This is an unbelievable illusion projected onto the side of the building. Watch the whole video, it’s better than this picture. Who wouldn’t freak out if they randomly walked by and saw this happening.
This would be great on the interior of a room as well. I just bought a new apartment, how cool would it be if I could shop for furniture online and I could see what they’d look like in my living room if I had a projector setup.
Here’s a quick lesson about fluids and a demonstration of how you can walk on water! You know that different fluids have different viscosities, some are runny whereas others are thick and flow slowly. But did you know that fluids can have variable viscosities? This is key to walking on water.
Here’s one example. Paint that you’d apply to your wall is a shear-thinning liquid. When it’s sitting in the paint can or on your brush it’s about as thick as syrup, but when it’s being applied to your wall it’s about as thin as water. The liquid gets runnier when you apply force to it (i.e. pressing it against the wall) but as soon as you remove the force it thickens up. This allows it to spread easily, but not just drip down the wall like water would; you want it to hold in place until it dries.
Likewise, there are shear-thickening fluids. Silly Putty is the most well known example. It’s normally soft and pliable, it will even drip between your fingers if you spread them out, but as soon as you exert pressure it becomes very thick. This is why you can roll it up in a ball and smash it at the ground, it bounces with barely a dent. But once you’ve caught it again you can effortlessly push your finger through it.
A mixture of cornstarch and water is a shear-thickening fluid. Fill a pool with it and you can run across it!
HT to Richard Yoo for this video
One practical application of shear-thickening fluids is in protective equipment. Take soccer shin guards as an example. Typically you have a plastic plate in the shin guard to protect you. Instead, if you fill it with shear-thickening fluid, then it’s soft and pliable most of the time so it’s much more comfortable, but at the moment of impact it hardens up to protect you right when you need it. I found a company, d3o, that creates this material for use in a wide variety of products.
This is a video of shear-thickening fluid placed on a vibrating surface so it’s alternating between being thin and thick, it does weird stuff!
You can read more about non-Netonian fluids on wikipedia.
17 years ago AT&T made predictions for 2010, watch the video below to see how right they were. It’s amazing how eerily familiar these technologies are, it’s hard to believe this was actually made in 1993.
To be fair they didn’t actually make these predictions for 2010, these were just predictions for “some day…” but still, gotta give them a lot of credit. I’d love to figure out who the advertising & creative people were behind these concepts.
A reflection of yourself appearing on sheet of wood. As the camera “sees” you the computer scans the image quickly to determine the darkness of each pixel of the image. It maps each pixel to a rod on the plane of wood and rotates the rod so it appears the correct shade of light or darkness.
The rods of wood appear to change color just by virtue of the overhead lighting. They’re cut on an angle such that they cast a shadow when rotated to a certain position. Ingenious. It has the interesting property that electric power is required to change the picture, but not to hold it. Once the rods are rotated it could be turned off and you’d still see the face.
What’s the practicality of something like this? Large outdoor signs where you want to be able to update the message; maybe the principle could be applied to flooring (cover with a sheet) so you could update the pattern of a floor; it would be a neat attention piece in a window display of a retail store.
I picked up this toy a few years ago when I was in Tokyo. It’s a clever blend of real and virtual.
It’s made the rounds on the internet but most people I show it to have still never seen it. It’s a favorite.
Since the last illusion proved so popular, I’ll share another of my favorites. There is a remarkable illusion that occurs when you look inside a hollow mask, the eyes and face look like they’re following you. You probably don’t have a mask around your home so start by watching the first video.
After you’re thoroughly intrigued, watch the second video. This is another version of the same illusion, and this one you can print out and try live: print this PDF and follow the instructions. It’s even more astounding in person, plus it’s a fun little arts and crafts project for the weekend. :)
Some day I’d like a third arm with this system. :) Tasks such as throwing and catching a ball, dribbling, twirling a pen–all of these we can learn to do and perform with relative ease. But “real world” tasks such as these are complex problems for robotic systems. Check out this incredibly adept high speed robotic hand.
If you want to skip the engineering explanation, the demos start at 1:05. The single coolest demo is at 2:38.
What are other practical applications of technology like this?
Living in a downtown condo there have been lots of times I wished I had more space. These two videos are both amazing examples of ingenious solutions to maximizing the space you have.
This first one are actual products from the New York-based furniture company Resource Furniture. The second is a Japanese architect’s apartment.
Which product did you think was best? Answer by writing a comment below!
This is a bicycle wheel that can be installed in any bike and the wheel balances itself eliminating the need for training wheels. You can stand the wheel on it’s own and let go and it won’t fall over, it’s quite remarkable to watch. It’s a clever application of a gyroscope.
You’ve experienced for yourself that when you’re riding a bike it’s easier to stay upright the faster you’re moving. When you’re moving at a slow speed is when you’re most unstable.
This is because the spinning wheels of a normal bicycle are acting as gyroscopes; the faster the wheels are spinning the more they resist a change in orientation (i.e. they resist tipping over).
This gyrowheel has a disc inside it that is spinning very quickly so even when the wheel itself is stationary, the fast spinning disc inside provides the same benefit to balancing. That’s why this wheel, when absolutely stationary, can stand upright without falling over.
What other products would benefit from being able to stand upright in what would normally be an unstable position that required careful balancing?
Below are some amazing pictures that look 3D without you having to wear any special glasses!
How does it work? The most significant factor which contributes to depth perception is bionocular disparity–it’s the fact that your left and right eye, because they’re separated by a few inches, see a slightly different picture of what is in front of you. Your brain integrates these two pictures into a coherent vision but it uses the difference between the pictures to give you a sense of depth. To see what I mean look away from your computer screen across the room. Alternate closing one eye than the other; notice both the difference between the pictures from each eye and also that with one eye closed the world seems flat.
Most 3D pictures achieve their effect by showing a slightly different picture to each eye. The old fashioned red and blue glasses did it by color filtering; the modern day 3D movies use oppositely polarized lenses.
Below is a new technique I’ve never seen before: by alternating the left and right eye image fast enough your brain integrates them to give you a sense of depth.
[Claud pointed out in the comments below that these images work equally well with one eye closed, so it's probably not binocular disparity but instead motion parallax that causes your brain to perceive depth. Motion parallax is the change in relative position of objects in the foreground and background as you move. Lean left and right as you look across the room and notice how the objects nearest to you change position relative to objects further away. Basically, the images below are simulating movement even while you're sitting stationary at your screen tricking your brain into perceiving depth.]
HT to abduzeedo
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