Jie Qi at the High-Low Tech lab at MIT’s Media Lab, posted a HOWTO on nitinol and origami. In the HOWTO she mentions that you can’t solder the nitinol directly, and so you’ll have to have create a soldering pad for it. (She used a craft crimp bead.) Another tip she gives is the need to preheat the nitinol by running a 9 volt charge through it for five seconds. When the wire relaxes, it will become be longer than it was originally, and so you’ll need to retention the wire. Last of all, she warns against keeping the wire energized too long, lest your “burn out” the nitinol. In another project, Qi mentions she used 0.006 inch flexinol for the origami, but used 0.01 inch for the more rapid vine/snake project.

I have had a fairly long interest in synthetic plants and was thinking if nitinol could be used to in a heliostat or some sort of dinural deployable structure, but I never knew the reaction time of nitinol. Seeing it used understanding what voltages are required was helpful. (Poking around just now, I also ended up finding a handy nitinol wire width-voltage-time-force table.) While I doubt that I will ever actually build whatever vague idea idea I have for synthetic plant, I’ve come to conclusion that nitinol perhaps isn’t the best choice of materials if you want it to hold position for any considerable length of time (or at least not without some sort of mechanical latching).

Previously.

Before the end of the 44th POTUS, he will accomplish something more evil than possibly be imagined. Even if it it is only the destruction of the one dollar bill. That will be evil enough to make his place in history as a brother of Satan, son of Satan, or Satan itself.

And now you know why the keep trying to put a woman on the dollar coins. Woman? Whore of Babylon? Do I have to spell it out for you?

Designed for Clarke Hopkins Clarke, John Leung designed “Magic Carp-pet“, a rug and table combination that uses lenticular printing to give the illusion of swimming fish viewers look at the table from various angles.

Video after the jump.

Hacker / Fashion designer Diana Eng created a thermographic scarf that reveals snowflakes at temperatures less than 65 degrees fahrenheit. (Video after the jump.)

It reminds me a bit of Hypercolor shirts, but actually pretty cool.

Daniel Burnham, Anuj Patel, and Sam Bell created for their embedded systems class at Georgia Tech a bathroom mirror / information display. Dubbed Cloud Mirror, it is essentially a partially silvered mirror placed in front of an LCD television, hooked up to a WinCE box with some Phidget sensors.

The User controls the display by waving his/her hand across eight infrared sensors (four across the top, and four down the side). Swiping across the top. the display is toggled on and off, while various modes (weather, news, traffic, and calendar) are controlled through the sensors on the right side. (Video after the jump.) Obviously, it is prototype level technology, but is a bit interesting. Basically, they were thinking about how to integrate typical morning information gathering into daily grooming rituals.

Exhibit B:

I know I shared these links like a year ago or so, but apparently I never posted them here.

Click through to PhysOrg if the video doesn’t load.

Ying Liu, et al. from Michael Dickey’s Lab at North Carolina State demonstrate how simply using an inkjet printer to put black lines on shrinky-dinks, one can transform them into a heat activated self-folding material. (Paper.)

The idea is very simple. When a light is shone on the taped up shrinky-dink, the black tape absorbs more energy, and thus the area under the tape heats up faster than the uncovered material. Since shrinky-dinks contract when heated, a hinge is created. By varying the width of the tape, the rate of closure and the resultant angle can be controlled.

Previously.

This is just embarrassing.

While the men fell as well, apparently they didn’t fall nearly as much. These are supposed to be some of the best dirt bike riders in the world, they look like what I could do, and I have never ridden a dirt bike in my life. The sexist youtube comments write themselves.

In case you’re wondering, the event is called Enduro X, which is basically just indoor dirt bike racing with bigger obstacles.

Originally from the Italian soft-core porn Sweden: Heaven and Hell, the song was adapted to by a young upstart Jim Henson for Sesame Street.

via Slate