Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

May 18, 2017

Ultrathin Loudspeaker-Mic Also Generates Energy from Motion

Printed newspapers may be going out of style, but what if you could have a flexible electronic paper that reads headlines or the weather report and skips to the sports section on voice command? Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a sheet-like device — known as a ferroelectret nanogenerator,...

May 28, 2017

How Would Engineers Build the Golden Gate Bridge Today?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Ever since the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic on May 27, 1937, it's been an iconic symbol on the American landscape. By 1870, people had realized the necessity...

Jun 5, 2017

Inexpensive Kit Offers Augmented Reality Alternative to High-End Headsets

Augmented reality lies at two extremes. On the one side are wearable headsets like Microsoft's HoloLens, which costs between $3,000 and $5,000, and mixes virtual reality with augmented reality for a holographic experience. On the other side are free apps, like Pokémon Go, which use software and your phone's camera...

Jun 20, 2017

10 Real-Life Technologies That Will Turn You Into a Superhero

Science fiction vs. science fact (Image credit: LuckyImages/Shutterstock)Whether you're looking to scale skyscrapers like Spider-Man or wish you could have Wolverine's amazing powers of self-healing, researchers are devising ways to bring extraordinary abilities to the average mortal, and some of these amazing technologies may make you feel like a real-life...

Jun 23, 2017

Customizable 'Smart' Exoskeleton Learns from Your Steps

In experiments with 11 able-bodied people, the so-called human-in-the-loop algorithm took about an hour to optimize the exoskeleton, and afterward, reduced the amount of energy participants needed to walk by 24 percent, on average, said research team member Rachel Jackson, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at...

Jun 28, 2017

Tiny, Lens-Free Camera Could Hide in Clothes, Glasses

The device, a square that measures just 0.04 inches by 0.05 inches (1 by 1.2 millimeters), has the potential to switch its aperture among wide angle, fish eye and zoom instantaneously. And because the device is so thin, just a few microns thick, it could be embedded anywhere. (For comparison,...

Jun 30, 2017

Nanotech's Big Ideas: From Tumor Zappers to Space Elevators

Some of today's biggest science innovations are happening at the smallest scales. Nanotech — nano is short for nanometer, referring to length scales in billionths of a meter — describes technologies that are built to perform complex tasks, but at the scale of molecules or even atoms. To put that...

Jul 25, 2017

Butterfly Wing Optics Help to Cheaply Create Bright, Realistic Holograms

Holograms have long captured the public's imagination. Whether it's Star Wars fans dreaming of holographic messages and chess games, concertgoers standing in awe before a resurrected Tupac Shakur, or the holographic future envisioned in the upcoming Blade Runner 2049, the hologram concept seems to offer something for everyone. But despite...

Aug 8, 2017

Disney's 'Magic Bench' Puts You in the Picture with Animated Figures

A new Magic Bench designed by Disney Research lets you interact with endearing animated characters — and no special glasses or headsets are required. Instead, the complete environment — the seat, the sitter and the cartoon humanoid animals — is mirrored on a screen opposite the bench, making it possible...

Aug 8, 2017

Here's What It's Like to Be the Planetary Protection Officer at NASA

If you want a job protecting Earth from threats from outer space — or even protecting Mars from us — NASA has an opening for you — sort of. The job of planetary protection officer generated quite a bit of buzz last week, when the public learned that a role...

Aug 28, 2017

Pod Traveling at 201 MPH Wins Elon Musk's Hyperloop Competition

A team of students from Germany sent a carbon-plastic pod whizzing through a tube at 201 mph (324 km/h) last weekend, securing the top spot in Elon Musk's second Hyperloop competition. Musk, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla and brain-interface company Neuralink, aims to revolutionize transportation with his Hyperloop concept, which...

Aug 29, 2017

Elon Musk's Neuralink Gets $27 Million to Merge Humans and Machines

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, perhaps the world's most famous futurist, has made a career of pursuing far-fetched projects that have one leg planted firmly in science fiction. SpaceX aims to colonize Mars. The Boring Company wants to dig tunnels to transport cars at high speeds along sliding electric skates. And...

Sep 22, 2017

World's Largest Aircraft Starts Engine Tests

For the first time, the private spaceflight company Stratolaunch tested all six of the engines on a colossal airplane with the largest wingspan of any aircraft in the world. In these initial tests, each of the six engines operated as expected, Stratolaunch, which is led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen,...

Oct 11, 2017

'Beam of Invisibility' Could Hide Objects Using Light

Once thought of as the province of only Star Trek or Harry Potter, cloaking technologies could become a reality with a specially designed material that can mask itself from other forms of light when it is hit with a beam of invisibility, according to a new study. Theoretically, most invisibility...

Feb 23, 2018

Chinese Scientists Unveil Plans for Weird Hypersonic Jet with Extra Wing

Building a useful plane that's faster than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, is a difficult engineering challenge, but a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has a plan to pull it off. The trick to making these faster-than-Mach 5, or hypersonic, vehicles is...