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Upton O'Good (2)

We went into the Doubleday bookshop at Fifth Avenue and Fifty Second Street the other day, intending, in our innocence, to buy a book, and found all the clerks busy selling Silly Putty, a gooey, pinkish, repellent-looking commodity that comes in plastic containers the size and shape of eggs.

How an item in the August 26th, 1950 New Yorker's Talk of the Town column turned a marketing consultant into a millionare by Christmas. [more inside]
posted by Toekneesan on Dec 22, 2011 - 31 comments

Vimeo user Charlie Bucket has created a "Fluid Dress" made from 600 feet of plastic tubing, throughout which courses a controlled mixture of air and fluorescent liquid. The result is quite fascinating (SLVimeo)
posted by ShutterBun on Jul 30, 2011 - 32 comments

Fusing the energy of hardcore with the wall of sound of Detroit hard rock, Denver's The Fluid was the first non-Seattle band signed to Sub Pop Records. Particularly acclaimed for their live shows, Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks compared a performance of the five-piece to seeing the Stooges in their heyday. After breaking up in 1993, they reunited in 2008. Fluid guitarist Rick Kulwicki (who was also a founding member of Denver’s groundbreaking hardcore band the Frantix) died this week at 49. [more inside]
posted by scody on Feb 16, 2011 - 20 comments

The Wet-Dog Shake (SLYT). Scientists have worked out the optimum amount of shaking that animals have to do to dry themselves after getting wet. Filming in slow motion, they captured various animals shaking themselves off, from a wet mouse to a big grizzly bear. [more inside]
posted by 7-7 on Oct 30, 2010 - 41 comments

Spinal-Fluid Test Is Found to Predict Alzheimer’s "Researchers report that a spinal fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer’s disease."
posted by rageagainsttherobots on Aug 10, 2010 - 55 comments

A liquid mirror telescope is made by spinning a reflective fluid, such as mercury, at a constant rate. This rotation produces a parabolic surface, which is an ideal shape for a telescope mirror. (You can try this yourself.) While these mirrors can be built to be large and orders of magnitude cheaper than solid mirrors, they have the disadvantage that they can only look straight up. Creating mirrors this way is not new; they have a history [.ps] that dates back to Newton. However, they have recently regained attention as the technology behind proposals to build an enormous (20m+) telescope on the moon. (A less technical treatment here.)
posted by Upton O'Good on Jul 1, 2008 - 36 comments

Reversible flow! In the 1960s, the National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films produced a series of films for education in fluid mechanics. This clip is part of "Low Reynolds Number Flow"; you can find the entire collection streamed here. Interesting demonstrations abound. (1st link is QT; rest are RealPlayer.)
posted by Upton O'Good on Aug 17, 2007 - 19 comments

MizPee works on your mobile phone to help you locate the nearest, cleanest bathroom.
posted by Dave Faris on Jul 3, 2007 - 25 comments

Order from chaos! Fill a cylindrical bucket with water and make it so the bottom can spin. At certain speeds, stable regular polygonal shapes will spontaneously form at the turbulent surface of the water. See the video. [2.6MB avi] [via last week's PRL]
posted by sergeant sandwich on May 10, 2006 - 28 comments

This cornstarch, it vibrates. (wmv 4MB)
posted by stbalbach on May 19, 2004 - 23 comments