thrillers he’s known for. Cussler’s private collection includes a 1951 Daimler DE-36 “Green Goddess” Drophead Coupe— one of only four left in the world.…

My grandfather worked in the plant pictured above. He spent two summers as an inspector at Ford’s Rouge Factory complex in my hometown of Dearborn, Michigan, earning money to pay his tuition and become the first person in our family to graduate college. His job was to check coils of steel that would get stamped into the bodies of the cars that Ford had been churning out at the plant since it opened in 1917. (Today, they make F-150s there.) About 55 years after my grandpa, I’d spend my own college summers working the loading dock at a sausage-processing company across a set of railroad tracks from the Rouge. Driving down Wyoming Avenue at 5:30 every morning, I’d see the smokestacks spewing flames like a torch beckoning me to my…

BUILD THIS COFFIN! Get our free plans at popularmechanics.com/coffin THE GARAGE OF HORRORS 1 Gene Schopf at fieldofscreams.com recommends setting a bright light at the entrance. The light will constrict visitors’ pupils so it’s harder for them to see when they get inside. 2 Line both walls of a hallway with inflated fabric, completely filling the space. Visitors will have to slide and feel their way through. Maybe there’s a person waiting in there to meet them? For instructions, see below. 3 Mount a dogtraining shock mat flush with one wall, Schopf says. As visitors track their hands down the wall to find their way, they’ll touch the mats and get a slight shock. Nothing painful. Just scary. 4 Remove all of the dangerous parts of an air wrench or…

Q What’s the best way to remove fiberglass splinters from clothes? DENNY A., ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO A After an incident a few years ago in which I inadvertently spread fiberglass dust all over the house and onto the clothing of some of my not-too-pleased family members, I developed what I think is the perfect protocol: Once I’ve finished working with fiberglass, I go outside and shake out my work shirt. Then I walk a few steps away from any floating fiberglass and put my shirt back on. I take a small bench brush and thoroughly clean my hat, work shirt, and pants. I close my eyes and even brush off my face, dust mask, and neck. Then I rinse off my safety glasses and wipe them dry. Next, I wrap…

The Woodpile Whole trunks of oak dry out behind Furman’s Savannah restaurant, just a few feet away from the smoker. He knows they’re ready for the firebox when the bark begins to peel off. Zachary Prell shirt ($115), Levi’s jeans ($260), Red Wing Heritage boots ($270). Bryan Furman starts his day in the overgrown back lot of B’s Cracklin’ Barbeque at about 6:00 a.m. in a flurry of heat and smoke. The former welder left his job operating the laser cutter at a construction-equipment manufacturer and cashed out his 401(k) three years ago to open his own barbecue stand. Now he’s up in the early morning, pulling off the hog that had gone on the night before and prepping with his employees the next round of meat to hit the…

A hackathon is like a tag-team MMA fight for makers: Coders, woodworkers, engineers, and dreamers form teams to think up and build inventions in a highpressure environment. Major League Hacking’s weekend-long competitions attract 65,000 high school and college students every year. At the end of an annual circuit of events, they crown a school as champion based on its hackers’ performance. Here are some of the most inventive teams from last season. The Cadillac of Soldering Irons Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, New Jersey: Jake Kaplan, 16, and Danny Yim, 16 Soldering irons come in two varieties: $10 plugins, which quickly burn themselves out, and hardier temperaturecontrolled irons that can cost as much as $70. Knowing the struggles that come with the less expensive kind, Kaplan had a thought familiar to…

When a 43-year-old Chicago woman caught a sinus infection in 2009, she never imagined it could kill her. But five years later, after multiple antibiotics had failed to work, her body began to shut down: She could barely eat, her vision suffered, her head spun, and her joints ached. She had contracted methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of about 20 multidrug-resistant superbugs that together infect about two million people in the United States every year, killing 23,000 of them. Desperate, the woman turned to the internet, where she discovered a treatment called phage therapy, an alternative to antibiotics that is not currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration but is attracting excitement as our national stockpile of antibiotics grows increasingly less potent. In July of last year, the world’s…

MODEL: ELSTER AMERICAN METER AC-250 PRODUCED: NEBRASKA CITY, NEBRASKA TIME TO DISASSEMBLE: 52 MINUTES, 0 SECONDS NUMBER OF PARTS: 133 NOTES: The first commercial natural gas well in the U.S. was drilled by William Hart in Fredonia, New York, in 1821. He piped gas to an inn for stagecoach travelers. In those days, it was mostly used for lighting. In the late 1800s, methods for efficiently burning gas were developed, so it could be used for heat and cooking. That allowed it to become a standard home utility, and by the middle of the next century, the U.S. was crisscrossed by pipelines. In all that time, one thing remained more or less the same: the gas meter. The two-diaphragm meter was invented in 1843, and the design seen here—which is…

1 Cut two sheets of tearresistant, vinyl-type fabric. They should be a little longer and taller than your walls, so that when they are inflated, they touch in the center of the hallway. 2 Attach grommets to the edges of your fabric and fasten the sheets to the wall, close to the ceiling and one foot off the ground so it doesn’t get stepped on. 3 In the plywood walls, cut holes the size of the opening of a fan blower such as a Power Glide or Craftsman, centered behind the fabric. Mount the blowers to the back side of each wall. 4 Turn on the blowers. When inflated, the sheets should touch in the middle of the hall, but be soft enough for someone to squeeze between them. Adjust…

Think of a Factory Five kit car as the ultimate adult Lego set. The premise: An average weekend warrior, armed with basic tools and about 250 hours of spare time, can build a hot rod, a midengine supercar, or a replica Shelby. Spend $19,990 for Factory Five’s Mk4 Roadster kit, add an engine, transmission, wheels, and paint, and you have a sweet Cobra for less than $35,000. Yes, the term “kit car” still carries a bit of pejorative sting. The early days of this automotive sub-industry included machines that were unappealing concepts (art deco roadsters based on Volkswagen Beetles), had parts that didn’t fit (this was before computeraided design), or both. Not so anymore. Modern kit cars are designed using 3D CAD software and engineered around powerful, reliable running gear…

TECHNOLOGY Since DARPA began developing them in 2001, modern exoskeletons—the hydraulic bodysuits worn to enhance a wearer’s strength and speed—have been primarily used by the military. But the medical uses are obvious. In an exoskeleton, a person who has suffered a spinal-cord injury no longer needs a wheelchair. The suits also reduce repetitivestress injuries when worn by construction crews. And now, they can be used to help stroke patients regain the ability to walk. This year, Ekso Bionics’ Ekso GT suit became the first exoskeleton approved by the FDA for treating stroke victims, which means twenty times more patients can be treated. Here’s how the GT works. The benefit of the exoskeleton is that it helps the body find alternative routes to movement, working around muscles with limited function and…

PROJECT NOTES AFTER AN INITIAL prototype that required quite a bit of cutting, we came up with this version, which requires only one real cut. The LED puck light in its end is bright, but stays cool, so you won’t end up with melted candy. And it can be decorated however you like, with paint, decals, or both. Instructions kid only parent only parent and kid 1. Using a coping saw fitted with a 10 tpi (teeth per inch) blade, crosscut the 4-inch PVC pipe to 24 inches. 2. Drill a 13/64-inch hole with a twist drill bit 2 inches from each end of the pipe. The bit should go through only one side of the pipe. 3. Cut the nylon support strap to length with scissors, and use a…