I know most people have been living in caves for the past couple of months like brown bears hibernating over the winter, and nobody has been interested in much other than sleeping and eating the occasional beetle.  That’s fine – and completely normal – but spring is coming and before you know it, everyone will be compelled to emerge to gather salmon and frolic among the blossoming flowers.  In fact you might consider coming out of the cave a little early this year because this February something has already started to bloom:  fuel cells.
After eight …

When they poured water on the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, she started to shrink, screetching, “I’m melting! I’m melting!” and it seemed like a really unpleasant experience for her.  Another way to describe the conversion from evil green lady to a pile of black clothing might be to say that the Wicked Witch of the West underwent a phase change, although “I’m phase changing! I’m phase changing!” doesn’t really have the same ring to it so I respect the script writer’s choice of words.  We benefit from the phenomenon …

Your friendly neighborhood scientists are messing around with nanoparticles.  They’re doing it because materials take on new properties and even behave differently at such small sizes.  If you want to learn more about nanotechnology before we dive into liquid glass, take a look at this video from KQED:

Now let’s consider glass.  We are most of us by now fairly familiar with the material;  its primary ingredient is silica, it’s brittle, at earthly operating temperatures it tends to be fairly solid, and it loves long walks on the beach, horseback riding, and watching the sunset.  But when …

It’s probably not a good idea for another architect to be spreading the word about a “building in a bag” developed by architects and Concrete Canvas co-founders Peter Brewin and William Crawford, but it’s just such a clever and useful concept that I can’t keep it to myself.  Besides, they’re not very pretty (the buildings – I haven’t laid eyes on Peter Brewin or William Crawford) so I don’t think we’ll be officing or living in Concrete Canvas Shelters except under the most extreme circumstances:  the local design review board starts experimenting with peyote for example, or suddenly people only …

I’m completely obsessed with thermochromatic ink.  I’m obsessed with ink in general, ever since my undergraduate days in the print shop in Walsh.  But I am especially obsessed with thermochromatic ink – and not just because it’s how I know whether my beer is cold enough.  Thermochromatic ink changes color when the temperature drops above or below a specific threshold.  I found this lovely and slightly dense explanation of how this happens while I was looking at Chromazone Thermostar Ink the other day:
“ChromaZone is a microencapsulated thermochromic pigment which changes from colour to colourless …