There are researchers who calculated how much time we spend on the toilet: months or even years. But "Mr Toilet", Sim Jae-duck, a South Korean National Assembly representative, has chosen to spend his life in one. Located in Suwon, 40 km (25 mi) from Seoul, there is the world's first "Toilet House", named "Haewoojae" ("a place where one can solve one's worries"), shaped like a toilet bowl which is 24 1/2 feet (7.5 m) tall, with a surface of 4,520 square feet (500 square meters). The toilet bowl-shaped house could turn into a symbol for a movement whose goal is solving a huge issue: world's toilet sanitation. The house commemo... [read more >>] The Wankel rotary engine is another type of internal combustion engine that features a very clever rearrangement of the four elements of the Otto cycle. It was invented by the German engineer Felix Wankel in the 1950s.In the piston engine, the cylinder performs all four steps: intake, compression, combustion and exhaust. In the Wankel engine, there is a triangular rotor incorporating a central ring gear that is driven around a fixed pinion within an oblong chamber, so the same four jobs happen in their own part of the "cylinder" housing.The four strokes of the Otto cycle take place in the space between a rotor, which is roughly triangular... [read more >>] There are many historical accounts of spherical lightnings, or "ball lightnings." Although they were once thought to be very rare, a 1960 paper reported that 5% of the US population reported having witnessed ball lightning and another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases.Ball lightning has the strange tendency to float (or hover) in the air and take on a ball-like appearance. Its shape has been described as either spherical, ovoid, teardrop, or rod-like with one dimension being much larger than the others. Many witnesses reported them as being red to yellow in color, sometimes transparent, and some containing radial filaments or sparks. ... [read more >>] The hovercraft (to hover - to remain floating, suspended, or fluttering in the air; craft - vessel or vehicle) is an amphibious military or civilian vehicle designed to travel over any kind of surface (as long as it's reasonably flat), being supported by a cushion of pressurized air.It may look weird and some of them may look like floating UFOs, but they rely on physics and control equipment, float on a volume air at a low pressure, ejected downwards against the surface close below it.It is actually more closely related to aircrafts than it is to boats or automobiles and it is also called an Air Cushion Vehicle (ACV).They are the late... [read more >>] The gamers probably remember the famous "Jet Pack" from the old Command & Conquer: Red Alert series or even from the childish (is it?) Worms game. For those who don't, let me tell you that the jet pack is a concept dating from World War II, when Germany made late-war experiments of strapping two wearable shortened Schmidt pulse jet tubes of low thrust to the body of a pilot. The working principle was the same as the Schmidt-Argus pulse jet that powered the Fieseler Fi 103 flying bomb whereas the size was much smaller.The device was called "Himmelstürmer" (Skystormer) and operated as follows: when the flier ignited both engines simulta... [read more >>] We will look today at what you need in order to make a nuclear fission bomb. You need some money, as it would really help if you were the prince, sultan or other royalty of a small, but rich state. If not, you need to know on a first name basis some evil leader with lots of cash, oil, diamonds and so on, of a small but ambitious country, with a need for revenge on the world.Step 1 - What is a nuclear fission bomb?Fission bombs derive their power from nuclear fission, where heavy nuclei (uranium or plutonium) are bombarded by neutrons and split into lighter elements, more neutrons and energy. These newly liberated neutrons then bombard othe... [read more >>] The mouse, a computer peripheral that probably doesn't save your life, but it sure makes it a lot easier, has evolved over the years, much like its biological counterpart, adapting itself (well, humans did the adapting for it, actually) to new "environmental" conditions. It's the survival of the fittest, a principle as valid in the silicon world as it is in nature.The name mouse, coined at the Stanford Research Institute, derives from the resemblance of early models (which had a cord attached to the rear part of the device, suggesting the idea of a tail) to the common eponymous rodent, and it remained unchanged in most languages,... [read more >>] In physics, magnetism is one of the phenomena by which materials exert an attractive or repulsive force on other materials. Some well known materials that exhibit easily detectable magnetic properties are nickel, iron, some steels and the mineral magnetite. However, all materials are influenced to greater or lesser degree by the presence of a magnetic field and humans have learned to use it to their benefit, in countless applications.The earliest literary reference to magnetism lies in a 4th century BC Chinese book called Book of the Devil Valley Master "The lodestone makes iron come or it attracts it." Guess who invented the magnetic comp... [read more >>] As evolved as humans are, the dominant species of this planet has not evolved much, in terms of man-to-man combat, beyond the stone-throwing ability developed by our ape-like ancestors, around 4 million years ago.First, apes learned how to throw a stone. Then, early humans learned how to attach the stone to a stick and they invented the spear and the arrow. Then they realized physical strength is not enough to throw a stone beyond a few hundred feet, and they attached it to an elastic material, to create the slingshot. The Chinese thought that the expanding gas from an explosion could propel a projectile farther than any human could, and t... [read more >>] In 1920 the Russian scientist Constantin Tiolkovski wrote "The pressure of solar light could be applied to spacecrafts which have already defeated Earth's gravitational pull". In a novel published in 1865, Jules Verne speculated that light might someday be used "as a mechanical agent" to propel a spacecraft between the planets. They were talking about using solar radiation pressure, the so-called "solar wind". The idea was again debated in the 1950s, but the technological means to transform it to reality did not exist at that time.Mariner 4 was the fourth in a series of spacecraft used for planetary exploration in a flyby mode and per... [read more >>] | 
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