You’ll Wonder How You Ever Lived Without This Charming Social Robot

Fibonacci trefoil

© Rafael Araujo

In mathematics there is a concept known as ‘Conformal Mapping’ which allows you convert a given shape to a completely different one by making a transformation.

In the joukowski transform you take all the points on a circle and apply the following transform:

And the resulting transformed points resemble an aerofoil shape. Pretty cool huh ?

** Conformal mappings are a really cool topic in complex analysis but also equally extensive. If you want to know more about them click here

This is the Hollow Mask Illusion.

At first, it looks like the face is popping out towards you, but as it turns far enough, you realise that it is in fact concave, bending inwards from the base, away from you. This illusion plays on the fact that our perception is influenced by past experience; we expect faces to protrude outwards, which helps the illusion trick our brains.

You can make your own version of this mask at home, and it’s an awesome activity to try with your kids to get them thinking about the science of psychology. Click here for all the info!

Major types of Engines

Straight In-line

This is the type of engine that you find in your quotidian car. Nothing fancy, just all pistons arranged parallel along the vertical direction.

V in-line

Now, this is the sort of the engine that you find on sports cars like the Ferrari. When you hear sports enthusiasts go ‘ Whoa, that’s a V-12! ‘ - it just means that the engine has a V-type arrangement with 12 cylinders.

V +  Inline = V-inline

Commonly referred to as the VR engine.

The name VR6 comes from a combination of V engine (German: V-Motor), and the German word “Reihenmotor” (meaning “inline engine” or “straight engine”)

Volkswagen’s VR6 engines, and the later VR5 variants, are a family of internal combustion engines, characterized by a narrow-angle (10.5° or 15°) V engine configuration.

                    a: straight engine, b: V engine, c: VR engine

W engine

A W engine is a type of reciprocating engine ( again created by Volkswagen) arranged with its cylinders in a configuration in which the cylinder banks resemble the letter W, in the same way those of a V engine resemble the letter V.

Bugatti Veyron’s W16 engine

A W16 engine is used on the Bugatti Veyron. That’s 16 cylinders!

Flat Engine

Flat engines offer several advantages for motorcycles, namely: a low centre of gravity, smoothness, suitability for shaft drive, and (if air-cooled) excellent cooling of the cylinders. You can find them on aircrafts as well

Radial Engine (aka the dancing starfish)

They were used mostly in small aircraft for the propeller

The big advantage of radials was their large frontal area, which meant they could be air cooled, meaning less maintenance, failures, and of course a lower cost of initial purchase and maintenance.

Wankel Engine

This engine has only 3 moving parts and can make a lot of power.However, they are pretty inefficient, the last car to use this was a Mazda RX-8.

Axial Engine

The axial engine is a very interesting design. But they are not widely used because they are just hard to make and running these things at high RPM’s  is a challenge.

Duke engines are equipped with this type.

Jet engine

Commonly jet engines refer to the engines that are found on, well Jets!

Suck,squeeze,bang and blow

Air is sucked in through the front and  squeezed. A controlled explosion follows and the exhaust is blown out through the back

But, Jet engines also include the engines that are found on rockets, hybrids and water-jets. And their mode of operation is different than the one mentioned above.

Pretty cool eh?

Have a great day!

PC: Howstuffworks, Duke, MichaelFrey, Azure.km

** There is also the Stirling Engine. It’s amazing and a topic for an another post. But if you are interested do check out more about it here.

EDIT :  Had forgotten about the VR and the W-engines. My bad! Thanks for pointing it out.:D.

EDIT2: The suck squeeze bang and blow illustration was incorrect. Ergo, changed that.

10 “Spinoffs of Tomorrow” You Can License for Your Business

The job of the our Technology Transfer Program is pretty straight-forward – bring NASA technology down to Earth. But, what does that actually mean? We’re glad you asked! We transfer the cool inventions NASA scientists develop for missions and license them to American businesses and entrepreneurs. And that is where the magic happens: those business-savvy licensees then create goods and products using our NASA tech. Once it hits the market, it becomes a “NASA Spinoff.”

If you’re imagining that sounds like a nightmare of paperwork and bureaucracy, think again. Our new automated “ATLAS” system helps you license your tech in no time — online and without any confusing forms or jargon.

So, sit back and browse this list of NASA tech ripe for the picking (well, licensing.) When you find something you like, follow the links below to apply for a license today! You can also browse the rest of our patent portfolio - full of hundreds of available technologies – by visiting technology.nasa.gov.

1. Soil Remediation with Plant-Fungal Combinations

Ahh, fungus. It’s fun to say and fun to eat—if you are a mushroom fan. But, did you know it can play a crucial role in helping trees grow in contaminated soil? Scientists at our Ames Research Center discovered that a special type of the fungus among us called “Ectomycorrhizal” (or EM for short) can help enhance the growth of trees in areas that have been damaged, such as those from oil spills.

2. Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag

When it comes to aircraft, drag can be, well…a drag. Luckily, innovators at our Armstrong Flight Research Center are experimenting with a new wing design that removes adverse yaw (or unwanted twisting) and dramatically increases aircraft efficiency by reducing drag. Known as the “Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag (PRANDTL-D)” wing, this design addresses integrated bending moments and lift to achieve drag reduction.

3. Advancements in Nanomaterials

What do aircraft, batteries, and furniture have in common? They can ALL be improved with our nanomaterials.  Nanomaterials are very tiny materials that often have unique optical, electrical and mechanical properties. Innovators at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have developed a suite of materials and methods to optimize the performance of nanomaterials by making them tougher and easier to process. This useful stuff can also help electronics, fuel cells and textiles.

4. Green Precision Cleaning

Industrial cleaning is hard work. It can also be expensive when you have to bring in chemicals to get things squeaky. Enter “Green Precision Cleaning,” which uses the nitrogen bubbles in water instead. The bubbles act as a scrubbing agent to clean equipment. Goddard Space Flight Center scientists developed this system for cleaning tubing and piping that significantly reduces cost and carbon consumption. Deionized water (or water that has been treated to remove most of its mineral ions) takes the place of costlier isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and also leaves no waste, which cuts out the pricey process of disposal. The cleaning system quickly and precisely removes all foreign matter from tubing and piping.

5. Self-Contained Device to Isolate Biological Samples

When it comes to working in space, smaller is always better. Innovators at our Johnson Space Center have developed a self-contained device for isolating microscopic materials like DNA, RNA, proteins, and cells without using pipettes or centrifuges. Think of this technology like a small briefcase full of what you need to isolate genetic material from organisms and microorganisms for analysis away from the lab. The device is also leak-proof, so users are protected from chemical hazards—which is good news for astronauts and Earth-bound scientists alike.

6. Portable, Rapid, Quiet Drill

When it comes to “bringing the boom,” NASA does it better than anyone. But sometimes, we know it’s better to keep the decibels low. That’s why innovators at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed a new handheld drilling device, suitable for a variety of operations, that is portable, rapid and quiet. Noise from drilling operations often becomes problematic because of the location or time of operations. Nighttime drilling can be particularly bothersome and the use of hearing protection in the high-noise areas may be difficult in some instances due to space restrictions or local hazards. This drill also weighs less than five pounds – talk about portable power.  

7. Damage Detection System for Flat Surfaces

The ability to detect damage to surfaces can be crucial, especially on a sealed environment that sustains human life or critical equipment. Enter Kennedy Space Center’s damage detection system for flat composite surfaces. The system is made up of layered composite material, with some of those layers containing the detection system imbedded right in. Besides one day potentially keeping humans safe on Mars, this tech can also be used on aircrafts, military shelters, inflatable structures and more.

8. Sucrose-Treated Carbon Nanotube and Graphene Yarns and Sheets

We all know what a spoonful of sugar is capable of. But, who knew it could help make some materials stronger? Innovators at NASA’s Langley Research Center did! They use dehydrated sucrose to create yarns and woven sheets of carbon nanotubes and graphene.

The resulting materials are lightweight and strong. Sucrose is inexpensive and readily available, making the process cost-effective. Makes you look at the sweet substance a little differently, doesn’t it?

9. Ultrasonic Stir Welding

NASA scientists needed to find a way to friction weld that would be gentler on their welding equipment. Meet our next tech, ultrasonic stir welding.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center engineers developed ultrasonic stir welding to join large pieces of very high-strength, high-melting-temperature metals such as titanium and Inconel. The addition of ultrasonic energy reduces damaging forces to the stir rod (or the piece of the unit that vibrates so fast, it joins the welding material together), extending its life. The technology also leaves behind a smoother, higher-quality weld.

10. A Field Deployable PiezoElectric Gravimeter (PEG)

It’s important to know that the fuel pumping into rockets has remained fully liquid or if a harmful chemical is leaking out of its container. But each of those things, and the many other places sensors are routinely used, tends to require a specially designed, one-use device.

That can result in time-consuming and costly cycles of design, test and build, since there is no real standardized sensor that can be adapted and used more widely.

To meet this need, the PiezoElectric Gravimeter (PEG) was developed to provide a sensing system and method that can serve as the foundation for a wide variety of sensing applications.

See anything your business could use? Did anything inspire you to start your own company? If so, head to our website at technology.nasa.gov to check them out.

When you’ve found what you need, click, “Apply Now!” Our licensing system, ATLAS, will guide you through the rest.

If the items on this round-up didn’t grab you, that’s ok, too. We have hundreds of other technologies available and ready to license on our website.

And if you want to learn more about the technologies already being used all around you, visit spinoff.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Hi I made this app called PhysicsPedia. It contains all the theory and formulas of high school and college physics. Please have a look. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pp.nikit.phyprac2

Editor’s Note:

Thank you for your submission android-nikit  and we did check the app out and it is really interesting and useful. If you are in high school, we recommend you give this one a try!

On the cross product

Understand the concept and not the definition.

If you have studied vectors, then the notion of a cross product is something that you might be familiar with.

Although it is taught in many colleges and schools in its mathematical glory, this post aims to supplement the same but with an real-life example.

The cross product

The magnitude of the cross product is the area of the parallelogram with two sides A and B.

The orientation of the cross product is orthogonal to the plane containing this parallelogram. 

Why on earth is it orthogonal ? Like seriously…

I mean this is one of the burning questions regarding the cross product and yet for some reason, textbooks don’t get to the bottom of this.

It is modeling a real life scenario!!

The scenario being :

When you try to twist a screw inside a block in the clockwise direction like so, the nail moves down and vice versa.

i.e When you move from the screw from u to v, then the direction of the cross product denotes the direction the screw will move.

That’s why the direction of the cross product is orthogonal. It’s really that simple :D

Have a good day!

A2A : Anonymous

Week in brief (7–11 October)

Tesla reveals solar roof tiles

Electric carmaker Tesla has unveiled a new design of solar roof panels with integrated photovoltaic cells that are not visible from the outside. The tiles, made from glass, are intended to be a more attractive way to add solar panels to homes, by disguising the cells through a coloured film. 

Presenting the new tiles for the first time, Elon Musk, Chief Executive of Tesla, said, ‘We need to make solar panels as appealing as electric cars have become. The goal is to have solar roofs that look better than a normal roof.’

Musk demonstrated in the launch the strength of his new roofing product, testing heavy weights on three common roofing shingles as well as his own. The Tesla roof was the only one that could withstand the weight and pressure. ‘It’s made of quartz. It has a quasi-infinite lifetime,’ explained Musk.

The new roof will be offered in four designs including Tuscan glass, slate glass, textured glass and smooth glass tile. Elon Musk presented the Solar Roof during a Tesla event at Universal Studios, USA.

In other news:

·      New surfaces repel water in oil as well as oil in water

·      Rewritable material could help reduce paper waste

·      Ministers reject calls for 5p charge on UK’s disposable coffee cups

·      Electric current used to track water in concrete

To find out more on materials science, packaging and engineering news, visit our website IOM3 or follow us on Twitter @MaterialsWorld for regular news updates. You can also now get access to our content any time, offline and online, anywhere via our app. For more information, visit app.materialsworld.org

If you trace the orbits of Earth and Venus over 8 years, this is the pattern that emerges

These giant mesh nets provide drinking water in the driest desert on Earth.