Solar cells keep advancing. I’ve heard that regular panels are slightly cheaper to operate than standard grid power now in San Diego, it’s only a matter of time before that efficiency (and grid cost) spreads to the rest of the country. In this picture, that’s a single later of Si atoms!
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: March 1, 2012, 9:06 pm |Comments Off on More advances in solar cells
Megalodon was huge! Check out this picture at the Earth Science Pic of the Day. The smaller white teeth on top are Great White Shark teeth. The lower darker fossil one is from Megalodon. It was bigger than my house!
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: February 9, 2012, 8:58 pm |Comments Off on Megalodon!
It’s possible to print a bone-like material now. You could print a scaffold, put that in a body and let the body heal normally, but quicker. Knitting bone is slow and error-prone. This should help with that.
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: December 12, 2011, 8:39 pm |Comments Off on 3D Printing Bones
I’ve wanted one of these for years, since they came out! I found a great deal on one. It’s a 2002 with 25,000 miles on it. Someone left it in their garage except for Sundays it seems. I should have it paid off in a year too. Not bad!
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: November 11, 2011, 8:35 pm |Comments Off on My new toy
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: June 10, 2011, 8:08 pm |Comments Off on Bre Pettis of Makerbot discussing how 3D printers work on the Colbert Report
Mike Rowe, who creates and stars in the show Dirty Jobs, talks to Congress about jobs and people and education and try to get Congress to see life as it really is outside of marble halls. He talks about his grandfather and all the trades he could perform.
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: May 16, 2011, 8:03 pm |Comments Off on Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs addresses Congress
This guy made a number of marble machines. This is what I was thinking of when I was talking about the xylophone before. It’d be neat to have a room sized one that wrapped around the walls of a room.
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: May 15, 2011, 8:00 pm |Comments Off on Home made marble machines
Posted by MikeS, filed under internetisawesome, Uncategorized. Date: May 15, 2011, 7:57 pm |Comments Off on Awesome video of clouds looking like the fluids that they are
SciAm has news of a new type of solar cell that uses both light energy and heat energy. 30% efficiency, not bad! I’d like to see this get commercialized soon. Nuclear power is about 30% efficient, and high efficiency triple junction solar cells ($$$ and fragile) are 30%-45% efficient.
This is neat! They made a xylophone out of a forest. I bet I could make a smaller one that combined this with a marble machine. The tone boards could be tunable by being hollow with one side sliding in and out of the end. They’d all be hooked up on a descending line and a small robot could climb down them or move on a wire to the side, pulling and pushing the tuning bit. Then have the ball move back to the top the way it normally does in a marble maze. You could program in different sounds and timing.
Posted by MikeS, filed under Uncategorized. Date: April 5, 2011, 7:38 pm |Comments Off on Forest sized xylophone
This is neat!
