RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHsXcHoJu-A

This is our submission for the Mythbusters video challenge

This post contains the parts list for constructing a DWFTTW vehicle, along with pictures of the finished DWFTTW product. I think the solution is for a few people to build this thing and test it out.

For some background, here’s Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder:

Over a year ago on Boing Boing, I linked to this video from a guy who made a propeller-powered vehicle that he claimed could travel downwind faster than the wind. Some people think it was a hoax, and some don’t.

In Make Vol. 11, Charles Platt made a miniature model of the vehicle and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a wind-powered vehicle that can travel faster than the speed of the wind.

Now there’s a new video on YouTube (above) that claims it is possible to sail directly downwind faster than the wind (aka DDFTTW).

It’s obviously not a closed system, and it’s obviously not creating energy out of nothing… but that’s not the question here, either. Assuming the vehicle moves forward, it’s doing this with wind. Honestly, I don’t care how the energy gets transferred into forward motion. If it works, then it is useful. If it doesn’t work, then it just takes a few people to build this kit and it will be proved to be useless.

Well, I haven’t spent any time analyzing this, but it doesn’t seem impossible to me. I’ve been sailing dozens of times, and I’ve flown in a plane a few dozen more times. The short story of my experience is that wind, and air pressure in general, are capable of weird things. This isn’t any reason to conclude anything one way or the other, but I guess I’d like to see this one be proven incorrect before I disbelieve what my eyes are telling me. If I had a few bucks to spend, I’d like to make one of these things.

Here is the parts list, compliments of Spork (the creator of the video above):

- 4.15 Century Tail Gear Set Hawk (Tower LXMJX7)
- 6.95 Century Tail Gearbox Hawk Pro (Tower LXLKD0)
- 2.00 5×13x4 Revolution (2 front prop shaft bearings) (Avid 695-RSZ)
- 3.00 5×11x4 Revolution (2 axle bearings & 1 rear prop-shaft bearing) (Avid MR115-RSZZ)
- 21.00 Prop GWS 15×7.5 Propeller (6 for $21.00) (Tower LXHHZ1)
- 1.75 GWS 3.00″ Wheels (2 for $1.75) (Tower LXHHZ8)
- 7.00 5mm x 40″ Carbon tube for prop shaft and axle (AeroMicro)
- 4.00 4mm x 40″ Carbon tube (40″ for $4.00) (AeroMicro)
- 2 pieces at 2″ used for axle step-down
- 3.20 3mm x 40″ Carbon tube (40″ for $4.00) (AeroMicro)
- 2 pieces at 2″ used for axle step-down
- 9.99 0.08″ Music wire (2 pieces at 2″ used for axle (Tower LXWV01) step down)
@ 9.99 for 15 pieces at 36″ each
- 9.69 1.25″ of 0.063″ Music wire for rear axle (Tower LXWV00)
@ 9.69 for 15 pieces at 36″ each
- 2.00 3/8″ soft aluminum tube (24″) from plumbing dept at OSH
- 2.99 Dubro 2″ Micro Lite wheels; 2 for $2.99 (Tower: LXAZC6)
- 1.00 Nuts and bolts to hold aluminum tube to gearbox
- 1.00 HDPE Bearing block to support rear prop-shaft bearing (Tap Plastics)

Total: $79.72 Plus Tax & shipping (but you’ll have lots of leftovers)

You’ll need:
- super glue
- sand-paper
- 5mm drill bit and some standard sized bits
- exacto knife
- Metric allen wrenches

Suppliers:
www.towerhobbies.com
www.AvidRC.com
www.AeroMicro.com
OSH: Orchard Supply Hardware

The finished version should look something like the following photo gallery. These images are based on the high-quality version of the YouTube video, above.

Representing the skeptics, Charles Platt on Makezine says:

In this forum and in others hosted by Make I have explained repeatedly why a treadmill demonstration does not satisfy my original requirement. The cart should be on a level surface, experiencing a steady tailwind; it should accelerate up to the speed of the wind and should then exceed the speed of the wind. This is what Mr. Goodman claimed to have achieved. For reasons stated in my original article, I believe it is impossible.

There are a few other threads that discuss this topic, too:

James Randi Educational Foundation

Discovery Channel Community

Physics Forum

If you make this kit, please post a comment!

RTFA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic…

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

“I’m used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it’s something I just didn’t believe,” he said. “But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It’s a zero year. There’s zero production. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Okaaaay. I saw this first on Slashdot, and an insightful comment quotes from the article:

Whatever the reason for no acorns, foresters and botanists are paying attention.

But they say they’re not worried yet. “What’s there to worry about?” said Alan Whittemire, a botanist at the U.S. Arboretum. “If you’re a squirrel, it’s a big worry. But it’s no problem for the oak tree. They live a long time. They’ll produce acorns again when they’re ready to.”

White oaks can live as long as 300 years. Faster-growing red oaks can reach 200. And it takes only one acorn to make a tree, he said, which in an urban area with little open space is often more than enough.

“This is probably just a low year, a biological event, and it’ll go away,” Zimmer said. “But if this were to continue another two, three, four years, you might have to ask yourself what’s going on, whether it is an indication of something bigger.”

It’s pretty cool, all the same, that this sort of real-world event can be noticed, when it would probably have been ignored without the ability of people to share the right kind of information.

RTFA: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=28…

What do we know now? Director Peter Berg, known for such films as “Very Bad Things,” “The Rundown,” “The Kingdom,” and “Hancock” is set to direct. Joshua Zetumer will be writing the script.

This is exciting news! I look forward to seeing a new take on Dune. I loved the book dune and I thought both the movie and mini-series were good, but definitely not excellent representations of the book. Hopefully they nail it this time. I am also extremely excited to hear that Asimov’s Foundation book is also in the process of being made into a movie! However, I was a bit disappointed they’re only working on the first book right now instead of the whole trilogy. I think the Lord of the Rings approach would be appropriate here.

RTFA: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_…

Researchers at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities are studying a remarkable species of bacteria, Geobacter sulfurreducens, that produces electric current when attached to a graphite electrode or other conductive surface.

Geobacter’s current capability already has been harnessed in so-called “microbial fuel cells” that use bacteria to convert wastewater organic compounds into electricity. Daniel Bond, a microbiologist at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and his team have demonstrated the same phenomenon can be harnessed for use in batteries and biosensors.

A traditional battery or a hydrogen fuel cell requires a precious-metal catalyst such as platinum to strip electrons off the fuel source and pull them onto the electrode to generate electricity. Geobacter requires only graphite, an inexpensive and widely available form of carbon, to accomplish the same feat.
…
The similarities between microbes and batteries have been evident to scientists for many years and the idea of using the former to serve as the latter has been around for at least 100 years. The problem was that known species of bacteria didn’t make a particularly good battery. Recently, when members of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory found that electrodes in ocean sediments could generate electricity, the possible involvement of bacteria was more obvious. This led to the discovery that metal reducing bacteria could catalyze this process all by themselves.

There are uses for remote power sources deep in the ocean for sensors and communications and what a Geobacter battery lacks in power, it makes up in simplicity and efficiency. “There are no moving parts, it just works,” Bond said. Other research groups had made some progress in characterizing Geobacter’s current generating properties.

Move over voltaic cells, human energy consumption just made a new best friend! In all seriousness, though, this is pretty damn cool.

RTFA: http://dataportability.org/

Standardized Data Portability is the next great frontier for the web.
As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be
discoverable by, and shared between our chosen tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for
Identity. A distributed File System for data. This page will list the standards and
contributors who are making it happen.

Interesting project in the works…