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How to Improve the Audio Quality of Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

One of the first things you learn in the ID shop at design school: Wood glue is for joining wood, welding is great for joining metal, acetone is the thing for fusing plastics together. But when you need to attach one of these materials to another, you’ve got to switch over to hard fasteners or something more clever, since wood glue won’t stick to plastics, et cetera. While that’s occasionally a hassle for building multimaterial objects, record lovers have figured out that wood glue not sticking to plastic provides a huge benefit: You can use wood glue to clean LPs. Because Titebond won’t stick to vinyl, but will stick to all the microscopic specks of dust hanging out in the grooves, a layer of wood glue will become like a Biore strip for records. Observe, and be sure to listen to the before and after—the amount of snaps, crackles and pops the glue removes from the audio is astonishing: (more…)

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How to Improve the Audio Quality of Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

California Oil Spill Turns Out to Be a Freakishly Massive Amount of Fish

Earlier this week in La Jolla, California, what appeared to be a massive oil spill in the water began creeping towards the beach. However, closer inspection revealed that the inky cloud was not a batch of Exxon-Mobil’s finest at all, but an enormous school of fish. Specifically, anchovies. (more…)

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California Oil Spill Turns Out to Be a Freakishly Massive Amount of Fish

Making a Murano Glass Horse in Minutes with a Fiery Finish

Photo by Saffron Blaze via Wikimedia Commons Anyone who has witnessed a glassmaking demonstration can surely appreciate the skill that goes into a craft that dates back to 2, 000 BC. Named after the island from which it originates, Murano glass has been among the very best since the Renaissance, though the market has declined precipitously over the past few decades: according to The Guardian , the number of Murano sculptors has melted from “6, 000 in 1990 to less than 1, 000 [in 2012].” Even so, it’s hard not to be impressed by the practiced hands that churn out the souvenirs, kitschy though they may be, and at least one maestro has added a little flourish to the predictably well-documented process of sculpting a glass horse . This one is well worth watching in full: Post by Francisco Lopez Serrano . (more…)

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Making a Murano Glass Horse in Minutes with a Fiery Finish

How Will the iPhone 6’s Sapphire Screen Hold Up to Abuse? Watch and See

Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee somehow got a hold of what is purportedly the screen for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 6. Made of sapphire rather than Gorilla Glass, the screen has been rumored to be a big step up in durability. The material-minded will recall that Apple’s current iPhone features sapphire covers for both the camera and the home button/fingerprint sensor, and in those roles it is crucial the material not be scratchable, otherwise the functionality would be compromised. But how will it hold up with a much larger surface area, comprising the entire 4.7″ screen of the 6? On his YouTube channel MKBHD, Brownlee puts it to the test by working it over with a knife and a set of keys, before finally attempting to bend and break it. Have a look: (more…)

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How Will the iPhone 6’s Sapphire Screen Hold Up to Abuse? Watch and See

How to Keep Beer Cold, Outside, with No Electricity: The eCool

Beer was reportedly invented sometime around 5, 000 B.C. So it’s shocking to think that refrigeration wasn’t invented until the 19th Century. Because that means that the majority of man drank warm beer for nearly 7, 000 years. Which is kind of gross. Nowadays we can all enjoy a cold beer whenever we want, and your correspondent might even be enjoying one right now, depending on whether or not your correspondent’s bosses are reading this. But we rely on electricity and refrigeration to keep our brews frosty. Four fellows in Denmark, however, have figured out how to keep beer cold, outside, without using any power. Their invention is called the eCool , and it delivers “year-round cool beers” without being plugged into anything except the earth. To install the roughly four-foot-long device, you bore a hole into the ground using a garden drill, though they advise that “[the eCool] can be installed with a shovel as well, if you’re a real man.” Once you’ve got the hole dug, you insert the cylindrical device into the ground, then load it with up to 24 cans of quaff. The earth then keeps the beer cool, and when you’re ready to have one, you turn a handcrank attached to a vertical conveyor that serves you up a fresh can. “Do something great for yourself and the environment, ” the eCool guys write. “It’s easy to install in the garden or terrace, and uses no electricity. With the eCool you can always drink a cold beer with good conscience.” What we’d like to see next: A bottle version, please! (more…)

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How to Keep Beer Cold, Outside, with No Electricity: The eCool

Superhydrophobia: Breakthroughs in Next-Level Waterproofing

Water might be good for our bodies, but it’s terrible for our stuff. Our smartphones, the walls in our home, the precious documents we’re carrying—water can ruin all of it. So when a material is created that can repel water so perfectly that whatever it covers essentially never gets wet, we take notice. This kind of material is called superhydrophobic. That means that water droplets remain in their spherical shape, sit on top of the material, and then roll off of it like pearls from a necklace. The droplets never really touch the material in the first place. Check out the photo below. The angle between the bottom of the droplet sphere and the surface will be more than 120 degrees. If it were 180 degrees the droplet would not touch the surface. There have been many variations of superhydrophobic materials and most involve embedding structures within the material that prevent the water from coming into contact. For instance in a recent study researchers from Brigham Young University used material that either had microscopic long ridges or posts (see photos below) that prevented the droplet from penetrating through the fibers. (more…)

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Superhydrophobia: Breakthroughs in Next-Level Waterproofing

Google’s Self-Driving Car Just Got Slightly More Real

They could have done worse : as of yesterday afternoon, the Google Self-Driving Car Project has made a concerted push into the public eye with the unveiling of a pod-like prototype vehicle and a few new videos about what they’ve been up to lately. It’s a stripped-down electric two-seater—no steering wheel or pedals to speak of—that tops out at 25mph and is strictly intended for demonstration and pilot purposes, as seen in the video below: This is not by any means a production vehicle—they’re making “about a hundred” of them for now—so I’ll leave it to our dear readers to provide feedback on the styling (it’s on our discussion boards as of 8:26am this morning). All I can say is, open those doors up and I dare you not to picture a cutesy cartoon koala. An early rendering of the prototype Some talking points, regarding how they are presenting the self-driving car and what they’ve disclosed about the project in the videos they’ve released thus far (embedded below): (more…)

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Google’s Self-Driving Car Just Got Slightly More Real

Drinkable Book: Have We Found a Solution to the World’s Clean Water Crisis?

Finding clean water for the entire world to enjoy has been an ideal that’s gone unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Scientists, chemists and designers have been on the challenge for years, coming up with solutions that technically work, but might not necessarily fit into the budgets of those really in need of a tall glass of the good stuff. Non-profit Water is Life teamed up with scientists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia to come up with a solution that’s a little more wallet-friendly than a water generator: the Drinkable Book. The 20 corrugated pages in this booklet are actually filters that block harmful water-borne bacteria like cholera, E. coli and typhoid from getting into your water. Dr. Theresa Dankovich was able to create a paper coated with silver nanoparticles—tiny pieces of silver between 1 nm and 100 nm in size—which gets rid of more than 99.9% of dangerous bacteria. While the Drinkable Book’s primary intention is to provide safe drinking water, it also covers another very important link that’s been missing from the equation: education. Most people who catch water-related diseases have no idea that the drinking water is unsafe to consume. Each page of the book displays different water safety facts and tips for readers/drinkers. Check out Water is Life’s video for the project: (more…)

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Drinkable Book: Have We Found a Solution to the World’s Clean Water Crisis?

China on the Forefront of 3D-Printed Housing

While China had their Industrial Revolution rather late in the global game, their production might and speed means they’ll likely advance new digital fabrication techniques before the rest of the world does. For example, it’s been ten years since the American outfit Contour Crafting first proposed 3D printing houses, but aside from a brief surge of TED-Talk-inspired press in 2012, they’ve been mostly quiet. In that time, meanwhile, China has begun developing their 3D-printed-house-erecting capabilities in earnest. The Shanghai-based WinSun Decoration Design Engineering company recently printed ten sample structures of 200 square meters each. What’s amazing is that they produced the entire lot in less than 24 hours, and that the cost of each house is less than US $5, 000. The concrete-like building material comes “entirely out of recycled materials [and is] a mixture of construction and industrial waste” which the company claims is environmentally friendly (although they don’t provide specifics on the material). (more…)

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China on the Forefront of 3D-Printed Housing