- Keywords
- howtoonsscience (48)how-to (37)events (22)nature (10)cartoons (5)space (5)
- Search
- Explore
- BlogToonsLibraryGlossaryContactMenu
RSS Feed
RSS Feed
It's that time again - spectacular athletes from around the world are accomplishing amazing feats and breaking world records in Beijing, China. Want to know how they do it? We thought they just practice a LOT ... but apparently they get some help from science and technology too. Popular Science has a great article called "Olympic Science 101". Check out how hydrodynamics, biochemistry, and dynamics help your favorite Olympians earn their medals!
Howtoons was the winner of an "Editor's Choice" award at the 2008 San Mateo Maker Faire - it was a blast! Thanks to all for coming out, buying our book, making a marshmallow shooter, and sharing your stories and ideas of what you like about Howtoons and how to make it even better. If you weren't able to buy a book at the Faire, have no fear - you can buy it here at Amazon. We ran out of parts for making marshmallow shooters, but if you didn't get a copy of the instructions at the Faire you can download it for free here on the Howtoons site along with lots of other great activities and comics.
Keep an eye on our website for more exciting things to come, including more interactive activities, a new book in the fall of '08, upcoming events, and lots and lots of blog entries. As always, email us with your thoughts and suggestions!
Check out the video below of Saul Griffith demonstrating a super-modified version of the Infamous Marshmallow Shooter.
Also, see some great pics, below (we hope to get these up on Flickr soon...). See the extra-long marshmallow shooter that Saul's holding? This one worked great - go try to make your own!
The annual Maker Faire, held for the third year running in San Mateo, CA (just south of San Francisco), is a celebration of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) science and engineering, technology, arts, and craft. The Maker Faire is sponsored by Make Magazine, a super cool publication packed with great instructions and ideas for cooking up all sorts of interesting projects on your own time.
Howtoons founders Saul Griffith and Nick Dragotta will be at the Howtoons booth at Maker Faire – come check it out!
New York’s American Museum of Natural History hosted an impressive lineup of panelists and speakers at a mid-April event called “Science Generation: A National Imperative”. Scientists, politicians, and academics strongly agreed that America must make a major effort to educate, nurture, and support a future generation of scientists. Did you see the “Call to arms (or calculators)” post? This is the latest rallying cry for a generation of super-science-savvy kids!
Young students were even among the speakers at the Museum of Natural History, sharing their ideas for how to improve science education and inspire kids. Maybe it’s time for a national marshmallow shooter campaign…
As consumers, it is important that we make well-informed choices about the products we use and purchase. The dollars that we spend are like votes cast for products, and we'd like to support items and companies that promote sustainability, low environmental impact, and fair labor practices, among other things.
It's easy to judge the environmental and social impact of some products...a gas guzzling SUV that weighs 3.4 TONS is likely to be an environmentally irresponsible purchase. What about other products - like the clothes you wear?
The outdoor clothing maker Patagonia has introduced a revolutionary standard for design transparency that it calls "the Footprint Chronicles". Using Patagonia's slick website, you can pick an item of clothing - for instance, their popular Capilene long underwear or a rain jacket - and learn about the materials, shipping, and manufacturing processes that went into creating that product.
A cool feature of the website is that Patagonia discusses both the pros and cons of their products - those Capilene pants, for instance, are made of 64% recycled material (good), but still contain 36% non-recycled polyester. Patagonia claims that this trade-off is necessary to meet the performance (durability) requirements of the garment.
I never knew so much about a pair of pants!
The German engineering company Festo demonstrates a fascinating robotic arm in this video. Festo makes engineering components for precisely controlling fluid and air. The "muscles" in this amazingly life-like arm are actually Festo products called "fluidic muscles". Watch especially closely right at the start of the video - see how the muscle bunches up to contract and shorten, or narrows as it elongates - just like real human muscular tissue. Try to flex your bicep and see how it behaves the same way. Amazing!
And if you think that's cool, check out this article about DARPA's (US Defense Department) revolutionary prosthetic arm - it's entirely controlled by neural impulses.
Here is a neat video showing quick clips of early robotic arms, followed by the Festo arm, and state-of-the art prosthetics like those being developed by DARPA, or DEKA (Dean Kamen - inventor of the Segway)'s company. Exciting and amazing technology, no doubt.
Yesterday, April 12th, people around the world gathered to commemorate the heroics of Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first human to enter space (on April 12, 1961). The party, called Yuri's night, was held in the San Francisco bay area at the NASA Ames research center.
Yuri Gagarin had this to say upon returning to earth: "Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty - not destroy it!" Appropriately, the NASA Yuri's night event featured themes of sustainability. Howtoons' own Saul Griffith spoke about energy consumption and the challenge of meeting the Earth's energy needs sustainably. Although of course, the main topic of the night was - SPACE!
Check out this awesome techno video of Yuri's famous flight into space!
"Hackers" at MIT committed their most recent prank this week by erecting a giant 20 sided die in MIT's Killian Court.
The giant die paid tribute to Gary Gygax, creator of the infamous fantasy role play game Dungeons and Dragons. Mr. Gygax passed away earlier this month.
On May 28 - June 1, New York will host the 2008 World Science Festival. The festival will feature five days of speeches by internationally renowned scientists and thinkers, as well as events and presentations on science, technology, and the arts. Howtoons' own Saul Griffith is in fact a featured speaker!
In addition to the festival's mainstream events, there are events tailored specifically to families and youth, such as "The Science of Disney Imagineering".
One particularly cool presentation? "Cool Jobs" - scientists and engineers with some of the most fascinating jobs in the world share stories about their work ... how they use science in their everyday lives, and how they got such cool jobs!
Check out this website - the Molecularium! In the Molecularium, three animated tour guides (Oxy, Hydro, and Hydra) teach you about the structure of atoms and the way in which atoms create simple and complex molecules.
The Molecularium uses animated characters and an interactive, engaging format to make molecular chemisty interesting, understandable, and FUN.
The Molecularium's main feature is a "Digital-Dome" movie called "Riding Snowflakes" . Riding Snowflakes can be seen at planetariums around the country such as the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, CA, or the Children's Museum of Science and Technology in Troy, NY. The Molecularium page also feature a cool "Nanolab", an interactive feature that lets you practice assembling and manipulating molecules!
The Lilly Library at Indiana University hosts the Jerry Slocum mechanical puzzle collection. More than 30,000 cool mechanical puzzles and 4000 puzzle books to test the mind.
They have some cool animations too.
Inc. Magazine just published its interactive list of The Top 30 entrepreneurs under 30.
The achievements of these engineers, programmers, scientists, hackers, and business men and women is incredible - especially since many of them began inventing before they even started high school!
Inc. calls this list "The 30 under 30", but I would call it ... AMAZING PEOPLE DOING AWESOME THINGS
Scientists studying the Antarctic have observed that a massive field of ice called the "Wilkins ice shelf" is close to collapsing into the ocean. Scientists have been filming the ice shelf as it breaks into pieces for several weeks - see the video below.
In the past three weeks, 405 square kilometers of ice have broken off the Wilkins ice shelf into the sea. Only a thin strip of ice prevents the shelf's remaining 13,700(!) square kilometers from breaking off as well. The collapse of ice shelves like Wilkins is linked to rising temperatures from global warming. Scientists originally thought that the Wilkins ice shelf would survive for another 30 years - the rate of its collapse is alarming.
Last year, we posted a contest sponsored by Specialized Bicyles - Innovate or Die!. The Innovate or Die contest challenged contestants to invent a pedal-powered machine (like a bicycle) that would help make the world a better place. As an example, Specialized created a bicycle that, when pedaled, generated enough electrical power to run a laptop computer.
Months later Specialized had received hundreds of entries - maybe some of you came up with inventions! The winning creation was from a team in Palo Alto, California, and is a machine called "The Aquaduct". More than ONE BILLION people around the world live in places where their drinking water comes from lakes, streams and rivers that are dirty and unsafe to drink. Worse, these streams and rivers are often miles from where people live. The Aquaduct is a bicycle that makes it easier for villagers to transport large amounts of water from a river or lake to their home and - at the same time!! - pumps that water through a filter to make it safe to drink.
To see a demonstration of this amazing technology, check out the video below. Congratulations to the Aquaduct team and thanks to Specialized for helping to support such creativity!
How would YOU use a bicycle to change the world?!
I think that traveling into space is one of the coolest experiences I can imagine. In the old days, traveling to space meant first becoming an astronaut for NASA. To become an astronaut requires years of science and engineering training in school, becoming an airplane pilot, and demanding physical training and testing. All that sounds like fun - TONS of fun, but it takes time.
There is now another way to view the Earth from space. After winning the infamous Ansari "X prize", inventors and entrepreneurs Burt Rutan and Richard Branson founded Virgin Galactic - the first successful commercial space flight company. Virgin Galactic will allow civilian passengers to purchase a ticket for a flight into space. For a taste of this experience, check out this video:
A flight above Virgin's "SpaceShip Two" won't be cheap - tickets will originally sell for $200,000, though that cost is predicted to fall to $25,000 in fewer than 10 years.
So maybe becoming an astronaut is still the best way to explore outer space. Or maybe there's a third possibility...build your OWN space ship!