Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2023 i Popular Mechanics

THE ABANDONED BASE WHERE SCIENTISTS DRY-FIT THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMB

WENDOVER AIR FORCE BASE in Utah was the training home of the 509th Composite Group, a unit made up of Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers specially prepared for the Manhattan Project’s nuclear goals—like loading up Enola Gay and Bockscar, the aircraft that would go on to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. Today, Wendover Airport sits on the site. The base has been unusually well-preserved due to its extremely low-humidity environment. Loading the Bombs //During World War II, scientists used Wendover Air Force Base to test how the Manhattan Project’s emerging atomic bombs fit into aircraft. Military aircraft must always find a balance between carrying all the equipment and weapons people need and ensuring the aircraft is still safe to fly. The base has areas for storage of bombs…

4 min

How the Power Grid Works

THE FIRST ELECTRIC SYSTEM POWERED 400 lamps in 1882, marking the beginning of the U.S. power grid. It has since transformed into 4.24 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual electricity. Some consider the North American Power Grid—technically, a patchwork of five smaller interconnections—to be the biggest machine humanity has ever created. The U.S. alone contains 600,000 miles of transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines (those black wires that feed power to your home). By all accounts, it’s a stunning engineering achievement, and one that must keep evolving to meet future challenges. Because the ability to store energy is complex and expensive, electricity is generated on demand, meaning the volts powering a lightbulb in your house were generated microseconds earlier at a power plant, possibly hundreds of miles away; electromagnetic…

4 min

When the Aerospike Engine Will Change Space Flight

THOSE BEHIND THE AEROSPIKE ROCKET engine certainly believe it could be the next big thing in space flight. Engineers have been toying with the aerospike engine concept since the 1950s, but interest picked back up in the early 2000s with NASA’s Project X-33. And just this year, the German military awarded a contract to Polaris, a small startup testing out a new linear aerospike rocket engine. How Aerospike Engines Work //The aerospike engine—specifically the conical aerospike—looks quite similar to a conventional rocket, and functions using largely the same principle: exchanging thermal energy for kinetic energy. The aerospike is named as such because it uses a spike-shaped section that fits inside where the divergent part of a bell nozzle would be. “It replaces this fixed boundary with a free boundary…instead of…

2 min

WE NEED GEAR FOR WORK, FOR PLAY, EVEN TO MAKE A GREAT DINNER AT HOME.

BEST PAINT STRIPPER Speedheater 1100 IR Paint Stripper $540 We’ve tried a lot of ways to remove paint over the years, but after using the Speedheater 1100, we’re not going back. It’s the cleanest, safest, and easiest way we’ve found to remove paint. The Speedheater uses infrared (IR) heating elements to heat up the paint just enough to soften it and make it lift off the wood. If you have an older house, where lead paint may be a concern, it won’t get hot enough to release toxic lead fumes. The Speedheater has heat shields on both sides that serve two purposes: to ensure the IR element is the optimal distance from the surface and to keep the heat focused and contained, which provides even, predictable results. Using the Speedheater,…

1 min

HOME

BEST MONEY-SAVING KIT Tom’s Key Company Pro grammable Key Kit $95–$115 These days, car keys need to be paired with and programmed for your specific car, which can be expensive—over $250 at the dealer for some cars. Tom’s Key offers a DIY solution for many makes and models, which can cost less than half of what dealers charge. A full key kit from Tom’s typically comes with a programming device and blank key—in some cases the programming device needs to be returned; in others, you keep it. The blank key can be cut locally at a hardware store, or Tom’s can cut it for you (for a fee) if you send them a photo of your key. The programming process is easy to do, takes only about 15 minutes, and can…

5 min

Starrett Safe-Flex Hacksaw Blades | $6–$8

Popular Mechanics may be the last magazine in America in which you’ll find a full page devoted to a hack-saw blade. This isn’t a concealed advertising play. It’s an honest report. I’ve used Starrett’s Safe-Flex hacksaw blades for so long, I don’t remember when I started or even how. I can’t say that I’ve subjected these blades to lab-grade testing, but I can say that I’ve never broken one. I’ve dulled them but, brother, it takes a lot of cutting. In the world of hacksaw blades, a track record like that is extremely rare. Perhaps it’s not unique, because I don’t know if somebody else has duplicated the feat. I’ve cut mild steel, hardened steel, and stainless steel with these blades—all without issue. For difficult cuts, I use Relton Rapid…

1 min

WHY AIRCRAFT CARRIERS DON’T TIP OVER

Could a $13 billion aircraft carrier that took five years to build, now home to 5,000 people, just suddenly tip over? Tapered hulls with ridiculous-looking curves may make carriers look unsteady, but a tremendous amount of naval know-how goes into every aircraft carrier, and not all of it is visible when the ship is in the water. 1 Knifelike bow: This dramatic curvature at the front end of a ship helps reduce wind resistance and aerodynamic drag, but below the waterline, the hull spreads out and is actually quite wide. A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, for example, is 134 feet wide at its widest at the waterline; this prevents the buoyancy force from pushing on one side or the other from below and flipping the ship over. 2 Bulbous bow: Ship…

1 min

Why the Marines Are Ditching Tanks and Howitzers

THE U.S. MARINE CORPS IS UNDERGOING its biggest reorganization in decades, slimming down and chopping weapons systems, such as tanks and howitzers, in an effort to become quicker, more agile, and more lethal, while specializing in operating in island chains and coastal areas. It’s all built on the service’s belief that the next war will resemble World War II far more than it will Iraq or Afghanistan. What Is Force Design 2030? //After the Cold War, the Marine Corps began to resemble a second American land army; the Marines invaded Iraq over land in 1991 and again in 2003, and were functionally a land army in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021. While the Marines were successful in this role, it was clear that defense budgets would soon come under increasing…

3 min

Why Hair Turns Gray

OUR HAIR GAINS ITS COLOR THROUGH melanin, a natural pigment that also determines the color of our eyes and the shade of our skin. In young hair, melanocytes (specialized cells that produce melanin) transfer this pigment along the length of each strand as it emerges from its follicle. Combinations of two main types of melanin (one for darker hues and another for lighter ones) make up all the dazzling shades of human hair—from icy blond to fiery red to ebony black. But aging disrupts this process, leaving our hair without pigment, appearing silver, white, or gray. As anyone who’s had to grow out a bad perm or a too-short cut knows, hair goes through phases of growth and rest that can last years; new hair comes in and then falls out…

2 min

WORK

BEST LUBRICANT WD-40 Precision Pen $15 (3-pack) In the Popular Mechanics shop, we use WD-40 to clean parts and to lubricate tools and machines. The Precision Pen is the tidiest way we’ve ever seen to apply the popular lubricant. The pen has a felt tip, which fills when you press down to initiate the plunger. Once the tip is wet, press it to leave a spot of lubrication or to wipe on a stripe as wide as the pen’s tip. Take multiple swipes to leave a wide swath of WD-40, only where it’s needed.—Roy Berendsohn BEST SAW BLADE Diablo Ultimate General Purpose 10-inch Saw Blade D1040UX $50 Every woodshop needs at least one workhorse saw blade to make routine rips and cross-cuts while saving specialized blades for melamine, cove cutting,…

9 min

FALL OUT

I. FIRE It’s alive. That’s how the neighbors alongside the landfill describe it. As a living creature, a growling menace. The modern-day incarnation of Typhon, the monster of Greek mythology with a hundred dragon heads, cast into the underworld but still capable of unleashing volcanic powers. It has resided 240 feet down in the Missouri earth, gurgling and hissing, for the past 13 years. Republic Services, the Phoenix-based owners of the Bridgeton Landfill, where the beast resides, never uses the word fire. Company officials refer to it as a “subsurface smoldering event” or an “underground exothermic heat-generation reaction.” Surrounded by barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence, the smoldering mass gorges on old drywall and broken shingles discarded by construction crews decades ago, opening fissures and tunnels of ash. Sometimes those underground shafts collapse,…

33 min

The 3 Most Expensive Home Renovation Projects

I’VE TACKLED A HANDFUL OF RENOVATIONS in my 40-year-old home, from a bathroom remodel to exterior projects. It helps that nothing warms my heart more than picking out faucets or flooring. But the budgeting is another story. If you’re embarking on your own home renovation journey, chew on this: The National Association of Home Builders suggests sticking to a percentage of your home’s value for each room you update. For example, a kitchen renovation should cost about 16 percent of your home’s value, and a bathroom project should cost only 3 to 5 percent. Here’s what to expect when taking on any of the three most wallet-busting home renovations. Kitchens //Kitchen renovations cost between $15,000 and $50,000 in the current housing market, says Brady Bridges of Reside Real Estate in Ft.…

3 min

WHETHER ALIEN PROBES ARE ALREADY ON EARTH

Avi Loeb, PhD, of Harvard University—known as the “bad boy of astronomy”—led an expedition over the summer in Papua New Guinea where his team combed the ocean floor for remnants of two meteors Loeb believes could actually contain alien technology. They recovered metallic “spherules” from the site, but it’s still unclear what they are exactly. From where Loeb stands, there’s at least a chance these spherules are alien probes, dropped from a mothership; the theoretical physicist believes the cigar-shaped Oumuamua, which in 2017 became the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, could be such a parent craft, for instance. Loeb has already sent the spherule samples to labs at Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bruker Corporation in Germany for further analysis. Plus, he’s…

1 min

WALKING THE LINE

I CAN NO LONGER SEE WAYNE Aubertin, but I can still hear him: his legs thwacking through the underbrush, his labored breath. “Come on!” he yells at no one in particular. A few minutes later I emerge into a clearing of young saplings and find the 58-year-old surveyor cross-legged in the leaves, folded over a stack of topographical maps streaked with pink highlighter. The phone in his hand is displaying coordinates down to the second in bold, blocky typeface. “We’ve gotta be within 80 feet,” he says. It’s a brilliant May afternoon in the woods of western Maryland, and Aubertin is tantalizingly close to finding a stone the size of a shoebox, last seen, according to a 70-year-old report somewhere in that pile of maps, “in a thicket on a…

20 min

PLAY

BEST ELECTRIC PIZZA OVEN Ooni Volt 12 Pizza Oven $999 Ooni, the company that started the portable pizza oven craze, now has an electric model that rivals the performance of its gas and wood-burning ovens. Unlike pizza ovens that burn fuel, you can use the Volt 12 on your kitchen counter, plugged into a standard 120-volt, 15-amp outlet. There are plenty of electric pizza ovens available, but few are capable of hitting the Volt 12’s 850-degree-plus temperatures needed to make authentic Neapolitan pizzas. The oven walls are heavily insulated, with heating elements both above and below the pizza stone, to ensure your pizza cooks fast and evenly. The Volt 12 features easy-to-use controls, including a built-in timer, on the oven door. Warmup takes about 20 minutes, and you can cook…

3 min

Rotary Hammer: Don’t Call It a Hammer Drill

IF YOU NEED TO MAKE HOLES IN CONCRETE AND masonry, the rotary hammer—also known as a rotary hammer drill—is the gold standard of tools. A cross between a jackhammer and a drill, it was developed in Europe, where masonry construction materials are more prevalent in both residential and commercial buildings. Not to be confused with a hammer drill, the rotary hammer utilizes a powerful concussive force to drive a spinning bit through hard materials like stone and concrete. While they’re usually used to install anchors into—or pass pipe and conduit through—masonry walls or floors, they have other uses as well. We tested them on the most common materials you’ll encounter. Hammer Drill vs. Rotary Hammer Both of these tools apply up-and-down blows to their respective drill bits, expressed in blows per…

3 min

BEST OF THE TEST

FLEX 24V 1-IN. SDS PLUS ROTARY HAMMER Price: $300 (bare tool) | Power: 24-volt RPM: 0–980 | Max BPM: 4,350 Impact Force: 1.9 ft-lb | Weight: 7 lbs With no bells or whistles, the Flex 24V Rotary Hammer is a basic tool that simply gets the job done. It has the standard three modes found on most rotary hammers (drill, hammer drill, and hammer), each of which was able to complete our test scenarios. While testing, we found its relatively higher RPMs kicked up a few more chips and dust than the Bosch (at right), but the Flex put neat, clean holes through every material we tested. It’s available as a tool only, so buying a battery and charger will add to the expense. But if you’re already on the…

2 min