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Sto caricando le informazioni... Adventures from the Technology Underground: Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them (2006)di William Gurstelle
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Looks at amateur creations and events celebrating technologies like catapults, robots, electricity, and cannons. Some of the choices seemed to highlight performance art rather than focusing on technology. The reader POV stories showing you participating in technology activities didn't draw me in but annoyed me. I liked the author's Backyard Ballistics probably because it was plans and info on creating stuff instead of a story. Includes some very interesting information but I didn't like the writing style and format of the author. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
The technology underground is a thriving, humming, and often literally scintillating subculture of amateur inventors and scientific envelope-pushers who dream up, design, and build machines that whoosh, rumble, fly—and occasionally hurl pumpkins across enormous distances. In the process they astonish us with what is possible when human imagination and ingenuity meet nature’s forces and materials. William Gurstelle spent two years exploring the most fascinating outposts of this world of wonders: meeting and talking to the men and women who care far more for the laws of physics than they do for mundane matters like government regulations and their own personal safety. Adventures from the Technology Undergroundis Gurstelle’s lively and weirdly compelling report of his travels. In these pages we meet Frank Kosdon and others who draw the scrutiny of the FAA, ATF, and other federal agencies in their pursuit of high-power amateur rocketry, which they demonstrate to impressive—and sometimes explosive—effect at the annual LDRS gathering held in various remote and unpopulated areas (a necessary consideration since that acronym stands for Large Dangerous Rocket Ships). Here also are the underground technologists who turn up at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada high desert, including Lucy Hosking, “the engineer from Hell” and the creator of Satan’s Calliope, aka the World’s Loudest Thing, a pipe organ made from jet engines. Also at Burning Man is Austin “Dr. MegaVolt” Richard, who braves the arcing, sputtering, six-digit voltages of a giant Tesla coil in his protective metal suit. Add in a trip to see medieval-style catapults, air cannons, and supersized slingshots in action at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin competition in Sussex County, Delaware, and forays to the postapocalyptic enclaves of the flamethrower builders and the future-noir pits of the fighting robots, and you have proof positive that the age of invention is still going strong. In the world of science and engineering, despite its buttoned-down image, there’s plenty of fun, humor, and sheer wonder to be found at the fringes.Adventures from the Technology Undergroundtakes you there. • Launch homemade high-power rockets. • Catapult pumpkins the better part of a mile. • Watch robot gladiators saw, flip, and pound one another into high-tech junk heaps. • Dazzle the eye with electrical discharges measured in the hundreds of thousands of volts. • Play with flamethrowers, potato guns, and other decidedly unsafe toys . . . If this is your idea of fun, you’ll have a major good time on this wild ride through today’s Technology Underground. From the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s high desert to the latest gathering of Large Dangerous Rocket Ship builders to Delaware’s annual Punkin Chunkin competition (a celebration of “science, radical self-expression, and beer”), you’ll meet the inspired, government-unregulated, and corporately unfettered men and women who operate at the furthest fringes of science, engineering, and wild-eyed arc welding, building the catapults, ultra-high-voltage electrical devices, incendiary artworks, fighting robots, and other machines that demonstrate what’s possible when physics meets human ingenuity. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)621.815Technology Engineering and allied operations Applied physics Machine Engineering Principles of mechanismClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Chapters included are: High Powered Rockets, The Technology of Burning Man, Tesla Coils, High-Voltage Discharge Machines, Hurling Machines, Air Guns, Flamethrowers, Electrostatic Machines, Rail and Coil Guns, and Robots. The book includes separate sections with more technological detail on particular devices. Gurstelle suggests that you can read the sections if you are interested in more technical detail, but a casual reader can skip them. The sections are interesting, easy to understand (at least they were for this amateur), and include illustrations.
You need to know that this book is an introduction to the various catapults, aircannons, flamethrowers, etc., not a detailed set of schematics on how to build your own and what materials you'll need. There are notes and a further reading section if you really need to explore making your own "Punkin Chunk" air cannon or a personal Tesla coil. (Really, if you are expecting detailed instructions in a 224 page book that covers a wide range of projects, then you need to rethink that position.)
Gurstelle had five conditions that had to be met for inclusion in the book. Projects had to be founded upon physical science, the inventors had to have amateur standing, there are elements of danger involved, every project is high energy, the projects are recognized by others (pg 11-13).
With shows like Junkyard Wars, BattleBots, and Monster Garage, the whole idea of building something fantastic out of, well, junk or parts, is a concept many people can understand. Be forewarned, however, that this is not a book for the young scientist in your family - well, it might be with the exception of a certain section on, shall we say, "male enhancement," that might not be considered appropriate.
Very Highly Recommended - and I really want to see the quarter shrinking device. Really.
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