the future of electricity: flexible solar panels capable of 14 watts, housed in weatherproof transparent plastic. the day this stuff gets woven into coats, we’ll all become walking power plants. still a bit pricy at $399 for 12″x57″, but then you can run an ipod off the sun on your back.
via gizmodo
this is the first of many posts from the science history museum in florence (museo di storia della scienza) – an armillary sphere (sfera armillare) representing the entire earth and plotting the extents of the sky in carved and guilded wood. commissioned by ferdinando 1 de’medici and built by antonio santucci in florence in 1588-1593 it represents parts of the globe that were still unknown – as well as a gorgeous set of global coordinates.
the plastic resources for educators program has a great resource explaining various plastic forming processes in detailed drawings and animation, including extrusion, blow-molding, injection molding (including blown film, pictured), thermoforming, rotational molding as well as an overview of materials. great graphics.
i first saw the bodyworlds exhibit at the california science center and had to go back – it contains the most spectacular collection of dissected human bodies that have been plastinated (preserved with an infiltration of silicone) so that you can see the muscles, nerves, organs – even blood vessels in ways i never imagined before. pictured is one of the most spectacular full-body plastinates of a runner, muscles splayed in a boccioni-like pose to reveal the complex structure behind everyday movement. reminds you at once how timeless in beauty and fragile in substance the body is.
via primer
paco rabanne has been designing dresses that you make yourself from material swatches – anything from chocolate to leather and aluminum and plastic (top left to right) can be combined into clothing with the instructions, metal clasps and needle-nosed pliers included in each kit (bottom). they were sold during the 70s and 80s, and have always been out of reach despite their constructivist origins; but they were once available in special vending machines and are now only found vintage for hundreds of dollars.
via MAKE
noah fields from the medialab’s physical language group (run by john maeda) designed this program to generate flipbooks from animations, either by drawing them directly in this app, or by downloading this app to your mac or this app to your pc…
animation has a long history as a propaganda medium – these are the latest, produced by iranian television, depicting americans in a way we americans rarely see ourselves :
http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=906#
http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=907#
via lorelei pepi
like water droplets, atomic blasts have a beauty and grace that botticelli would have been proud of. pictured is a rapatronic photograph of an atomic detonation a few tenths of millionths of a second after detonation, the black stick at right being the 100-meter tower that supported the bomb (via futurefeeder.com). many more beautiful images and videos of the phenomenon are available at the vce website. i also recently bought the beautiful book 100 suns by michael light with large reproductions of the photographs taken at the 100 above-ground nuclear tests by the usa.