Big Chemistry: Synthetic Oil
For as long as I’ve been driving, I’ve been changing oil. Longer than that, actually — before I even got my license, I did a lot of the maintenance and …read more Continue reading Big Chemistry: Synthetic Oil
Category Archives: synthetic
Spider Silk, Spider Silk, Made Using a Strain of Yeast
Companies spend thousands developing a project for the market, hoping their investment will return big. Investing like this happens every day and won’t shock anyone. What may surprise you is someone who spends more than a decade and thousands of their own dollars to make an open-source version of a …read more
Continue reading Spider Silk, Spider Silk, Made Using a Strain of Yeast
I Talked to Four Humanoid Robots and They’re Mostly Dumb as Doornails
“Human relationships can be hard to define.” Continue reading I Talked to Four Humanoid Robots and They’re Mostly Dumb as Doornails
I Talked to Four Humanoid Robots and They’re Mostly Dumb as Doornails
“Human relationships can be hard to define.” Continue reading I Talked to Four Humanoid Robots and They’re Mostly Dumb as Doornails
Nylon Fibre Artificial Muscles — Powered by Lasers!
If only we had affordable artificial muscles, we might see rapid advances in prosthetic limbs, robots, exo-skeletons, implants, and more. With cost being one of the major barriers — in addition to replicating the marvel of our musculature that many of us take for granted — a workable solution seems a way off. A team of researchers at MIT present a potential answer to these problems by showing nylon fibres can be used as synthetic muscles.
Some polymer fibre materials have the curious property of increasing in diameter while decreasing in length when heated. Taking advantage of this, the team …read more
Continue reading Nylon Fibre Artificial Muscles — Powered by Lasers!