Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Popular Mechanics

Inspired by mountain goats and a desire to help people, NY-based industrial designer Kai Lin formed an unlikely alliance with an adaptive climber—Arc’teryx athlete Craig DeMartino. With empathy, efficiency, and a willingness to adapt, the pair serves up a holy grail for adaptive rock climbers: a badass prosthetic foot that won’t just level the playing field but will dish up, if not superpowers, then a real sense of empowerment. Which is almost the same thing. After surviving the 110-foot fall that probably should have killed him, DeMartino’s new reality looked like a fused neck and spine, a junky ankle, and a missing right leg. He redesigned his life and his mindset, but DeMartino is not an engineer. He relies on other technical people to invent things - and no one…

THE NEWEST BMWS HAVE this function that makes my geek heart sing. Foot on the brake, you hit the start/stop button, and the infotainment system—that big screen in the center of the dashboard—fills up with a tiny version of your phone, condensed down to the half-dozen or so apps you need while driving. You don’t even have to take your phone out of your pocket or purse. Unlike most other cars with Apple CarPlay, BMW’s system connects over Wi-Fi, so you don’t need to plug in a Lightning cable. Brilliant, borderline dystopian convenience. I’m probably alone in loving CarPlay so much. The tech is five years old, so you don’t really hear about it outside of car dealerships or Apple developer conferences. Consider that flattery, because the best-designed tools are…

Volcanic rock, forged in the bowels of the earth, should be the material of choice for your next insulation project. Mineral wool, or rock wool, insulation is made from melted basalt and recycled steel slag by spinning the molten material into threads, like cotton candy. The threads are collected in sheets and combined to make batts of insulation. While rock wool is typically 20 to 25 percent more expensive than traditional fiberglass insulation, it is pretty amazing stuff, and there are numerous advantages to using it—especially in garages and workshops. PERFORMANCE Rock wool insulation shares an important property with the rock it’s made of: fire resistance. That, combined with a higher R-value than fiberglass, means that it can slow the spread of fire in the event of a catastrophe. Rock…

IT’S AN ISSUE THAT HAS plagued photography since its creation: blurring, even when everything is in focus. No matter how high-quality the camera, math has dictated that the curve of spherical lenses means that rays of light coming through won’t converge on the exact same spot. At least, that was the problem until Rafael G. González-Acuña, a doctoral student at Mexico’s Tecnológico de Monterrey, up and solved it. The problem goes back thousands of years to the Greek mathematician Diocles. A contemporary of Archimedes, Diocles wrote a book titled On Burning Mirrors, in which he describes what would become known as a “spherical aberration.” As light rays fall on a lens, different rays don’t meet in a single focal point. Even the most high-end lenses can’t totally remove the aberration.…

SCIENCE FICTION IS A literary laboratory for ideas that could one day fill our future. And no idea has been examined more vigorously than time travel. Terminator, the biggest time-travel franchise of them all, gets its sixth installment with Dark Fate. The film marks James Cameron’s return to the series, as executive producer. This is good news. Because after 199=1’s Judgment Day, Cameron’s last Terminator movie, things got…confusing. In 2003’s T3: Rise of the Machines, the Judgment Day apocalypse wasn’t really averted, just postponed. Which felt more like a plot device for the studio to make movies that could take place after August 29, 1997, the date of the series’ original end-of-the-world conclusion. From there, Salvation and Genisys would go on to muddy things beyond recognition. Even Tim Miller, director…

ON THE AFTERNOON of Tuesday, September 25, 2018, Marc Benioff, founder and co-CEO of Salesforce, stepped on stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to deliver the keynote speech at Dreamforce, his company’s annual conference. The event—a combined business meeting, marketing rally, and New Age retreat—attracted more than 100,000 people from around the world, closing off an entire city block. Benioff had built Salesforce and its core product of cloud-based customer management software from a Telegraph Hill apartment into a $13 billion-revenuea-year juggernaut employing 30,000 people worldwide, with 8,500 in San Francisco. Just a few days before Dreamforce, he’d sealed a deal to purchase the struggling Time magazine, prompting an admiring profile in The New York Times. Completing his apotheosis, September 25, 2018, was Benioff’s 54th birthday. After his…

1. MAKE IT EASIER A huge hassle of analog circuit breakers is figuring out which outlets correspond to which breaker in your home. A tool like Klein’s ET300 circuit breaker finder saves you the guesswork. 2. MAKE IT TALK TO YOU An energy monitoring system like Sense can track device usage in your home and calculate how much each item contributes to your electric bill. You can monitor all the data, from your sump pump’s consumption rate to whether you left the garage door open, via an app on your phone. 3. MAKE IT SMARTER For the most intel and control over your breaker, Leviton is releasing a smart breaker box that lets you not only track energy costs and consumption on a granular level, but troubleshoot your breaker and…

Merrell Zion Mid WaterProof Hiking Boot The Merrell Zion combines a sneaker-like fit with support from dual-density EVA inserts and a compression-molded EVA midsole. Springy and light, the boot held up to long miles on the trail. And when the weather turned wet, we stayed dry, thanks to Merrell’s M Select DRY waterproof-breathable membrane. $150 KNIPEX 10" Pliers Wrench With a wide range of adjustability, these German-made pliers grip everything from thin sheet metal to 2-inch-diameter pipe and fittings. You can set your desired jaw width with the press of a button, and even when the jaws are fully open, the plastic-coated handles are still comfortable—and not too far apart—to grip. $78 Makita 18V LXT Cordless 5 3/8" Metal Cutting Saw Rated for a 2-inch cutting depth, this Makita workhorse…

Outdoors Editor My ideal day starts on a trail and ends with a drink in hand. Favorite App AllTrails. It’s usually the first place I check when I’m searching for a hiking trail in unfamiliar territory. CURRENT PASSION PROJECT Since January, I’ve been making a new cocktail every week to teach myself to become a better bartender. This might be the only New Year’s resolution I can actually stick with. The Coolest Thing I Have on My Desk I’m keeping things pretty minimal these days, but I use my Grand Canyon National Park coffee mug daily. I also have a pocket multitool from Gerber to help me open gear that’s sent for testing. The Best Money I Ever Spent $100 for my REI Co-op Camp Dome 2 when my original…

1. HEAT YOUR SELF LASKO OSCILLATING CERAMIC HEATER / $45 You don’t need to heat an entire space to feel warm. A small, powerful heater pointed at you can make all the difference. Lasko’s portable ceramic heater oscillates and pushes 1,500 watts of heating power—enough to cover a small area around you and take the edge off the cold. 2. HEAT THE WORK AREA DELONGHI MICA THERMIC PANEL HEATER / $9 Another way to get warm is to heat the objects around you with this micathermic heater from DeLonghi. A mica panel emits electromagnetic rays that warm objects in the room, which in turn warm the ambient air. The slim heater is portable, and can be hung out of the way on the wall. 3. HEAT THE GARAGE DEWALT POR…

WITH ITS BULLET shape and stubby wings, the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle looks like the little brother of NASA’s classic Space Shuttle orbiter. But the comparisons end there: The X-37B is built to spend months and even years in orbit, carrying out classified missions for America’s military space program. In the 1990s, NASA needed a cheaper option to boost spaceplane readiness. The Space Shuttle couldn’t lower its payload-to-orbit costs, and it took months to refurbish between flights. The agency’s solution? An unmanned spaceplane (a vehicle that moves like an aircraft in our atmosphere and like a spacecraft in space), which would require less thrust and a smaller rocket to send it into space. Without a crew, it could spend as long as the mission needed in low-Earth…

WITH NEW MICRO breweries popping up everywhere—589 op ened in the U.S. a lone between 2017 and 2018, according to the Brewers Association—finding new ways to innovate among a crowded pack of craft producers is a tall task. But the brewers at Seven Bro7hers in Salford, England, have arrived at a solution for separating theirs from the rest: using leftover cereal. Last year, the brewery teamed up with BrewDog in Manchester to whip up a milkshake IPA called “Cornshake,” which used leftover Corn Flakes in the mash. But Seven Bro7hers owner and founder Keith McAvoy expected the Kellogg’s legal team would make sure the brew didn’t last. “A few days after we launched the beer,” McAvoy says, “Kellogg’s got in touch, and as we had used Kellogg’s branding on the…

Big Dig Boston, Mass. Cost: $24.3 billion // An overhaul of Boston’s infrastructure—spanning three decades until its completion in 2007—included billion-dollar cost overruns, massive leaks, shoddy epoxy, falling light fixtures, and a fatal ceiling collapse. Consequences: Finished nine years late and more than $20 billion over the original estimate, Boston will be paying off the Big Dig until 2038. The Mose Project Venice, Italy Cost: $6.3 billion // The Italian government designed a system of gates to alleviate flooding. But political disagreements and the 2014 arrest of Mayor Giorgio Orsoni and 35 others on charges of corruption, bribery, and misuse of public funds resulted in serious delays. Consequences: The unfinished project keeps the city vulnerable to rising water levels. Sagrada Família Barcelona, Spain Cost: Annual budget of $28 million and…

Liner // One side of the handle’s inner liner is bent, causing it to act like a spring. When you open the blade, that springing liner slides over behind the tang of the blade to keep it from closing. Pro: Simple and inexpensive. Con: Fingers are in the way when closing. Frame // Like a liner lock, but this system has one side of the knife’s frame slide behind the blade when you deploy it. Pro: Secure. Con: Not ambidextrous. Lock Back // A locking bar runs up the spine of the knife’s handle and springs up into a notch in the tang. To close, press on the bar close to the butt of the handle to pivot it out of the tang. Pro: Ambidextrous. Con: Can wear out, causing…

Photographer Give me a bike or pair of skis and leave me in the woods, and I’ll be just fine. The Best Money I Ever Spent L.L. Bean boots. Lifetime warranty, durable, versatile. SALOMON SHIFT BINDINGS The most innovative bindings I’ve used to date. They provide confident Alpine performance and are ready for some touring when needed. PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW CURRENT PASSION PROJECT Finding old Cannondale CAAD bike frames to rebuild and modernize. I’m currently on the hunt for a Caad7 Saeco Tour de France edition. Favorite App and Why Right now, Ride with GPS. Very helpful for mapping out next weekend’s adventures. The Coolest Thing I Have on My Desk There is always something cool hanging out on my desk. Currently a Wahoo Roam cycling GPS for…

GARAGES OFTEN HOUSE the mechanical systems that run your home—from the electrical breaker box to your HVAC system, explains home-renovation specialist and Trane partner Anthony Carrino, the star of HGTV’s Kitchen Cousins. As a result, even seemingly small damages can have pricey implications if the garage gets too cold. Whether you want to keep using your garage as a workspace or just want to make sure your tools are safe from the tough winter conditions, it’s important to properly winterize your garage, according to Adam Mennenga, a licensed and certified HVAC tech and president of billyGO. Here are three tips on doing just that before the cold weather arrives. ▪ STOP DRAFTS Preventing drafts from sneaking in will not only keep the garage warmer but will also save you money…

DEWAR’S DOUBLE AGED SMOOTHNESS What’s in a name? In a word, standards. At Dewar’s, we’ve made a name for ourselves by living true to our standards for over 130 years. That’s about how long we’ve been double aging our whisky. Why? For extra smoothness. www.Dewars.com ROTOCUBE® MAGNETIC DRY ERASE ROTATING BULLETIN TOWER. Put a 4 x 6’ whiteboard into a 21” freestanding footprint. Rotocube® Rotating Dry-Erase Towers help keep your workstations updated with the latest performance KPI’s, inventory levels, and safety metrics by placing information in the traffic stream. Order online: magnatag.com/rotocube OIL VANISH OIL STAIN REMOVER Quickly removes oil stains from driveways, garages and parking areas. It penetrates deeply into the surface to lift and eliminate the toughest stains from a variety of surfaces. Outperforms degreasers, acids and poultice…

ON MOST EARLY MORNings, eagle-eyed visitors in the Las Vegas desert can spot strange lights in the sky moving up and down. No, it’s not a UFO. It’s actually the semisecret commuter airline using the call-sign “Janet” that transports workers from Las Vegas’s McCarran Airport to the infamous Area 51, just north. Since the base opened in the 1950s, “alien” aircraft have been reported. Though unlikely, the base’s secretive history has invited conspiracies to run wild about what is truly concealed in the southern Nevada desert. But if not aliens, what is hiding behind the walls of Area 51? There are other, non-intergalactic theories that are just as fantastical. But in reality, the base’s true purpose and likely cause for discretion lies in its origins. ▪ THE ORIGINS OF A…

PM: What was it like joining the Ford team at Le Mans so early in your career? MA: For me personally, the Le Mans effort couldn’t have come at a better time. Being a rookie, developing a relationship with Ford played perfectly into my hands as far as developing some of my skills in road racing. I remember all of it with great fondness. PM: Ford was new to racing, but they went in big, didn’t they? MA: They pulled out all the stops. In 1966, I think, we had cracking windshields. And they were buying seats in first class and flying replacements over the next day. We had our own medical unit. It was amazing. I remember we were at Daytona and Bandini [with Ferrari] came over and looked…

A STUD FINDER IS GOOD for, well, finding studs you can’t see. Knowing where those are is crucial so you can be sure to screw into them instead of just the drywall when you’re hanging something heavy, like a mirror or a mount for, say, a flat-screen TV. But some stud finders have other features, too, like deep scanning and AC wire detection. That doesn’t mean they always do what they’re supposed to. There’s a lot going on in walls, and it can be hard, despite advances in tech, for any device to parse it all and determine what’s a pipe and what’s a wire from outside of the wall. To test all the features, we put a selection of stud finders through their paces on a wall of our…