A new era dawns, perhaps, in how humans try and perhaps succeed in gently handling squishy marine animals. A new study gives details. “Ultra-gentle soft robotic fingers induce minimal transcriptomic response in a fragile marine animal,” Michael Tessler, Mercer R. Brugler, John A. Burns, Nina R. Sinatra, Daniel M. Vogt, Anand Varma, Madelyne Xiao, Robert […]
Tag: machine
Food Adventure: Watch an explosion-puffing machine in action
This US government video, called “Quick-Cooking Foods by Explosion Puffing,” shows “the ‘explosion puffing‘ food dehydration process. This process yields a porous dehydrated vegetable or fruit product that rehydrates more rapidly than heat-dried or freeze-dried foods, and has better retention of quality (color, texture, flavor)”.
The automatic diaper-changing machine is now in development
BabyWasher, the automatic dirty-diaper-changing invention, honored by the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for engineering, now has a name, and is now undergoing intense development. You can follow the progress by visiting the inventor’s new web site, BabyWashers.com. The BabyWashers site explains: What Does BabyWasher Do? After placing the baby in the BabyWasher’s chair and pressing […]
Pass the salt (A Rube Goldbergian machine)
The video above is styled after the roundabout-action machines designed, a few generations ago, by cartoonist Rube Goldberg. This one was designed by Joseph’s Machines. (Thanks to Bob Rosa for bringing the video to our attention.) Meanwhile, Rube Goldberg’s granddaughter is overseeing a contest to build a supremely inefficient hand-washing machine. Hilarie M. Sheets of […]
A newish twist, by a man named Olds, on a screwy old idea
The Olds elevator is a fairly simple machine that apparently no one thought up until recently. It’s a fairly new twist, by a man named Olds, on a screwy old idea: Archimedes lifting screw: Peter Olds has US patent #US7314131B2, which describes the invention. (Thanks to Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)
Foot Kinetics During Machine Scrummaging [study]
Q. What is this man doing? A. He is strenuously tackling a ‘Scrummaging Machine’ developed at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Q. Why is he doing that? A. In order to assist with an experimental study into the effect of variations in the alignment of the feet on scrum kinetics during machine scrummaging. Q. […]
The Uncertainty Machine
NIST has an uncertainty machine. This theme of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is UNCERTAINTY. Make of these two facts what you will. Does the uncertainty machine have a manual. Yes, it does. (Thanks to Arno Laesecke for bringing the machine to our attention.)
Paper airplane machine
This paper airplane machine makes and launches paper airplanes. (Thanks to Keren Schlomy for bringing it to our attention.)
Joseph’s Rube Goldberg machine for roasting a turkey
Here is Joseph. Joseph built a Rube Goldberg machine to roast a turkey. Joseph made a video of his Rube Goldberg machine roasting a turkey. This is that video: (Thanks to Sarah Smith for bringing this to our attention.) NEXT POST: Why did they smell the unwashed jeans?
The long tail of machine design
Today’s engineering exercise: reverse engineer the machine shown in this video: