For my readers in the Frozen North . . .

. . . proof that every (snow) cloud has a silver lining for at least one person.

Cool!  (Literally!)



Peter

Ever heard of "Newton's Beads"?

Thanks to a link at Dark Roasted Blend, I came across this fascinating experiment with a bead chain.  The BBC gets together with Steve Mould to discuss the science behind "self siphoning beads", also called "Newton's beads".  The discussion begins at about 1m. 34s. into the video.

I'd never heard of this before.  Fascinating!

Peter

Space tourism draws ever closer

Here's a great video of SpaceShipTwo's latest test flight over New Mexico.  It's scheduled to carry its first paying passengers later this year.  I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

Wish I could afford to take a trip aboard her . . .

Peter

The janitor's revenge

A tip o' the hat to reader E. J. for sending me the link to this video.

Peter

One heck of an advertisement!

This is funny, original, ingenious - and involves vintage warbirds!  What's not to like?  Be sure to watch it in full-screen mode.

Thanks to reader B. V. for sending me the link.

Peter

Never mind toppling dominoes - how about falling ice?

I must admit, I found this fascinating - as well as funny.

I daresay those shivering in the North-East right now won't find it so amusing, though . . .

Peter

50 years of the lava lamp

I didn't know that the lava lamp was a British invention (and originally known there as the 'Astro Lamp'), but according to a photo essay in the Telegraph (and a quick check in Wikipedia), it was - fifty years ago.

An early prototype of the 'Astro Lamp'

The device was invented by an accountant, Edward Craven-Walker, in 1963.  He set up a company with his wife to manufacture them.  They're shown below next to a delivery van for their products.

H2G2 has an interesting article about lava lamps, including this story (which may or may not be true - opinions differ) of how the device was invented.

Craven-Walker got the idea for the original lamp design after walking into a pub in Hampshire, England and noticing a rather odd item sitting on the counter behind the bar. It was a glass cocktail shaker that contained some kind of mucus-like blob floating in liquid. Upon inquiry, the bartender told him it was an egg-timer. The 'blob' was actually a clump of solid wax in clear liquid. The bartender explained: "You put the shaker in the boiling water with your egg, and as the boiling water cooks the egg it also melts the wax turning it into an amorphous blob of goo." When the wax then floated to the top of the jar, your egg was done.

Craven-Walker saw a money-making opportunity in front of him - turn the egg-timer into a lamp with thicker oil that would form sculptural shapes and sell it to the public. He set about tracking down the inventor of the original design. The inventor, known only by his last name of Dunnet, was deceased, allowing for Craven-Walker to patent the invention for himself.

There's more at the link, and more images at the Telegraph photo gallery.

I can remember lava lamps at home when I was a child.  Was that truly fifty years ago?  I suddenly feel old and decrepit . . .

Peter

OK, that's low!

This video clip is of an Argentine Air Force C-130 Hercules making a (very) low pass over observers on the runway at that country's Marambio Base in the Antarctic.

Bet he warmed up the observers a bit as he parted their hair!





Peter

Translating pudding into air miles???

I was amazed (and amused) to read of an engineer who turned 12,150 cups of chocolate pudding into 1¼ million frequent flyer miles - and free airline travel for the rest of his life.  Gizmodo reports:

[David Phillips] saw that Healthy Choice was having a promotion on their frozen entrées section. The offer was as follows: for every 10 bar codes of their product a person sent in, they’d be awarded 500 Air Miles. However, the company had an early bird stipulation that people who redeemed the offer within the first month of the competition would receive double that, meaning a person could potentially receive 1000 Air Miles for buying just 10 of their entrées.

Upon catching wind of the deal, David scoured his local supermarkets to see which, if any products offered the best potential return. After some legwork, he found what he was looking for- a discount grocery chain that was selling individual chocolate pudding cups for 25 cents each. This meant that for a measly $2.50, he could get 1000 Air Miles.

Realising the amazing return he was potentially able to receive, David set out to hit every store in the chain in one day and buy up every single Healthy Choice pudding they had.

. . .

But the benefits of David’s scheme didn’t end there. After sending off the bar codes ... he now officially had over a million miles in his frequent flyer accounts, which automatically gave him lifelong access to something called the “American Airlines AAdvantage Gold club” giving him and his family a number of awesome flying related perks for the rest of their lives.

But we haven’t even got to the best part yet. David will likely never run out of Air Miles because he’s still earning miles at about 5 times faster than he’s spending them, despite traveling quite often ...

There's more at the link.  It's a fascinating study in how thinking outside the box and being mildly obsessive can reap a rich harvest.

Peter

The Moon in the round - and round, and round . . .

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been looping around and around the Moon since 2009.  Now the agency has released this video loop, compiled from who knows how many individual photographs, showing the entire surface of the Moon, including the 'dark side' previously seen only by astronauts.  As Geekquinox explains:

The moon really does rotate, even though it doesn't look like it from here. Because the moon is 'tidally locked' to the Earth, that means that it always has one face pointed towards us. However, it also means that the time it takes to rotate once is the same as the time it takes to go around the Earth — 27 days.

There's more at the link.  Here's the video.  I highly recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

I can remember the Moon landings very clearly.  I'd expected there to be colonies on the Moon by now, perhaps even a tourist resort or two.  I guess we dropped the ball on that one . . . but not to worry.  China plans to have its astronauts on the moon within a year or two.

Peter