Cloak of INVISIBILITY, Emergency Vending Machines, Bendable Concrete, and Nuking your Cell Phone

May 13, 2009 at 1:41 am | In Tech Talk | Leave a Comment

tech talk tuesday

Japan Vending Machines in Japan Offer Free Drinks in Case of Emergency:

Major earthquake, flood, storm or other natural disaster in your area? Out of water and the roads are blocked? Japan’s famous vending machines have got you covered. Following a mutually beneficial agreement between Japanese vending machine companies and local municipalities, specially marked beverage vending machines that dispense drinks for free have been set up in public areas.

Bendable Concrete from University of Michigan: concrete bent by heavy weights

Traditional concrete is brittle and is easily fractured during an earthquake or by overuse.

By contrast, the new concrete composite can bend into a U-shape without breaking. When strained, the material forms hairline cracks, which auto-seal after a few days of light rain. Dry material exposed by the cracks reacts with rainwater and carbon dioxide in the air to form “scars” of calcium carbonate, a strong compound found naturally in seashells, said study co-author Victor Li of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The flexible material is just as strong after it heals.

California Berkeley – ‘Invisibility Cloak’ Successfully Hides Objects Placed Under It:

A team led by Xiang Zhang, a principal investigator with Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and director of UC Berkeley’s Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center, has created a “carpet cloak” from nanostructured silicon that conceals the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection. While the carpet itself can still be seen, the bulge of the object underneath it disappears from view. Shining a beam of light on the bulge shows a reflection identical to that of a beam reflected from a flat surface, meaning the object itself has essentially been rendered invisible.

Microwaving a cellphone is surprisingly cool: