"Almost half the children committed one or more of these mistakes. They attempted with apparent seriousness to perform the same actions with the miniature items that they had with the large ones. Some sat down on the little chair: they walked up to it, turned around, bent their knees and lowered themselves onto it. Some simply perched on top, others sat down so hard that the chair skittered out from under them. Some children sat on the miniature slide and tried to ride down it, usually falling off in the process; others attempted to climb the steps, causing the slide to tip over. (With the chair and slide made of sturdy plastic and only about five inches tall, the toddlers faced no danger of hurting themselves.)"
posted by Tlogmer
on Aug 18, 2005 -
34 comments
Advanced methods of bomb detection and investigation.
New equipment developed to scan cars and people, such as a parking lot device which
quickly bathes the car's trunk in invisible neutrons, a procedure that makes materials inside the trunk emit gamma-rays that would indicate the presence of explosives.
Also,
a bomb disposal robot which take[s] fingerprints before blowing [a] package up.
posted by mcgraw
on May 3, 2004 -
17 comments
Underwater Warpdrives Some naval experts believe that supercavitating systems could alter the nature of undersea warfare, changing stealthy cat-and-mouse stalking contests between large submarines into something resembling aerial combat, featuring noisy high-speed dogfights among small, short-range "subfighters" shooting underwater bullets at one another after having been launched from giant "subcarriers."
posted by hmgovt
on Apr 26, 2001 -
22 comments
