Category Archives: Video

Add corn starch to water and stir slowly. Keep adding until the suspension is near its maximum concentration – what happens next becomes rather interesting. It’d exhibit what is known in physics as “Non-Newtonian fluid” properties in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate.

In layman’s term, it means that if you apply abrupt force on it, the suspension behaves like a solid. For example, if you quickly poke it with a stick, the stick would bounce back. But if you slowly insert the stick into the fluid, the suspension would still behave like a liquid, and the stick would submerge.

This makes for interesting effects, like in the video above: it is entirely possible (or even, somewhat easy) to run on top of a corn starch pool. The first application that came to my mind is actually… freshman orientation games. But of course, the cleverer and more serious people are researching on this effect in applications like bullet proof vests – the armor would be soft and flexible in normal situations, but when impacted at high velocity by a bullet, that part of the vest would behave like a solid, repelling the bullet.

Cool!

This is the real life version of Minority Report style user interface – a multi-touch sensor screen. Usually touch screens are only able to work with one point of contact at a time, but this can work with multiple points simultaneously – and thus instead of having to direct all our motion into one point (like controlling a mouse pointer), we can use all our fingers at one go.

This might not seem like much – you might think “oh yeah, so now you’ve got 10 mouse pointers!” – but freeing up the hands from a interfacing tool (like a mouse pointer, a stylus etc) gives a whole lot more intuitive and intimate interaction with the software – like how the Wiimote would open a whole new dimension of playing games.

Most of the video to me is just snazzy effect, but at around 2:40, Jeff Han demonstrated the light table application, which I think is fantastic. When you have a lot of things, you need to sort out the mess, and quickly switch between stuff – that’s where this product really shines.

Plus, now that we’re already so sedentary, it does no harm to have an interface that may help us shave an ounce off our flabby arms!

By now it’s common knowledge that mixing Coke and Mentos gives a geyser fountain. The pioneers of the Coke-Mentos Geyser were from Eepybird, who has since tested the theory with 15 kinds of soda and all sorts of candies. This time they’re back with a bigger and badder vengeance – enter the Domino Fountain!

Watch as one fountain triggers the next – with some impressive effect too! Coke and Mentos has also seized this publicity opportunity by sponsoring the ingredients, so you’d get a longer, grander sugar load.

[Eepybird]

Treadmills, to me, equate monotonous boredom.  And so I was delighted to see an excellent piece of dance choreography that leverages the treadmills for a number of dance moves, making exercise on treadmills seem like a fun activity – no less thanks to a great matching tune, “Here it goes again” by OK Go.