Bellbottoms, knee-highs, and perms, oh my! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Fashion – it NEVER stops changing! What used to be HIP is now squaresville. And technology moves even faster than style. Who can keep up? Ramses Martinez and his team at Purdue University
Continue readingTag: engineering
Laser Sailing
Space…the final frontier! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Breakthrough Starshot is a globally funded engineering research project. Their mission? To send thin, sheetlike “starChips” into space and take closeup pictures of alien stars. A whole fleet of these objects is designed to sail through
Continue readingCars Lite
Does your car need to go on a diet? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Wish your gas-guzzler got more miles to the gallon? It would if it wasn’t so heavy! Steel accounts for more than FIFTY PERCENT of average car weight! Replacing steel with
Continue readingBuild-A-Burger
Coming to a supermarket near you – lab-grown steak! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science….saying, someday. When they get it right! Yes, scientists can now make meat by growing cells in a laboratory! It’s easy on the planet, but not so much on the palate.
Continue readingSilent Running
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… an ion-plane? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Aircraft fly using thrust from a power source to generate lift with their wings. Usually, that power source is a gas guzzling engine, or a noisy propeller. City dwellers pay
Continue readingBumble-Drones
Flight of the bumblebee? More like flight of the bumble…drone! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Engineers are always looking to make things lighter, faster, and stronger. Origami-inspired structures are lightweight and cost-effective. That’s perfect for improving robot technology such as drones. However, they have
Continue readingR-Ray Spex
WOW! X-Ray Specs! Remember ordering those? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science, saying yeah, mine didn’t work either! But, good news, kids! Researchers from M-I-T think they have a NEW way to see through walls. Dina Katabi used radio waves to map people’s locations. This
Continue readingChainsaw Bot
Robot lumberjacks? Tell me more! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Lumberjacking is dangerous work for humans. How about for chainsaw-wielding robots? There the problem is power. Climbing gobbles energy, as does holding robots vertically in place. So most climbing ‘bots need huge batteries. Inspired
Continue readingSmell Detector
Is the bathroom still smelly? Odorbot to the rescue! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Ever dream of having a day when smelling unpleasant odors is a distant memory? Kenshi Hayashi and colleagues at Kyushu University share this dream. And they’re working on a solution:
Continue readingThe Nerve!
Are cockroaches lending a helping hand? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. I know – technically cockroaches don’t have hands… But they do have legs, and they’re revolutionizing prosthetic limbs. How? Yeongin Kim and colleagues at Stanford University have created an artificial nerve. It senses
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