MIT Creates Amazing Self-Folding Origami Robots & Leaping Cheetah Robots

in MIT, Technology | June 1st, 2015

Last Thurs­day, MIT released two stag­ger­ing­ly cool videos. And I don’t think I’m being hyper­bol­ic in say­ing that. Above we have a robot­ic chee­tah that’s “trained” to “see and jump over hur­dles as it runs — mak­ing this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obsta­cles autonomous­ly.” The chee­tah knows when to jump by using LIDAR — “a visu­al sys­tem that uses reflec­tions from a laser to map ter­rain.” MIT News has more on the tech behind this cre­ation.

Mak­ing almost equal­ly big news is anoth­er MIT inven­tion — a minia­ture origa­mi robot that self-folds, walks, swims, and degrades. As the elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing web­site IEEE Spec­trum explains:

The unfold­ed robot, which is made of a mag­net and PVC sand­wiched between laser-cut struc­tur­al lay­ers (poly­styrene or paper), weighs just 0.31 g and mea­sures 1.7 cm on a side. Once placed on a heat­ing ele­ment, the PVC con­tracts, and where the struc­tur­al lay­ers have been cut, it cre­ates folds.…

Once you’re done mess­ing around, you can dri­ve the robot into a tank of ace­tone and it will entire­ly dis­solve.

One day, if things go accord­ing to plan, these crea­tures will become small enough to per­form impor­tant med­ical tasks with­in your body, and then when they’re done, poof, they’ll be gone. And you’ll have an MIT researcher part­ly to thank.

via Men­tal Floss

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Free Online Engi­neer­ing Cours­es

 

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Discover Japan’s Earthquake Proof Underground Bike Storage System: The Future is Now

in Design, Sports, Technology, Travel | May 25th, 2015

Behold, the inge­nious under­ground bicy­cle stor­age of Japan! What a vision of futur­ist effi­cien­cy — the only thing miss­ing is Ray­mond Scott’s Pow­er­house (aka Bugs Bun­ny fac­to­ry music).

Japan­ese cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor Dan­ny Choo strapped a cam­era to his seat to cap­ture a bike’s eye view of the robot­ic Eco Cycle Anti-Seis­mic Under­ground Bicy­cle Park. It takes an aver­age of 8 sec­onds for two-wheel­ers to make the jour­ney — human involve­ment stops at the street lev­el card read­er.

(One inter­net com­menter won­dered what hap­pens if the sys­tem malfunctions…and all I can say is I once spent what felt like an eter­ni­ty, trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Man­sion.)

Giken-Eco-Cycle-Underground-Bike-Park-1-537x424

As futur­is­tic visions go, it’s a finite one. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly design allows for fair­ly easy de-instal­la­tion, should pub­lic demand for safe, sub­ter­ranean bike park­ing wane.

It’s also earth­quake-proof, a fea­ture which gives rise to all sorts of dystopi­an Plan­et of the Apes-style fan­tasies (replace Apes with Bikes).

Cities from Lon­don and Paris to New York and Hangzhou have embraced bike­shar­ing schemes, but the Japan­ese mod­el allows cyclists to keep their own rides. Signs post­ed at street lev­el remind rid­ers to remove per­son­al effects like pets (!) before using the sys­tem.) Unlim­it­ed park­ing and retrieval comes in at under 20 bucks a month.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As of this writ­ing, the cycle-friend­ly Nether­lands is plot­ting the world’s largest bike park — under­der­ground — to be launched in 2018.

Hat tip to Dan­ny Choo.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Turn Your Bike into an Elec­tric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copen­hagen Wheel”

The Physics of the Bike

How Leo Tol­stoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Oth­er Tales of Life­long Learn­ing

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The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talking Dolls: An Invention That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Market

in History, Technology | May 8th, 2015

Edison doll

When study­ing his­to­ry’s most famous cre­ators, we must nev­er for­get that they always pro­duced fail­ures as well as suc­cess­es, and often fail­ures as impres­sive as their suc­cess­es. Take Thomas Edi­son, wide­ly regard­ed as the great Amer­i­can inven­tor for his work on the light bulb, the movie cam­era, and the phono­graph. We all know about those achieve­ments, all of which shaped tech­nolo­gies which went on to near-uni­ver­sal use, but have you heard of Edis­on’s still-pio­neer­ing but rather less well-known work in the field of talk­ing dolls?

Many of us in the past few gen­er­a­tions grew up with talk­ing dolls of one kind or anoth­er. But had we been chil­dren in 1890, we might have grown up with the very first talk­ing dolls, for which Edi­son designed an inter­nal mech­a­nism that played one of sev­er­al wax cylin­ders pre-record­ed with var­i­ous child-ori­ent­ed songs, prayers, and nurs­ery rhymes. Or rather, we might have grown up with them if we came from wealthy fam­i­lies: they cost between $10 and $20 in 1890 dol­lars, or up to $526 in today’s dol­lars.

And even at that price, Edis­on’s talk­ing dolls pro­vid­ed not just the low­est of lo-fi lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences, but resound­ing­ly creepy ones at that. “The pub­lic react­ed as one does when con­front­ed with a grandmother’s mas­sive doll col­lec­tion: You avert­ed your eyes in fear,” writes PBS’ Joshua Bara­jas. “After six weeks into pro­duc­tion, the dolls were deemed too scary and pulled from the mar­ket, the New York Times report­ed.”

Edison dollad

But now, thanks to opti­cal audio-scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy unimag­in­able in Edis­on’s day, we can hear the dolls’ ren­di­tions of “Twin­kle, Twin­kle, Lit­tle Star,” “Hick­o­ry, Dick­o­ry, Dock,” and — most eeri­ly of all — “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” just as the chil­dren of 1890 would have heard them. But even this seri­ous­ly wrong­head­ed-seem­ing prod­uct paved the way for not just the less dis­turb­ing Fur­bys and Ted­dy Rux­pins of more recent child­hoods, but, giv­en its unprece­dent­ed use of auto record­ings made for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es, the entire record indus­try — and, of course, the minor but robust sub­genre of talk­ing-doll hor­ror movies.

via PBS News Hour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edi­son and Niko­la Tes­la Face Off in “Epic Rap Bat­tles of His­to­ry”

A Brief, Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Thomas Edi­son (and Niko­la Tes­la)

Thomas Edi­son & His Trusty Kine­to­scope Cre­ate the First Movie Filmed In The US (c. 1889)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

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Visit The Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Virtual Reality

in Literature, Technology | April 27th, 2015

Red Book

Jorge Luis Borges spe­cial­ized in envi­sion­ing the unen­vi­sion­able: a map the same size as the land it depicts, an event whose pos­si­ble out­comes all occur simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a sin­gle point in space con­tain­ing all oth­er points in space, a vast library con­tain­ing all pos­si­ble books. That last, the set­ting, sub­ject, and title of his short sto­ry “The Library of Babel,” has giv­en read­ers much to think about since its first pub­li­ca­tion in 1941, and in recent decades has done more than its part to bol­ster Borges’ posthu­mous rep­u­ta­tion as a seer of our unprece­dent­ed­ly rich but often dif­fi­cult-to-nav­i­gate new media land­scape.

Borges imag­ined the Library of Babel com­pris­ing a huge num­ber of con­nect­ed hexag­o­nal rooms lined by book­shelves. “Each shelf con­tains thir­ty-five books of uni­form for­mat; each book is of four hun­dred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines, each line, of some eighty let­ters which are black in col­or.” Each book con­tains a dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of let­ters, and in total they con­tain all pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions of let­ters, with the result that the Library as a whole con­tains

Every­thing: the minute­ly detailed his­to­ry of the future, the archangels’ auto­bi­ogra­phies, the faith­ful cat­a­logues of the Library, thou­sands and thou­sands of false cat­a­logues, the demon­stra­tion of the fal­la­cy of those cat­a­logues, the demon­stra­tion of the fal­la­cy of the true cat­a­logue, the Gnos­tic gospel of Basilides, the com­men­tary on that gospel, the com­men­tary on the com­men­tary on that gospel, the true sto­ry of your death, the trans­la­tion of every book in all lan­guages, the inter­po­la­tions of every book in all books.

This vision has inspired a fair few thinkers, includ­ing most recent­ly Brook­lyn author and pro­gram­mer Jonathan Basile. “I was lying in bed one night and the idea of an online Library of Babel popped into my head,” he says in an inter­view with Fla­vor­wire.  “My first thought was — it must exist already. It seems like such a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the capa­bil­i­ties of a com­put­er that I was sure some­one would have made it. The next day I looked for it, a bit excit­ed­ly, and was dis­ap­point­ed. From then on, it’s kind of been a reluc­tant des­tiny for me.”

As the fruit of that des­tiny, we have libraryofbabel.info, a new web site that will the­o­ret­i­cal­ly come to con­tain exact­ly what Borges’ Library of Babel con­tains: the text of every pos­si­ble 410-page book. You can start look­ing through them by search­ing for text, view­ing a ran­dom book, or brows­ing by hexag­o­nal cham­ber. You’ll notice that the vast, vast major­i­ty of Basile’s Library of Babel offers noth­ing but non­sense — the very same thing, in oth­er words, that Borges’ does, which in his telling caus­es great frus­tra­tion among the luck­less librar­i­ans charged with main­tain­ing the place.

But a vis­it to the online Library of Babel should bring you to the same ques­tion the orig­i­nal sto­ry does: to what extent does mean­ing reside in the phys­i­cal world, and to what extent does it reside in our minds? And what would Borges him­self make of all this? “He was nev­er one to take the bor­der between real­i­ty and fic­tion too seri­ous­ly,” says Basile. “Read­ing his sto­ry is already, in its own way, enter­ing the world of the library. In a sense it’s a hor­ror sto­ry, but it feels to me more like a black com­e­dy. Per­haps he would just laugh.”

Enter the online Library of Babel here.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Per­son­al Library

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What It’s Like to Be Color Blind and See Art in Color for the First Time

in Art, Biology, Museums, Science, Technology | April 7th, 2015

We all know that say­ing about walk­ing in anoth­er’s shoes, but what about see­ing through anoth­er’s eye­balls? I’m not talk­ing about per­spec­tive. I’m talk­ing about col­or. As in I see it, and my hus­band does­n’t. At least not the way I do.

His cop­ing mech­a­nism is to chal­lenge me when­ev­er I refer to some­thing as “blue.” To him, it’s grey, or brown, or some oth­er non-blue shade. He wants me to see it that way too. To admit that I am wrong. For my part, I feel it’s impor­tant that the per­son to whom I’m mar­ried acknowl­edge that there’s no way my favorite bowl can be the col­or of cement, no mat­ter what his cone cell recep­tors are telling him.

Per­haps he’d have bet­ter luck ask­ing patient strangers to describe col­or to him, as blind-from-birth film crit­ic Tom­my Edi­son does below. Hmm. Col­or may be more sub­jec­tive than my hus­band’s and my spec­tral stand-offs would sug­gest.

Accord­ing to EnChro­ma, the com­pa­ny that designed and sells the col­or-cor­rect­ing lens­es the onscreen guinea pigs are seen wear­ing in the video up top, an esti­mat­ed 300 mil­lion peo­ple suf­fer from some form of col­or blind­ness. Their glass­es offer some of those three mil­lion a chance at see­ing red in the lit­er­al sense. The video par­tic­i­pants are, not sur­pris­ing­ly, blown away by their first encounter with a Cray­ola-col­ored world.

Hav­ing refreshed myself on the struc­tures of the eye, I took the col­or blind­ness test on EnChro­ma’s web­site. I test­ed nor­mal, hav­ing iden­ti­fied the hid­den (or in my case not-so-hid­den) num­bers in a vari­ety of vir­tu­al mosaics.

My col­or blind friend, Bob, agreed to take it too, pro­vid­ed I muz­zle myself from offer­ing the sort of com­men­tary to which hus­bands are sub­ject­ed. (Whad­daya mean you can’t see it!? It’s bright fuch­sia!!!) He pulled a pret­ty heavy duty protan defi­cien­cy, oth­er­wise known as red-green col­or blind­ness.

Accord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er, EnChro­ma glass­es are unlike­ly to col­or his world. The best he could hope for is a slight improve­ment after weeks of wear­ing.

Bum­mer, except that he lives in Chica­go, where the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offers EnChro­ma Cx loan­ers at the recep­tion desk. Like many such insti­tu­tions, the MCA is active­ly seek­ing ways to improve acces­si­bil­i­ty. (The museum’s col­or blind direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions rec­om­mends hav­ing a look at Mar­tin Creed’s Work No. 1351, a col­or­ful lat­tice in the cafe. See right below.)

Creed_JulyInstall_03

Per­haps Bob will get a peek at some­thing he has­n’t seen before. Like red. Oth­ers will expe­ri­ence a rev­e­la­tion. Mean­while, an insuf­fer­able non-col­or­blind indi­vid­ual such as myself might get an effect akin to an Insta­gram fil­ter. My col­ors will pop.

“Unfair,” say Bob and my hus­band. I have to agree. Should the Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art offer col­or-leech­ing glass­es, I will wear them, even if the frames are real­ly ugly. Until then, the video below pro­vides some sense of what those of us who see the full range of col­or aren’t miss­ing.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Helen Keller Speaks About Her Great­est Regret — Nev­er Mas­ter­ing Speech

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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George Mason Students Create Revolutionary Fire Extinguisher That Uses Sound Waves to Blow Out Fires

in Technology | March 30th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already: two George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty engi­neer­ing stu­dents — Viet Tran and Seth Robert­son — have cre­at­ed a poten­tial­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary device, a new-fan­gled fire extin­guish­er, that uses low-fre­quen­cy sound waves to snuff out fires. Accord­ing to Tech­Ex­plore, Tran (a com­put­er engi­neer­ing major) and Seth Robert­son (dou­ble e major) “start­ed with the sim­ple idea that sound waves are also mechan­i­cal or  (due to the back and forth motion of the medi­um in which they pass through), which can cause an impact on objects.” Through tri­al and error, the stu­dents fig­ured out that ultra-high fre­quen­cies did­n’t do very much, but low­er fre­quen­cies (in the 30 to 60 Hertz range) can blow a small fire right out. Just watch above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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