On Monday, The Onion Reported That The “Nation’s Math Teachers Introduce 27 New Trig Functions”. It’s

Human fingers can detect nano-size objects. This means you not only have the ability to feel a tiny bump the size of a large molecule, but if your finger was the size of Earth, you could determine the difference between a house and a car. Source

Nontoxic underwater adhesive could bring new surgical glue

A nontoxic glue modeled after adhesive proteins produced by mussels and other creatures has been found to out-perform commercially available products, pointing toward potential surgical glues to replace sutures and staples.

More than 230 million major surgeries are performed worldwide each year, and over 12 million traumatic wounds are treated in the United States alone. About 60 percent of these wounds are closed using mechanical methods such as sutures and staples.

“Sutures and staples have several disadvantages relative to adhesives, including patient discomfort, higher risk of infection and the inherent damage to surrounding healthy tissue,” said Julie Liu, an associate professor of chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Purdue University.

Most adhesives do not work well in moist environments because water interferes with the adhesion process. While developing adhesives that overcome this problem is challenging, glues for medical applications must meet an additional requirement: they must be nontoxic and biocompatible, as well.

Read more.

Crazy Looking Bamboo Tower Creates 25 Gallons of Drinking Water Per Day From Thin air

This crazy looking tower creates 25 gallons of drinking water per day from thin air. It’s basically an atmospheric water collector which gathers dew from the air.

“…The 9 m tall bamboo framework has a special fabric hanging inside capable to collect potable water from the air by condensation…”

It’s called the WarkaWater:

“…The name ‘WarkaWater’ comes from the Warka Tree, a giant wild fig tree native to Ethiopia, traditionally used for public gatherings and school education. The Warka Tree is an archetype of the Biennale theme ‘Common Ground’…”

The simple and practical, yet elegant design powers out ahead of any of the commercial atmospheric water generators on the market which cost thousands more to build than this.

This is a wonderful water generation idea, that’s inexpensive, and actually beautiful to look at.

Water is life, and being designed after a tree. This is a real Tree of Life.

What Are Earthquake Hazards?

Ground Shaking

The first main earthquake hazard is the effect of ground shaking. Buildings can be damaged by the shaking itself or by the ground beneath them settling to a different level than it was before the earthquake (subsidence).

Liquefaction

Buildings can even sink into the ground if soil liquefaction occurs. Liquefaction is the mixing of sand or soil and groundwater during the shaking of a moderate or strong earthquake. When the water and soil are mixed, the ground becomes very soft and acts similar to quicksand. If liquefaction occurs under a building, it may start to lean, tip over, or sink several feet. The ground firms up again after the earthquake has past and the water has settled back down to its usual place deeper in the ground. Liquefaction is a hazard in areas that have groundwater near the surface and sandy soil. 

Ground Displacement

The second main earthquake hazard is ground displacement along a fault. If a structure (a building, road, etc.) is built across a fault, the ground displacement during an earthquake could seriously damage or rip apart that structure. 

Flooding

The third main hazard is flooding. An earthquake can rupture (break) dams or levees along a river. The water from the river or the reservoir would then flood the area, damaging buildings and maybe sweeping away or drowning people. Tsunamis and seiches can also cause a great deal of damage. Atsunami is what most people call a tidal wave, but it has nothing to do with the tides on the ocean. It is a huge wave caused by an earthquake under the ocean. Tsunamis can be tens of feet high when they hit the shore and can do enormous damage to the coastline. Seiches are like small tsunamis. They occur on lakes that are shaken by the earthquake and are usually only a few feet high, but they can still flood or knock down houses, and tip over trees. 

Fire

The fourth main earthquake hazard is fire. These fires can be started by broken gas lines and power lines, or tipped over wood or coal stoves. They can be a serious problem, especially if the water lines that feed the fire hydrants are broken, too. For example, after the Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, the city burned for three days. Most of the city was destroyed and 250,000 people were left homeless. (Source)

Flat tires could eventually be a thing of the past. Michelin has unveiled the concept for a 3-D printed, airless tire.

follow @the-future-now

Major types of Engines

Straight In-line

This is the type of engine that you find in your quotidian car. Nothing fancy, just all pistons arranged parallel along the vertical direction.

V in-line

Now, this is the sort of the engine that you find on sports cars like the Ferrari. When you hear sports enthusiasts go ‘ Whoa, that’s a V-12! ‘ - it just means that the engine has a V-type arrangement with 12 cylinders.

V +  Inline = V-inline

Commonly referred to as the VR engine.

The name VR6 comes from a combination of V engine (German: V-Motor), and the German word “Reihenmotor” (meaning “inline engine” or “straight engine”)

Volkswagen’s VR6 engines, and the later VR5 variants, are a family of internal combustion engines, characterized by a narrow-angle (10.5° or 15°) V engine configuration.

                    a: straight engine, b: V engine, c: VR engine

W engine

A W engine is a type of reciprocating engine ( again created by Volkswagen) arranged with its cylinders in a configuration in which the cylinder banks resemble the letter W, in the same way those of a V engine resemble the letter V.

Bugatti Veyron’s W16 engine

A W16 engine is used on the Bugatti Veyron. That’s 16 cylinders!

Flat Engine

Flat engines offer several advantages for motorcycles, namely: a low centre of gravity, smoothness, suitability for shaft drive, and (if air-cooled) excellent cooling of the cylinders. You can find them on aircrafts as well

Radial Engine (aka the dancing starfish)

They were used mostly in small aircraft for the propeller

The big advantage of radials was their large frontal area, which meant they could be air cooled, meaning less maintenance, failures, and of course a lower cost of initial purchase and maintenance.

Wankel Engine

This engine has only 3 moving parts and can make a lot of power.However, they are pretty inefficient, the last car to use this was a Mazda RX-8.

Axial Engine

The axial engine is a very interesting design. But they are not widely used because they are just hard to make and running these things at high RPM’s  is a challenge.

Duke engines are equipped with this type.

Jet engine

Commonly jet engines refer to the engines that are found on, well Jets!

Suck,squeeze,bang and blow

Air is sucked in through the front and  squeezed. A controlled explosion follows and the exhaust is blown out through the back

But, Jet engines also include the engines that are found on rockets, hybrids and water-jets. And their mode of operation is different than the one mentioned above.

Pretty cool eh?

Have a great day!

PC: Howstuffworks, Duke, MichaelFrey, Azure.km

** There is also the Stirling Engine. It’s amazing and a topic for an another post. But if you are interested do check out more about it here.

EDIT :  Had forgotten about the VR and the W-engines. My bad! Thanks for pointing it out.:D.

EDIT2: The suck squeeze bang and blow illustration was incorrect. Ergo, changed that.

Are Cloaking Devices Coming? Metalens-Shaped Light May Lead The Way

“The biggest challenge facing a real-life cloak has been the incorporation of a large variety of wavelengths, as the cloak’s material must vary from point-to-point to bend (and then unbend) the light by the proper amount. Based on the materials discovered so far, we haven’t yet managed to penetrate the visible light portion of the spectrum with a cloak. This new advance in metalenses, however, seems to indicate that if you can do it for a single, narrow wavelength, you can apply this nanofin technology to extend the wavelength covered tremendously. This first application to achromatic lenses covered nearly the full visible-light spectrum (from 470 to 670 nm), and fusing this with advances in metamaterials would make visible-light cloaking devices a reality.”

What would it take to have a true cloaking device? You’d need some way to bend the light coming from all across the electromagnetic spectrum around your cloaked object, and have it propagate off in the same direction once it moved past you. To an outside observer, it would simply seem like the cloaked object wasn’t there, and they’d only view the world in front of and behind them. Even with the recent advances that have been made in metamaterials, we have not yet been able to realize this dream in three dimensions, covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and from all directions. But a new advance in metalens technology might get you the full electromagnetic spectrum after all, as they appear to have solved the problem of chromatic aberration with a light, small, and inexpensive solution. If we can combine these two technologies, metalenses and metamaterials, we just might realize the dream of a true invisibility cloak.

Whether you’re a Star Trek or Harry Potter fan, the ability to turn yourself invisible would be Earth-shattering. Come see how transformation optics might transform the world!

The great esGape

Unlike most elemental metals, gallium will melt in the palm of your hand, or at temperatures above about 30 °C. And that’s not the only unusual thing about this element: It also expands when it freezes. In this video series, warm liquid gallium is poured into a glass vial (top), followed by a little clean-up. As the gallium cools back down to room temperature, it starts to bubble up as its volume expands (third video down). Overall, it expands 3%, shattering the vial (bottom). Water is a substance commonly used to demonstrate this sort of expansion, growing about 8% in volume when frozen, but other elements exhibit this behavior as well, including silicon and plutonium. The final two clips have been accelerated 200 times and 10 times, respectively.

Credit: Periodictable.ru (watch the whole video here; GIFs created by rudescience)

More ChemPics and C&EN stories:

Liquid metals take shape

A melting liquid

Rolling out liquid-metal motors

Smooth Ride, Bumpy Road

Why are wheels circular? Why aren’t they triangular or square shaped?

That is a question that you might have pondered at some point in your life ( perhaps as a shower-thought? ) But sometimes even the most simple questions have the most elegant answers!

A square wheel can roll smoothly if the ground consists of evenly shaped inverted catenaries of the right size and curvature.

What is a Catenary?

Well, it is the curve that a hanging cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends. You find these everywhere!

Those chains on the pavement,

those hanging cables on a power transmission station,

or maybe a chandelier is of your type

All are catenaries!

Although it superficially resembles a parabola, it is NOT!

Practicality

The mythbusters (like always) decided to give the four wheel vehicle a try.

And found out that, get this - with speed, a truck fitted with square wheels can deliver a relatively smooth ride, despite that bouncy start!

Well, although circular wheels still remain as the king of wheels, it is nice to know that we do have some alternatives up our sleeve!

Merry Christmas :)

PC: Etan J. Tal, kamel15

If you trace the orbits of Earth and Venus over 8 years, this is the pattern that emerges