The WalMart Atomic Clock
In the realm of first-world problems, your cheap wall clock doesn’t keep time, so you have to keep setting it. The answer? Of course, you connect it to NTP and …read more Continue reading The WalMart Atomic Clock
Author Archives: Al Williams
There’s Always Room for 3D Printed Batteries
There are many applications where you have limits on how much you can cram into a particular space. There are also many applications where you need as much battery as …read more Continue reading There’s Always Room for 3D Printed Batteries
R2D2 Gets New Brains
While it is fun to get toys that look like your favorite science fiction props, it is less fun when the electronics in them don’t measure up to the physical …read more Continue reading R2D2 Gets New Brains
Inside Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari Style)
It’s a bit ironic that an Atari 2600 game based on Raiders of the Lost Ark — a movie about archaeology — is now the subject of its own archaeological …read more Continue reading Inside Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari Style)
The Engineering of the Falkirk Wheel
We live in an age where engineering marvels are commonplace: airplanes crisscross the sky, skyscrapers grow like weeds, and spacecraft reach for the stars. But every so often, we see …read more Continue reading The Engineering of the Falkirk Wheel
Does this Electron Make Me Look Fat? Weighing an Electron
[The Signal Path] shows us how to recreate a classic science experiment to measure the weight of an electron. Things are easier for us, because unlike [J. J. Thomson] in …read more Continue reading Does this Electron Make Me Look Fat? Weighing an Electron
Bash via Transpiler
It is no secret that we often use and abuse bash to write things that ought to be in a different language. But bash does have its attractions. In the …read more Continue reading Bash via Transpiler
PROFS: The Office Suite of the 1980s
Today, we take office software suites for granted. But in the 1970s, you were lucky to have a typewriter and access to a photocopier. But in the early 1980s, IBM …read more Continue reading PROFS: The Office Suite of the 1980s
Forget Waldo. Where’s Luna 9?
Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon. In 1966, the main spacecraft ejected a 99-kg lander module that used a landing bag to survive impact. The …read more Continue reading Forget Waldo. Where’s Luna 9?
Pi Pico Learns Morse Code
When [101 Things] didn’t want to copy Morse code, he decided to build a Pi Pico system to read it for him. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem …read more Continue reading Pi Pico Learns Morse Code