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REASON #32 Our perspective on science is unique. Like you. Sign up for the Popular Science editorial newsletter and each week you’ll get the latest and greatest in tech reviews, science news, video, photography, and special offers. GET THE LATEST CONTENT FROM OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS THE FUTURE NOW PopSci.com’s news-reader app delivers all the content from PopSci.com in an easy-to-read format on the go. Get up-to-the-minute news on cutting edge scientific research, gadgets and green tech. Save the stories to read, even when you’re not connected, and filter them by your favorite topic. STAY CONNECTED TO THE POPULAR SCIENCE COMMUNITY Sign up today: POPSCI.COM/NEWSLETTER…

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Ever Sat in a Room Full of Geniuses?

“ YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY BE WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE. THAT’S WHAT INNOVATORS AND DISRUPTORS DO . –Kimberly Bryant, in “Coding Diversity into Silicon Valley” “The deepest question I had while making this film was whether the Internet dreams of itself. ” —Werner Herzog, in “Geeking Out” “WE CAN MANAGE ALL DISEASES BY THE END OF THE CENTURY. —Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Most Social Man on the Planet” “ SOME OF THE BEST MINDS OF OUR GENERATION ARE USING THE INTERNET TO MAKE ADVERTISERS RICHER.” —Chris White, in “The Man Who Lit the Dark Web” “ WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE REST OF THE WORLD WAKES UP AND REALIZES CHINA IS THE LEADER IN SPACE ? —James Lewis, in “China’s Race to Space Domination” “WE HAVE THIS GIANT INPUT CHANNEL CALLED OUR SKIN, AND WE AREN’T USING…

Ever Sat in a Room Full of Geniuses?

Hey Genius, PopSci is now on Apple News.*

But Wait... There’s More SHOW US WHAT YOU GOT Each year, Popular Science teams up with the National Science Foundation for the Vizzies, a competition to visualize a scientific concept or story in an arresting way. If you have a great visual idea, submit it at nsf.gov. THE SCIENCE OF SCISHOW YouTube star Hank Green and his team at SciShow do their best to explain the science all around you. Now, Popular Science goes behind the scenes to see how the explainers do their explaining, from pitches to postproduction. BRINGING BACK BIGGIE For rapper Biggie Smalls, there’s life after death—as a hologram. This fall, Toronto-based ARHT Media will put a high-fidelity digital creation of Biggie onstage. Popular Science reveals how a legend gets brought back to life.…

Hey Genius, PopSci is now on Apple News.*

ARM YOUR BATTLE STATION

6 DESKTOP UPGRADES WHETHER COPY-PASTING A TERM PAPER OR hunkered down to a life of code-jockeying, your desk is sacred space. It’s where you wage a daily battle against your to-do list, your fantasy-football research, and your online work—trashing friends in League of Legends. This gear prepares you for conquest on all fronts. LG 34-INCH ULTRAWIDE Wage war on your term paper with a screen large enough for writing, research, and Netflix—all without a pixel of overlap. The monitor’s 3,440-by-1,440 resolution isn’t full 4K, but you’re not skimping on definition either. 1/ ALIENWARE AURORA Your best weapon against drudgery should be strong and easy to repair. The Aurora is customizable to house Nvidia’s flagship GTX 1080 GPU, and was designed for tool-free upgrades. 2/ SYNOLOGY DS416PLAY Music and 4K movies quickly clog any hard drive. Store everything…

ARM YOUR BATTLE STATION

TURN THE REVERB TO 11

THE ACOUSTIC guitar rarely gets a makeover. There’s just no need. The intimate distance between good wood and an appreciative ear is all that’s required. But for the polished effects we hear out of the studio, like reverb and chorus, acoustic guitarists have to route their sound through effects pedals. Yamaha’s TransAcoustic is the first to naturally re-create those effects, no wires required. An actuator—seated in the base of the guitar’s body— vibrates due to the movement of the strings, delicately disrupting the sound naturally carried out of the guitar. Let your “Wonderwall” wail.…

TURN THE REVERB TO 11

1/ FREEWRITE Tap away without distraction on this digital typewriter, then upload your analog opus to the cloud. 2/ LOGITECH ZEROTOUCH Take calls and change tunes in the car with a wave of the hand so your eyes stay on the road ahead. 3/ CYRANO Deploy this gizmo for all of your aromatherapy needs: soothing coconut and guava scents during rush hour, or energizing citrus at work. 4/ SAMSUNG ICONX WIRELESS EARBUDS IconX earbuds track your heart rate and hold up to 4GB of music so you can go for a run phone-free. 5/ THINCHARGE CASE The Thincharge iPhone case protects your phone and adds 100 percent more battery life. 6/ KNOCKI This puck translates knocks into commands. Knock a surface twice to turn on smart lights or call an Uber. FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY FREEWRITE; COURTESY LOGITECH; COURTESY KNOCKI; COURTESY THINCHARGE;…

PURFIY YOUR AIR WITH LIGHT

WE SPEND 90 percent of our lives indoors. So the air we breathe inside is hugely important. Unfortunately, enclosed spaces are where pollutants stockpile. Cleaning products and contaminants from pets and plants can lead to pollutant buildup. Air purifiers combat these invisible threats (as do proper ventilation and correctly storing indoor chemicals). But many filters can’t catch volatile organic compounds. Meanwhile, captured compounds can escape filters and recirculate. Enter Molekule: a 23-inchtall, app-controlled air purifier whose makers say it delivers air that is cleaner than any other purifier. Instead of trapping pollutants, Molekule destroys them—purifying a 600-square-foot room in an hour. The driving force is photoelectrochemical oxidation: using light to trigger a chemical reaction producing hydroxyl free radicals—the same compound that kills cancer cells in radiation therapy. The radicals break…

PURFIY YOUR AIR WITH LIGHT

A SHIRT FOR GOLDILOCKS

COTTON IS COMFORTABLE, but when wet from sweat, it gets clammy. Self-wicking polyester is a good fix. But in wind or a temperature drop, it wicks away sweat so quickly, you get uncomfortably cold. Polartec’s engineers have figured out the right balance. Polartec created its new Delta—a mechanical wicking fabric-—to hold sweat close to the skin. It mimics the body’s natural cooling process before sweat evaporates through the fabric and into the air. Its secret: a water-receptive synthetic called Lyocell is knit into fins, similar to those in a car radiator, that absorbs and spreads out perspiration. Polyester between the fins pulls moisture from the fabric and disperses it into the air to limit sogginess. Added odor control and UPF make it ideal for indoor or outdoor training.…

A SHIRT FOR GOLDILOCKS

DO I NEED AN HDR TV?

OUR TELEVISION OVERLORDS—THOSE BOXES THAT hulk on our walls—are an insidious lot. Not happy to stay relevant for more than two years, their makers constantly beckon with new features, each more complicated than the last. The newest princeling is high-dynamic range, or HDR. These televisions display more than 1 billion colors, with ultimate control over every possible combination thereof, from the blackest black to the whitest white (if the content is HDR compatible). That means you see a more vivid movie, or a more textured video-game shootout. But do you really need HDR? Don’t ask the clerk at Best Buy. Our chart has your answer. LEFT TO RIGHT: COURTESY SAMSUNG; COURTESY NETFLIX; COURTESY LG; COURTESY WARNER BROS.; COURTESY VIZIO…

DO I NEED AN HDR TV?

SAFETY AT 220 MPH

A HEAVY HELMET IS THE LAST THING A motorcycle racer needs when going 200 mph. The speed alone can drag you backward or snap your neck in a turn. So Bell has designed a helmet that minimizes the toll of high-pressure rides. It’s the lightest motorcycle road helmet to meet U.S. safety standards, and still protects the brain in high-, medium-, and low-speed impacts. LIGHT, BUT FIRM The helmet is reinforced with an ultrathin carbon-fiber weave that weighs 125 grams. As strong as normal carbon fiber, it’s 20 percent lighter. Flat fibers that offer less room for resin buildup result in a lighter, stiffer body. BRACE FOR IMPACT The liner handles impact like a suspension system. Three layers—expanded polypropylene, soft polyolefin and stiff polystyrene—work independently to absorb energy and protect the head. ROCK AND ROLL Crushed…

SAFETY AT 220 MPH

CODING DIVERSITY INTO SILICON VALLEY

THE WHITE-MALE-DOMINATED TECH INDUSTRY is sorely in need of a diversity upgrade. So Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls Code in 2012 to add a few shades to Silicon Valley’s color palette. Her nonprofit is dedicated to teaching girls K-12 how to code. Some 6,000 girls have enlisted, from San Francisco to as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa. Many others have taken note, from President Obama to the folks at Google, who this summer gifted the group $2.8 million in office space inside their Manhattan headquarters. Bryant, the group’s CEO, talked to Popular Science about the importance of inclusion—and how diversity benefits us all. +STATS NAME Black Girls Code MISSION Train 1 million girls by 2040 NUMBER OF CHAPTERS 13 worldwide Why is inclusive hiring important in tech? The people we serve—our students, our customers, our markets— are themselves…

CODING DIVERSITY INTO SILICON VALLEY

The world’s longest and highest glass bridge opens

25 Number of volunteers who repeatedly jumped on a cracked panel to test its durability WHEN IT OPENS NEXT YEAR, THE WORLD’S LONGEST and highest glass bridge will stretch 1,400 feet across China’s Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, a setting that helped inspire the fictional world, Pandora, in James Cameron’s Avatar. To build it, engineers installed four support towers into the quartz sandstone of the canyon walls. A steel frame was fitted with more than 120 glass panels, which will allow up to 800 tourists to walk—and gawk—nearly 1,000 feet above the national park’s floor. Because durability is critical, each panel is a three-layered, 2-inch-thick slab of tempered glass; if one layer cracks, the others will hold. Adrenaline junkies will be able to dangle from the bridge’s underbelly on three long swings. But…

The world’s longest and highest glass bridge opens

OVER THE COURSE OF HIS 50-YEAR FILMMAKING CAREER, DIRECTOR and documentarian Werner Herzog has often explored humanity’s complicated relationship with nature. His newest release, funded by an internet security company —Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World—examines the changing roles technology plays in our lives. Herzog says he rarely uses the Internet himself, and didn’t make his first phone call until the age of 17. It’s this outsider’s perspective that imbues the film with both curiosity and concern: Here Herzog muses that artificial intelligence has the potential to enhance society, but that a consequence could be losing touch with the very things that makes us human. THE FIELD OF ARTIFICIAL intelligence research is a beautiful one. I’m not surprised by how far it has come, but I am surprised by…

HOW WILL ROBOTS LEARN?

IF THE INTERNET WAS THE BIRTH OF THE DIGITAL revolution, then today’s artificial intelligence is its first baby steps toward maturity. 1 Today, AI researchers feed an algorithm data and painstakingly help it learn. But to make AI that’s knowledgeable on a grand scale—like learning the idiosyncrasies needed to translate every human language— the software needs to learn on its own. However, researchers don’t agree on how to make that happen. One camp thinks that if we correct algorithms when they make the wrong decisions, they’ll learn to avoid bad choices and choose only the right ones. 2 In other words, we parent our AI until it reaches the ability to thrive on its own. The other camp believes learning is also informed by self-awareness, which lets humans make decisions based on their…

HOW WILL ROBOTS LEARN?

TRASH REACHES ARCTIC WATERS

AS SEA ICE SHRINKS, HUMAN activity in the Arctic increases. As a result, trash is seeping into our northernmost ocean, and seems to be creating a new garbage patch in the Barents Sea. Previously, scientists identified five major garbage patches, which collectively contain millions of tons of trash too buoyant to sink. “It’s like a turd that just won’t flush,” says Erik van Sebille, oceanographer at Imperial College London. The five patches are in mostly barren regions where the water is depleted of nutrients. But this new patch is forming amid an ecosystem with hundreds of creatures off the coasts of Norway and Russia. Researchers tested local wildlife and found plastic in 88 percent of sampled seabirds. So far, attempts at cleanup have been superficial, and studies suggest the seafloor holds…

TRASH REACHES ARCTIC WATERS

VOCAL-CORD SALVATION

Surgeon Steven Zeitels saves the voices of singers like Adele (left). But mere mortals also endure vocal-cord stiffness that can lead to strain and voice loss. Instead of treating it with costly surgery, Zeitels—director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center—is creating a 45-cubic-millimeter gel implant that will be injected under the vocal membranes to restore pliability. It’ll be ready for human trials in 2018. “This is a way to bring back what had been thought of as lost forever,” Zeitels says.…

VOCAL-CORD SALVATION

FROM CHAT ROOM TO CLINICAL TRIAL

BY AGE 7, TERESA CODY’S SON, NEAL, had yet to say his first word. He has Down syndrome, a disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, found in 6,000 babies every year in the U.S. There’s no cure, and most people with the diagnosis have an IQ about 50 points below average and a shorter life expectancy. Desperate to improve her son’s cognition, Cody gave him supplements, vitamins, and medication, which led her to an unlikely treatment: Prozac. She found studies that claim the antidepressant—also known as fluoxetine— could stimulate the growth of new neurons in mice. She convinced Neal’s pediatrician it couldn’t hurt, so he added the drug to Neal’s supplement regimen. Cody believes the drug sped Neal’s development, and although there’s no way to prove causation, Cody…

FROM CHAT ROOM TO CLINICAL TRIAL

REDEFINING EMERGENCY RESPONSE

When first responders enter the scene of an active shooting or chemical spill, they must rapidly decide how to prioritize patient care. The current triage system uses color-coded tags corresponding to the seriousness of a patient’s injuries. The problem is, first responders don’t always have the medical expertise to accurately identify who needs the most pressing attention. “During disasters, emergency rooms typically get overwhelmed,” says Peter Chai, an emergency medical physician at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “So when truly injured patients show up later, we have nowhere to put them.” Enter Google Glass: The augmented-reality headset that failed as a consumer product is getting a second life as a tool that turns paramedics and emergency medical technicians into walking telemedicine suites. Wearing it while assessing patients allows them to consult…

REDEFINING EMERGENCY RESPONSE

CALLING ON COAL

CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT WOULDN’T EXIST without rare earth elements. No smartphones, LEDs, wind turbines, or even car batteries. REEs, such as cerium and scandium, are scattered throughout the earth’s crust. China alone produces nearly 90 percent of the world’s supply, and the U.S.’s only mine closed this year. But researchers could help break that monopoly with something we already have in abundance: coal and its byproducts. “Everything that’s in the earth’s crust is also present within the coal,” explains Evan Granite, a chemical engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy. The DOE recently funded a wave of research to boost U.S. REE production to cope with demand, which is rising about 5 percent every year. Each step of coal production—mining, cleaning, and burning—creates REE-enriched material. The goal is to…

CALLING ON COAL

VISITING A KILLER ASTEROID

DESPITE ITS SMALL SIZE, 101955 Bennu is one of the most dangerous asteroids in the solar system. In 2135, it will fly within about 186,000 miles of Earth, at which point, the odds of it striking us are an unsettling 1-in-2,700. Based on impact calculations, University of Arizona Lunar & Planetary Laboratory staff scientist Bashar Rizk estimates that if a person were within 5 miles of the asteroid’s impact, he or she would likely not survive. If Bennu were to hit a city, “ civilization would be wiped out; most buildings would collapse or ignite, or both,” Rizk says. “The fireball would be about 1,500 times as bright as the sun.” That’s why this month NASA is sending a solar-powered spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx ( Origins, Spectral…

VISITING A KILLER ASTEROID

THE MOST SOCIAL MAN ON THE PLANET

DOWN THE HALL FROM MARK ZUCKERBERG’S DESK SITS A VIRTUAL REALITY STUDIO. FOREIGN HEADS heads of state and other dignitaries have been known to lose themselves here in games of zero-gravity Ping-Pong and the real-seeming experience of firing virtual fireworks at each other. Such are their number, and frequency, that on an early summer morning Zuckerberg is at a loss to remember—or perhaps too diplomatic to divulge—one of their names. He does, however, recall the anecdotal nugget of the man’s visit. “He wouldn’t leave,” says Zuckerberg, sitting in a glass-walled conference room in Facebook’s cavernous and almost factorylike headquarters in Menlo Park, California. “His aide was like, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, you have to take off…you’re two hours late for your flight.’” That is exactly the reaction that Zuckerberg—the 32-year-old, still jeans-and-tee-clad creator…

THE MOST SOCIAL MAN ON THE PLANET

The Brilliant 10

John Gunnar Carlsson Reroutes the World with Geometry FIELD Industrial and Systems Engineering AGE 33 INSTITUTION University of Southern California WHILE THE SAN FRANCISCO 49ers’ new 68,000-seat stadium was under construction, a team executive went to Stanford University with a stumper: We want to deliver hot dogs to fans’ seats. So how many servers should we hire? What routes should they take? How fast will the food arrive? The answer: “Talk to John Gunnar Carlsson.” Carlsson, who’s since moved to USC, has made a specialty of solving computationally tough questions— from how to route 1,000 delivery trucks most efficiently to getting airplane parts to the correct hangars around the world in the right order— using the power of math. These types of distribution problems are legendary in their difficulty. Solving them is so demanding that strategists tend to…

The Brilliant 10

THE GENIUS LIST

ILLUSTRATION BY PETE SUCHESKI; NELSON: RAY TAMARRA/GETTY IMAGES; ANDRES: PAUL MORIGI/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES; PAGE: C FLANIGAN/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES; TELSA: NEIL GODWIN/T3 MAGAZINE VIA GETTY IMAGES; POKEMON: EVERETT COLLECTION; MUSK: JUSTIN CHIN/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; DISNEY: ATLANTIDE PHOTOTRAVEL/GETTY IMAGES; INKY: COURTESY NEW ZEALAND’S NATIONAL AQUARIUM; VR:OLLY CURTIS/FUTURE PUBLISHING VIA GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY EHANG; DUGAN; NOAM GALAI/WIREIMAGE)/GETTY IMAGES; STING RAY: KARAGHEN HUDSON AND MICHAEL ROSNACH; MILNER:NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ROSEY: COURTESY WARNER BROS; CLINTON:SAMUEL CORUM/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES; BURGER: COURTESY IMPOSSIBLE FOODS; TRUMP: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; WALMART: DICK LOEK/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES; MUSK: VCG/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES; BIEBER: JOHN BLANDING/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES; BURNS: EVERETT COLLECTION; EINSTEIN: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES…

THE GENIUS LIST

THE MAN WHO LIT THE DARK WEB

BEFORE CHRIS WHITE COULD HELP DISRUPT JIHADI FINANCE NETWORKS, CRUSH WEAPONS MARKETS, AND BUST UP SEX-SLAVE RINGS WITH SEARCH TOOLS THAT MINE THE DARK WEB, HE FIRST HAD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP HIMSELF FROM PLUMMETING THROUGH THE OPEN GUN DOOR OF A BANKING BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER. ¶NO HAND-HOLDING IN A WAR ZONE, HE THOUGHT. ¶IT WAS SEPTEMBER 2010. WHITE WAS ON HIS WAY TO A FORWARD OPERATING BASE OUTSIDE KABUL HEADQUARTERS, AS PART OF A SECRET INTELLIGENCE CELL TO HELP CONFRONT THE TALIBAN and al-Qaida, smash their encrypted online money stream, and win over the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan population. Slight and lanky and 28, White felt Dukakis-ridiculous in his unwieldy body armor and bulbous helmet with “Dr. White” scrawled in marker on duct tape across…

THE MAN WHO LIT THE DARK WEB

CHINA’S RACE TO SPACE DOMINATION

( LET’S GO TO THE MOON ! ) Before this decade is out, humanity will go where it’s never gone before: the far side of the moon. This dark side—forever facing away from us—has long been a mystery. No human-made object has ever touched its surface. The mission will be a marvel of engineering. It will involve a rocket that weighs hundreds of tons (traveling almost 250,000 miles), a robot lander, and an unmanned lunar rover that will use sensors, cameras, and an infrared spectrometer to uncover billion-year-old secrets from the soil. The mission also might scout the moon’s supply of helium-3—a promising material for fusion energy. And the nation planting its starry flag on this historic trip will be the People’s Republic of China. After years of investment and strategy, China…

CHINA’S RACE TO SPACE DOMINATION

INSIDE TESLA THE FACTORY

SMART MOVES A robot cart follows magnetic strips on the floor to move this Model S down the production line. Such electric, selfcharging robots load and unload cars at each stop, making them key to the factory’s efficiency. Here, the Model S—with its body panels attached to an aluminum-and-steel skeleton—nears the end of its general assembly. FRESHLY PRESSED A Model S fender begins its life as an aluminum sheet snipped from a 20,000-pound coil. A laser-cutting robot then slices it into the desired shape before a press—with 1,000 tons of force—stamps it into a three-dimensional fender. It’s then mounted to a measuring board where engineers examine it for flaws. TESLA FACT .08 Time it takes, in seconds, to cut each fender sheet RUNNING THE GAUNTLET German-made Kuka assembly robots piece together the aluminum-and-steel bones of the Model…

INSIDE TESLA THE FACTORY

TRACKING THE TRAFFICKERS

WILDLIFE CRIME IS PUTTING THOUSANDS OF SPECIES AT RISK OF extinction to feed a growing human demand for food, pets, medicine, and status symbols. Led by international crime syndicates that move animals and products through black markets, illegal trafficking is an industry that’s worth up to $150 billion each year. ¶ Poachers are good at hiding their tracks. “The trick is getting one step ahead of them,” says Richard Thomas of Traffic, a wildlife trade-monitoring network. The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge could help. Launched last year by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the global competition received hundreds of ideas from technologists, academics, and activist hackers. Here are 10 of the most innovative. 32 Percentage of all seafood imported to the U.S. that is likely illegal SOURCE: MARINE POLICY HAWAII AQUARIUM APP YELLOW TANG Aquarium…

TRACKING THE TRAFFICKERS

Annoy Coworkers with This DIY Sky Puppet

TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE WACKY, WAVING INFLATABLE TUBE— also known as a sky puppet or air dancer—made its debut as a decoration at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Since then, its become most famous as an advertising gimmick at used-car lots. Goofiness aside, there’s a lot of science going on inside that tube. In 1883, British scientist Osborne Reynolds developed a theory that predicted how fluids, such as water or gas, would flow through pipes and ducts based on the ratio of speed to viscosity. Blow air through the flexible tube of a sky puppet, and it will flow smoothly, up to a certain point. When the air speed increases enough, the flow becomes turbulent and chaotic, turning the cylinder into a dancing decoration. Once you’ve found the ideal tube dimensions to…

Annoy Coworkers with This DIY Sky Puppet

A Mini Medieval Siege Weapon

AROUND THE TURN OF THE 14TH CENTURY, ENGLAND’S KING EDWARD I led his soldiers north to battle Scottish rebels. Eventually, he cornered his foes at Stirling Castle in central Scotland. Outside the castle walls, his English engineers built a phalanx of huge trebuchets. A trebuchet uses the force of gravity to fling projectiles. Its power comes from a counterweight—often a box that’s filled with stones or sand—connected to a lever arm. The other end of the arm is attached to a sling that holds a missile, such as a large rock. By raising the counterweight into the air with a pulley system and then letting it drop, the lever sends the boulder flying with great precision. Edward’s trebuchets, perhaps the most powerful ones ever made, even had their own names, such…

A Mini Medieval Siege Weapon

Build a Fog Machine That Fits in a Mug

HALLOWEEN FALLS ON A MONDAY THIS YEAR, GIVING YOU an excuse to celebrate it in the office—with a mini fog machine that fits in a coffee mug. This project, inspired by a water-only fogger from DIYer Brian Clarke, employs sound waves to turn distilled water into a spooky haze. The tiny cauldron gives you all the boil and bubble of a witch’s brew for a lot less toil and trouble. TIME 15 mins COST $30 DIFFICULTYY +TOOLS & MATERIALS Wire strippers • Two 23A battery boxes • Soldering iron • 5.5 mm-by-2.5 mm male plug for DC power • Two 23A batteries • Empty, dry 16-ounce plastic water bottle • Etree ultrasonic fogger • Duct tape • Mug • Distilled water +INSTRUCTIONS 1/Strip the ends of the battery box wires. Solder the negative wire from one box to the positive wire of the other. Solder the…

Build a Fog Machine That Fits in a Mug

Bend a Laser Beam

Want to defy physics? This experiment makes a straight laser beam appear to bend into a curve. Fasten a laser pointer to a flat surface, positioned so it shines horizontally through a full plastic water bottle. Poke a hole in the plastic where the beam of light exits; water will spill out in an arc. (Use a bowl to catch the runoff.) The laser light will appear to bend along with the water. How is this possible? According to Snell’s law, a ray of light will change its angle when it hits the boundary between one medium (water) and another (air). So the light is actually bouncing back and forth in straight lines within the stream of water, as if trapped in a hall of mirrors.…

Bend a Laser Beam

Listen with Your Skin

“With the VEST, we would no longer be limited by our bodies or our senses.” WHAT IF OUR BODIES HAD A NEW WAY—OTHER than our eardrums—to hear the world around us? That’s what neuroscientist David Eagleman wondered five years ago. He looked at the body for answers and saw a huge sound jack. “We have this giant input channel called our skin,” he says, “and we aren’t using it.” So Eagleman, along with Scott Novich, his then-grad student at Baylor College of Medicine, created the Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer, or VEST. The VEST system is worn like it sounds. Through 32 tiny motors, it translates sound waves into vibrations on your back. First, a computer or smartphone picks up sounds from your surroundings and breaks down the audio sample into a set of specific frequencies.…

Listen with Your Skin

The Art of Artificial Limbs

PHANTOM LIMB James Young sports one of de Oliveira Barata’s most audacious projects: the Phantom Limb, inspired by the video game Metal Gear Solid. Young and de Oliveira Barata worked with 11 artists and engineers to craft an arm that boasts lights, USB charging ports, a 3-D-printed hand, and a drone that docks on the shoulder, among other features. Young says he did lose some functionality for the cool factor, but tinkering with the limb has involved him in maker culture. “I’ve learned about LEDs and coding,” he says. FOR EIGHT YEARS, PROSTHETIC sculptor Sophie de Oliveira Barata created realistic-looking limbs for amputees who wanted to blend in. But she longed to work on more whimsical designs that would stand out. Then she met Pollyanna Hope, a young amputee. “She wanted something a…

The Art of Artificial Limbs

A Custom Chopper-Pontoon-Racecar

LAST YEAR, THE DENTED BODY OF A 1969 BELL OH-58 Kiowa helicopter sold at auction for $3,101. Previously, it had served in the Vietnam War, flown missions for a federal drug task force, and been chopped up for parts in Nashville, Tennessee, before floating away during a flood. Instead of landing in the junkyard, it got a second lease on life—as an amphibious car. That’s because the helicopter’s new owner was Jeff Bloch, a novelty-car builder and D.C. police officer. Bloch, who had dreamed of making a helicopter racecar for years, received the chopper as a donation and immediately recruited 16 friends and family members to help make it drivable. They mounted the helicopter on the chassis of a mid-’80s Toyota van wagon and added a lightweight rear suspension from a…

A Custom Chopper-Pontoon-Racecar

Lab-Grown Bones on Display

NEW-MEDIA ARTIST AMY KARLE HAS always been enthralled by science. She grew up around her mother’s medical research lab and studied genetic engineering in college. Now Karle, who previously performed an art piece where a computer mapped her biofeedback as she meditated, is growing a skeletal human hand. In the first step of the creative process, Karle and a team of experts scanned the bones of a female hand as the basis for a digital model. Then they gave the model pores and other microstructures that make it mimic bone. Karle 3-D-printed this scaffolding out of a biodegradable, nontoxic hydrogel. Finally, the team seeded the hydrogel with human stem cells and placed it in a bioreactor—a container to keep the project alive. Over the next two years, Karle wants the cells…

Lab-Grown Bones on Display

Make Your Own Hyperlocal Radio Station

EVER DREAM OF BECOMING A RADIO personality? While tinkering with an FM transmitter for MP3 players, engineer Denise Lee realized she could boost its range to turn her music into a radio show. “This is the cheapest form of broadcast technology,” she says. Her build lets you share your NPR voice with neighbors, the college quad, or fellow campers—up to about 100 feet away. +TOOLS & MATERIALS • Belkin TuneCast II FM transmitter • Screwdriver • Soldering iron • 70 mm of copper wire • Telescopic antenna • Electrical tape • Hot-glue gun • Wire cutter TIME 30 mins COST $15 DIFFICULTY +INSTRUCTIONS 1/ Open the transmitter’s battery compartment and pry open the seam near the DC input. 2/ Carefully heat the solder at the two points where the inductor connects to the edge of the circuit board. Remove and discard the inductor. 3/ Solder the…

Make Your Own Hyperlocal Radio Station

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Have a burning question? Email it to askanything@popsci.com or tweet it to @PopSci #AskAnything Q IS THERE A CURE FOR COLORBLINDNESS? Short answer It could be in sight. A THE COLORBLIND DON’T just suffer limited career choices (pilot is out). They also miss some of life’s biggest pleasures— vibrant sunsets, autumn foliage, the ability to determine if a tomato is ripe. “Nobody chooses a black-and-white TV over color,” says University of Washington ophthalmology professor Jay Neitz, who has devoted his career to studying color deficiency. “ Color makes us happy.” Cone cells in the retina normally help the brain translate lightwaves into what we perceive as colors. When those cells lack red or green photopigments, it causes the most common colorblind disorder, one that afflicts 1-in-12 men in the U.S. and 1-in-230 women. It’s…

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...CORDS THAT SELF-UNPLUG @scooterhead Instructables’ Becky Stern says that adding remote-controlled robotic “legs” around an outlet could pry the plug out of the socket. But there’s a fire hazard: “You might need a battery supply to keep it kicking until the plug is entirely clear from the wall so you don’t get any AC arcing,” Stern says. ...A ROBOT DOG WALKER @chaugh Maybe in a decade says Ross Hatton of Oregon State University’s Laboratory for Robotics and Applied Mechanics, “The big challenges would be making a bipedal robot that can withstand the dog’s pull,” stay balanced, and know when to pick up Fido’s “gifts.” ...A DIAGNOSTIC HOSPITAL BED @lpiciacchia We’re about three years from seeing a Star Trek-style bed, says Grant Campany of XPrize. Teams are developing portable pads that can measure all five major vital signs. “There…

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