Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 - January 2016 i Popular Mechanics

I left home for the Army on my 18th birthday. Overnight I found myself in the middle of an Alabama summer. There were drill sergeants screaming in my ears and I was doing push-ups until my face was buried in the thick red mud that the state is famous for. These trials came as no surprise to me. The Humvee, however: a surprise. I’d never in my life driven anything larger than a coupe, so taking the wheel of an enormous vehicle I’d seen only in photographs was terrifying. Over time, though, driving the Humvee became second nature. That’s how it happens for most soldiers. Did the Humvee have its problems? Of course. It had an annoying habit of not starting in the cold, so during an overnight blizzard in…

If you take a close look at Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of a family gathered around their holiday dinner, you’ll notice that the grandpa, in a matter of seconds, is going to pick up the carving knife and hack the bird apart right at the table. Now, maybe he happens to have great knife skills and he will not, in fact, dishonor the meat before everyone’s very eyes. But that is unlikely, because most people don’t know how to properly carve a turkey. What the man should do is tell his wife to hand him the bird so he can take it back to the kitchen, put it on a cutting board, and carve it slowly and properly, without the entire family looking on. I’ve been the designated turkey carver…

Q In 12 years we’ve lost three mailboxes and one post to snowplows. Is there any option that can take a hit? ALICE B., MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE A Your simplest choice is to shield the box by leaning a piece of plywood against it. Stake it in place and brace it with construction lumber. Although these shields can get slammed and ruined along with the box, most hold up okay. The second idea is to let the mailbox move with impact. That’s why you see mailboxes dangling from chains. But if they aren’t robustly designed, they can get ripped off. A better solution is the MailSwing, a 40yearold design in which the mailbox post has a socketed, freeswinging arm. Both the post and the arm are built from galvanizedsteel pipe.…

For our second annual Popular Mechanics Toy Awards, we tested the best of this year’s new toys with the help of more than 30 kids over two days in our New York City offices. Featured here are six of the winners. SPECIAL EXTRA PAGE! Shazam this page to see over 25 more Toy Award winners (and where to buy them). For instructions, see page 11. BRACKITZ $30–$100 As a general rule, the less structured a toy, the better. That’s why we like Brackitz, a new type of building set created by a dad in Salt Lake City. It’s just wooden planks and two types of plastic connectors—an open building experience that can be as simple or complex as the kid’s vision. HAPE VIBRANT RED GUITAR $70 Sturdy, lightweight, and easy…

SAT 12/5 THE KEY TO CHRISTMAS TREE SURVIVAL Get your tree early in the month. When it comes time to set it up, cut the base again to expose fresh wood. (Use the excess for an easy project, see page 13.) Then prop it up in a stand like the one on page 74. THURS 12/31 A NEW YEAR’S EVE KID HACK Let the little kids participate in New Year’s fun without keeping them up past midnight: When it’s near bedtime, set the oven clock to 11:58 and cue up last year’s ball drop on YouTube. Have your own countdown and let them bang pots till they’re all tuckered out. SUN 1/24 THE TV RECOMMENDATION Thirteen years after it went off the air, we once again get the pleasure of…

01 SHINOLA + CRISLOID DOMINOES SET Rhode Island–based Crisloid has been making games since 1948, which explains the reassuring heft you feel when you stack these dominoes. Teach someone to play and the black resin tiles become rich with significance. $230 02 ELECTROLUX MASTERPIECE COLLECTION BLENDER A simple, brilliant idea: The bottom of this blender is tilted 5 degrees, so the motor doesn’t need force to create a strong vortex— gravity brings all the ingredients into the blades. Late-night milk shakes are as delicious, but quieter. $349 03 STANLEY NESTING COCKTAIL SET Every camper does the whiskey flask. Try campfire manhattans and you and your party will agree that the bitters and vermouth were worth the extra weight. $35 04 ROKU 4 Spot a billboard ad on your commute, open…

Imagine you’re in another country—deep in agave territory in Central America, say—when you realize the location of your passport is not the same as the location of your body. You’re riding a bus. The passport? On a bar next to a plate of fish-taco crumbs. Option one: Panic. Option two: Download the passport app on your iPhone. No problem. For now, option two is not possible, but the Iowa Department of Transportation, of all agencies, is ushering us into an idyllic future in which it is. IDOT has partnered with Morpho-Trust USA, the nation’s primary license manufacturer, to pilot a mobile driver’s license (mDL) that works on any smartphone. To display the ID, a phone will require facial recognition, a fingerprint, or a code. Covert security features within the software,…

Something about an intimate bar makes music sound rich and stirring, but a tiny apartment doesn’t have the same effect. Any speaker configuration that fits in the space usually sacrifices acoustics. I have Sonos speakers ($199 and up) in my pint-sized Manhattan walk-up because, in addition to producing stellar sound, they get periodic software updates that actually make them sound better with age. The latest add-on, Trueplay, is an idiot-proof way to optimize the sound for a specific space. Plant a Sonos speaker wherever it ties the room together, open the app, and follow the video. As the speaker makes laser noises (pew! pew!), walk around the room’s perimeter waving your phone up and down. The app uses the phone’s microphone to determine which frequencies are getting accentuated or absorbed…

At this point, cordless drill drivers are so powerful that they’ve become hard to test. DeWalt, for example, tumbles its drills in a concrete mixer to ensure durability. Toughness is important, but we wanted to know how well they handled everyday work. We used four of the best new brushless drills—designed without the friction-adding carbon brushes that transfer current from battery to motor in typical drills—to bore 36 holes through a pressuretreated 4 x 4 and drive and reverse 24 lag screws in another. The drills sailed through, even if our elbows did not. While each earned our five-star rating, they’re not equally suited to every task. The one for you depends on the type of work you normally do. There are lower budget models out there, sure, and they…

1 Choose Your Telescope IT’S TRUE: You can do a lot of stargazing with a good pair of binoculars. But if you really want to get into astronomy, you need a telescope. And to that end, nothing can—and will—spoil your first foray faster than a bad scope. So don’t settle for anything suspiciously cheap, and make sure you understand the basics. Aperture The hole through which light passes, usually the diameter of the main lens or mirror. The larger the aperture, the better the resolution. For beginners, a 6- to 8-inch aperture is optimal. “Really, today, with the light pollution, you almost need to go eight,” says Roger Kolman, a 55-year amateur astronomer and second vice president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Focal length This is the…

READER TIP: ABATING THE HELL OF ATTIC REPAIR Your story “Home Ownership, Oh, Joy” (October) reminded me of when my sister and I insulated our mom’s attic in the ’50s in the heat of an Ohio summer. I remember saying we needed a rainstorm to cool things off. So I put a lawn sprinkler on the roof and in ten minutes we were cool for the rest of the job. Also, get an estimate before doing it yourself. After my neighbor redid his attic, he realized he could’ve had it done commercially for less than he paid for the insulation. Robert G. Henning Los Lunas, New Mexico AN UPDATE: WE KNOW HOW TO PICK ’EM When we selected Anurudh Ganesan and Olivia Hallisey for our Next Generation Breakthrough Awards (November),…

Even inside the Computer History Museum, August in Silicon Valley is too warm for a hoodie, so most of the 400 young engineers and programmers gathered here are wearing graphic T-shirts and baggy gym shorts or cargo pants. Many wear running shoes, but some are barefoot, and almost all have slumped posture and unstylish haircuts. Speakers on tripods at the edge of the room play dubstep, bass-heavy electronic music that reminds one of the sound effects from video games. “It’s like you’re a machine!” one engineer exclaims. Work surfaces are covered with oversize monitors, ergonomic mice, empty cans, and Sun Chips crumbs. Every item in sight serves the sedentary, stress-fueled, often solitary nature of inventing the future with ideas and a keyboard. This weekend, however, is anything but solitary. This…

There’s something you should know about Malört, but it’s something you can’t truly understand until after your first sip: It tastes terrible. One person described the flavor as “burnt Band-Aids.” Another compared it to “ashtray water.” To Chicagoans, the drink is a matter of history, pride, and pain. Malört is the Swedish name for wormwood, a wild plant native to the Northern European mountainsides and one of nature’s richest sources of alpha-thujone, a chemical compound believed to have hallucinogenic power. When used in absinthe, another wormwood spirit, thujone was believed to foster creativity as well as insanity—the reason absinthe was banned from legal production for almost a century. Not that that mattered in Chicago, where Malört, a relic of the city’s great Scandinavian immigration, has been made since Prohibition. In…

Q How many AA batteries would it take to start a car? A AA? WE PREFER AAA—as in the American Automobile Association, which, for a nominal yearly membership fee, will gladly send a mechanically inclined gentleman in a wellequipped truck to start your car for you if you ever get jammed up with a dead battery. But maybe you’re stranded outside an Eveready warehouse with no phone service or you’re just determined, for reasons of your own, to get all MacGyver with it. Here’s what you need to know: No. 1: This is an impractical idea. It would be difficult, expensive, and possibly dangerous. We do not recommend it. No. 2: It is possible. Let’s start with what we might call the “perfect case.” Professor and automotive engineer Giorgio Rizzoni…

MODEL: PROTEL XP1230 PRODUCED: LAKELAND, FLORIDA TIME TO DISASSEMBLE: 4 HOURS, 45 MINUTES NUMBER OF PARTS: 453 NOTES: For years, if you were away from home and wanted to make a phone call, pay phones were your only option. Even now that most of us have phones in our pockets, pay phones aren’t going anywhere. The FCC suggests having them in certain places for the sake of public safety or welfare (such as outside a police station, where you might need to make a call after being arrested). Pay phones manage to connect calls, set prices, and accurately collect payment using only electricity drawn from the phone line. They’re also basically bulletproof, devised to withstand all manner of vandalism and theft. POWER In the 1980s, the telephone companies that owned…

1. EVAPO-RUST $23 for 1 gallon Effective and quick. After six hours of soaking, the test blank was quite clean. After 12 hours, it was spotless, including the corners and the weld. We noticed some carbon deposits had leached out of the steel, but with a little effort we managed to wipe these off. 2. BULL FROG RUST REMOVER $11 for 16 ounces Its thick, honey-like consistency provides good vertical cling and required very little scrubbing to remove rust. The Bull Frog stayed moist and effective, even after being exposed to air for two hours. It was also the only product we tested that prevented flash rusting (which can happen within 20 minutes of treatment if you don’t prime or seal quickly) by using a Vapor Corrosion Inhibitor that bonds…

A BRIEF EXPLANATION You go chop down a tree, mow the lawn, deep-sea dive, or code at a computer all day, you do it in some kind of apparel. And that apparel, like all of your tools, has to operate in service of the task at hand—like this here neoprene suit in a rescue mission. Be it through the fibers from which they are made, or the ingenious placement of a zipper, or just classic styling, the clothes we wear when we go out in the world are as purposeful and important as what we do when we’re wearing them. 01 CLOTHING, IN EXTREMIS THE I950 STEARNS THERMA SHIELD 24+ Immersion suits—the thick, neoprene numbers donned by sailors forced to abandon ship—are rated to keep a human alive in frigid…

The UNIVERSALLY BELOVED GIFT THE PK GRILL $370 The smoke you create when you cook up some hamburgers over a charcoal fire is bracing, full of fragrant char and the fresh punch of beef. The smoke that hisses from a smoker is an altogether different smoke: earthy and slow, smoke that wraps around you and sweetens the whole neighborhood. This portable kitchen—that’s what the PK stands for— gives you both at the same time. The inventor, one Hilton Meigs, designed it with a four-way venting system when he built the original in the 1950s and sold them out of his car. Today they’re made in Little Rock, Arkansas. Use it year-round. EDITORS’ PICK 2015 That’s all it took to solve problems—just sense.” —FROM HAT CHET, THE CLASSIC BOOK FOR BOYS…

DRONES They’re everywhere. Crashing into the seats at the U.S. Open. Crashing on the White House lawn. Drones may be getting more and more popular, but what can you really do with them? Does a normal person actually benefit from them? I decided to find out. THEY SENT ME DRONES. Integrate them into my daily life, they said. It was going to be a challenge. My daily life tends toward the mundane. “Can they fold laundry?” my wife asked. “Can they do dishes? Can they cook dinner? Can they drive carpool? Will they mow the lawn? Or vacuum? Or sweep out the garage?” My wife and I share these duties. Neither of us likes any of them, except the cooking, sometimes, which we weren’t about to turn over to a…

What’s that like for them? Down a locker-lined hallway at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis, Zac Felli, a junior, walks to his first class of the day. He wears tortoiseshell glasses and is built like he could hit a ball hard. He has enviable skin for a teenager, smooth as a suede jacket. Over one shoulder he carries a slim forest-green and tan messenger bag that would have been social suicide in 1997. But 1997 was the year Zac was born, so he wouldn’t know anything about that. A squat, taupe monolith flanked by parking lots, Lawrence Central smells like old brick and floor polish and grass. Its gleaming floors squeak if you move your foot a certain way. The school has existed on precisely this spot of land…

For years, only the left flipper worked. So for years, Jerry played with only the left flipper. In the basement of his family’s home in rural Connecticut, the flashes of white and yellow reflected off the lenses of his glasses as he stood intently over his Sharpshooter pinball machine, sometimes for hours. More than a decade earlier, with both flippers operational, the entire family— three kids and even his wife, Cynthia, who generally doesn’t have an interest in that sort of thing but is drawn to any kind of familial excitement— would be downstairs with him, peering over the edge to watch or anxiously waiting in line for Jerry’s ball to drop between the flippers, the loud clunk and seemingly endless chiming of the scoreboard signaling the start of their…

PROJECT NOTES OUR BIGGEST CONCERN with a sled made out of 2 x 4s was the weight. At about 20 pounds, this thing is a little heavy, but all you have to do is pull it over the snow, so that shouldn’t be a problem. In our testing, the carriage bolt would occasionally loosen with the movement of the sled’s front end, but you can fix that with a little bit of Loctite or superglue. The only other thing to fix was the friction. We worried that lumber wouldn’t make for the most slippery surface—a problem we solved by adding the PVC board. The smooth plastic on the underside makes for a very fast surface. Rub some paraffin wax on it, and it’ll really fly. SEE PREVIOUS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS…