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Bead screen depicts atomic life in glorious low resolution
In an era where virtually flawless 8K screens are a reality, it's easy to forget that low-resolution displays have their own appeal -- a flickering tube TV can exhibit more character than most modern sets. And a team of artists and scientists (at France's Millimètre and Harvard University) are taking full advantage of that emotional pull. Their Life in Picoseconds exhibit uses an "Atom Screen" made of thousands of beads to depict a protein molecule in a purposefully low resolution. The project uses 70 software-guided fans to suspend beads between plastic panels, turning them into pixels when you shine light on them. The effect is fuzzy, jittery and tenuous, as if the energy and fragility of the atoms is reflected in the display itself.
Researchers build world's smallest steam engine that could
Wanna create your very own microscopic steam engine? Just take a colloid particle, put it in water, and add a laser. That's a CliffsNotes version of what a group of German researchers recently did to create the world's smallest steam engine. To pull it off, engineers from the University of Stuttgart and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems tweaked the traditional approach introduced by Robert Stirling nearly 200 years ago. In Stirling's model, gas within a cylindrical tube is alternately heated and cooled, allowing it to expand and push an attached piston. Professor Clemens Bechinger and his team, however, decided to downsize this system by replacing the piston with a laser beam, and the cylinder's working gas with a single colloid bead that floats in water and measures just three thousandths of a millimeter in size. The laser's optical field limits the bead's range of motion, which can be easily observed with a microscope, since the plastic particle is about 10,000 times larger than an atom. Because the beam varies in intensity, it effectively acts upon the particle in the same way that heat compresses and expands gas molecules in Stirling's model. The bead, in turn, does work on the optical field, with its effects balanced by an outside heat source. The system's architects admit that their engine tends to "sputter" at times, but insist that its mere development shows that "there are no thermodynamic obstacles" to production. Read more about the invention and its potential implications in the full press release, after the break.
Perler bead crafting evolves
This question mark block has extended its form into the fabled third dimension! This mysterious realm of depth is unexplored by either 8-bit explorers or Perler bead artists. This bold scientific discovery promises to usher a new age for Super Mario Bros. crafts!Shown above, an artifact from the third dimension, looking very much like one of our own question mark blocks, but somehow composed of many two-dimensional blocks working in tandem to form a strange array of squares. These squares exist simultaneously in the normal two dimensions and in the newly-discovered third! This is a hypersquare.[Via Wonderland]
Target pimping out DS Lites
Here we thought it was enough that Target was selling our favorite games on the cheap, but that's not the only gem in their huge DS sale. If you happen to be in the market for a new DS Lite, you can also pick up one of these bad boys, though "bad boys" may not be the most appropriate phrase, considering the bedazzling, beaded array of special edition skins on display here.It's a shame these aren't sold separately. Do we really need a reason to pick up another DS Lite, considering we all own like eight? No, we need reasons not to buy another! No wonder the games are on sale ....[Via Gay Gamer]
Sweet Nintendo beaded art
Apparently known as Perlerbead art, the pixel-perfect precision of the sprites that have been recreated just breaks our brain. It's uncanny, the kind of representation these Nintendo, and other iconic gaming, characters have enjoyed in flickr user foglera's photo gallery. We suggest you check out the rest of them here.[Via Wonderland Blog]
