Tag Archive

Storing megawatts: Liquid-metal batteries and electricity

Image via Wikipedia

Making aluminum requires a lot of electricity. That’s because the metal bonds tightly to oxygen and it takes a lot of energy to break that bond. In essence, the process of making aluminum is a giant battery with the silvery metal being reduced to purity at the cathode while oxygen [...]

A touchless touch-screen may soon reach the market

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

THE popularity of touch-screens on mobile phones means that a swipe, tap or a flick comes as naturally these days as the click of a mouse. But existing touch-screens have their limits. Those relying on changes in electrical resistance tend to have poorer resolution than is needed [...]

Robot Pack Mule to Carry Loads for G.I.s on the Move

Image via Wikipedia

Boston Dynamics’s Legged Squad Support System is the latest challenge for robotics pioneer Marc Raibert
Within the next three years, the U.S. military will test the feasibility of sending a quadruped robot out into the field as a trusty pack mule to carry supplies for its troops, wherever they go. If [...]

Bearings That Pack a Punch (and Their Own Controls)

Image by Burns! via Flickr

TRAINS that float on air may be the most famous objects borne by magnetic fields.
But magnetic forces can also support other, less visible objects: the spinning shafts, for example, hidden at the mechanical core of industrial equipment like pumps, generators, motors and compressors.
Electromagnets surround these rotating shafts and keep them [...]

MIT debuts the Copenhagen Wheel

Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s SENSEable City team have chosen the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change to show off a new bicycle wheel prototype which not only provides electric rider assist, but also contains “a veritable Swiss army knife’s worth of electronic gadgets and novel functions”, including sensors to monitor air quality and noise [...]