popular mechanics - april 2014 usa.pdf

MakersThe

25 Leaders of the New Industrial Revolution p. 54

How GoPro, Nest, MakerBot,Kickstarter & Others Are

Changing the World

Chris Anderson Quit His Day Job to Build a Drone Factory

A Perfect Lawn by Summer: 6 Easy Steps p.0 pp. 88

T E C H H O M E A U T O A D V E N T U R E S C I E N C E

RobotOlympicsWE WERE THERE! p. 68

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I G N I T I O N / F E AT URE S

O N THE C O V E R

A P R I L 2 0 1 4

PHOTOGRAPH BY L A N D O N N O R D E M A N P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 01

Junk Science ................. 62Shoddy, agenda-driven research often masquerades as legitimate, compromising the credibility of the scientific com-munity—and threatening the very lives that depend on genuine, objective studies. BY SARAH FECHT

NASA JPL’s RoboSimian at the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Movers and Makers .. 54A fresh breed of inventors and entrepreneurs are using cutting-edge tech, a die-hard DIY ethic, and unconventional funding methods to fire the engines of the innovation economy. Meet 25 leaders of the new industrial revolution. BY CHRIS RAYMOND

Escape From The Lab .......................... 68If rescue robots can save you from disasters, what else could they do? We go behind the scenes at the DARPA Robotics Challenge to meet some awesome automatons and their equally impressive creators. BY JOE PAPPALARDO

Chris Anderson, CEO and cofounder of 3D Robotics, with his company’s drone, the dodecacopter. Photograph by Peter Yang.

O N THE C

BY SARAH Fthe new industrial revolution.BY CHRIS RAYMOND

Chris Anderdrone, the ddrone, the d

W E E K E ND

ColumnsSuperiority Complex ........................................................... 46Between the two world wars, the Brough Superior was the fastest, most elegant motorcycle money could buy. BY JAY LENO

Becoming an Airplane ......................................................... 50Reporter-at-large Jeff Wise soars the skies, strapped into a powered paraglider—which turns your body into a plane. BY JEFF WISE

PHOTOGRAPH BY P H I L I P F R I E D M A N

Tech ..................................... 78Give your workout a jolt—and pedal to good use—with our DIY bike-powered generator. Instructions included!Digital Clinic The sky has limits. Know your drone laws, so you can fly safely and legally.

Home ................................. 88Six ways toward a less thirsty, low-maintenance lawn.Tool Test Mini tillers are a gardener’s godsend. We rate seven of them.Home Clinic No time for wood deck upkeep? Plastics can help.

Auto ..................................... 98Polycarbonate-plastic head-lights have benefits, but lasting clarity isn’t one of them. PM shows you how to restore cloudy lenses.Car Clinic You want to flush my what? Avoid rip-off repairs.

A Brief History of the . . . Submarine ....................................................................................... 108We delve into the watery past and promising present of these deep divers.

02 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 / P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M

I G N I T I O N / DE PA R T ME N T S

Ignition ..................................................... 04Letters, Complaints, EventsTech Watch ............................................ 10News, Trends, Breakthroughs Nuclear power faces decline as the need for affordable, clean energy grows.Upgrade .................................................... 21Gear, Tools, GadgetsWant to create something? Armed with the right gadgets, make that next Lego masterpiece, or maybe some moonshine.Auto Intel ................................................ 33Test Drives, Top Tech, Hot Rides With Apple and Android integration, cars and tech continue on their collision course.

Legos get a brand-

new look. p. 21

I G N I T I O N

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Senior editors Mike Austin and Andrew Del-Colle traveled to the automotive holy grail, also known as the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, to look at some of the upcoming cars for 2014, including the eye-catching aluminum-body 2015 Ford F-150 (p. 42) and the all-new Corvette Z06. Associate tech editor Davey Alba attended New York’s 3D Printshow in February, which featured talks and announcements from industry stalwarts (such as MakerBot, Adobe, Shapeways, SketchUp), and a dash of weird with an entirely 3D-printed-fashion show.

WE’RE REALLY BUSY IN APRIL APRIL 2–4: Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo, New York Microsoft Build Developer Conference, San Francisco USA Science & Engineering Festival and Expo, Washington, D.C.

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C O M P L A I N T S DEPARTMENT “Your magazine needs to be longer—at least 500 pages per issue!”SHANNON FRENCH, KNOXVILLE, TN


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In our February cover story, “It’s Time to Fight for Your Privacy,” associate tech editor Davey Alba provided readers with practical advice to secure their digital information. Doug Tracey of Conshohocken, Pa., thinks that the first step toward privacy is practicing a little social-media vigilance. “How can someone expect privacy when every move they make is described on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever?” However, Tracey mentions an unexpected public benefit to online transparency. “Lack of privacy is making it harder to keep important information secret—like the emails in New Jersey’s Bridgegate.” Even digital snooping has a silver lining. ● Dick Larsen of Hope, Idaho, is ready for the tech year ahead after reading our “10 Tech Terms for 2014.” “The article is great,” he writes. “It’s chock-full of great information, easy to understand, and inspires me to research further.” Glad to help. We hear muon tomography is a great conversation starter. ● At popularmechanics.com, we dived into the 30-year history of Mac computers. “I remember buying a Macintosh and throwing an office party to show it off to my clients,” Ollie Relfe posted on Facebook. “Thanks for the trip down memory lane!”

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When I use a camera, I like to zoom, but the image gets pixel ated. How can I avoid this? Aneesh M., 11, ChicagoPixel-heavy pics are an unfortunate side effect of digital zoom, but, luckily, optical lenses are fighting this bothersome blur. According to Canon, new optical glass and aspherical lens elements are improving zoom image clarity.

TH E K ID WANTS TO KNOW

Are you a kid with a question? Ask Darren!

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IT’S YOURS.

©Kubota Tractor Corporation, 2014

www.kubota.com

Imagine the possibilities with Kubota’s BX Series – America’s top-selling sub-compact tractor for over a decade.

1970 1980 1990 2000

What we’ve been using

What we could build

What we’re building

Westinghouse Four-Loop

1200megawatts

$5339 perkilowatt

Diameter: 150 feetHeight: 205 feet

Westinghouse AP1000

1117megawatts

$6000 perkilowatt


Babcock & Wilcox mPower

180megawatts

$5000 perkilowatt

Diameter: 101 feetHeight: 135 feet(Estimated)

Reactor Type

Capacity Build Cost

ReactorVessel Size

Nuclear power plants continue to be decommissioned. If we don’t replace them,nuclear’s share of power production plunges.

Small modular reactors come online andusher in a nuclear renaissance.

New reactors are being built to keep power production at current levels, but production will not grow with demand.

1970 1980 1990 2000

What we’ve been using

What we could build

What we’re building

Westinghouse Four-Loop

1200megawatts

$5339 perkilowatt


Westinghouse AP1000

1117megawatts

$6000 perkilowatt


Babcock & Wilcox mPower

180megawatts

$5000 perkilowatt

Diameter: 101 feetHeight: 135 feet(Estimated)

Reactor Type

Capacity Build Cost

ReactorVessel Size

Nuclear power plants continue to be decommissioned. If we don’t replace them,nuclear’s share of power production plunges.

Small modular reactors come online andusher in a nuclear renaissance.

New reactors are being built to keep power production at current levels, but production will not grow with demand.

DATA V ISUAL IZAT ION BY B E N W I L L E R S

NEWSTRENDS

BREAKTHROUGHS

Edited by JENNINGS BROWN

Nuclear Power:Phaseout or Revival?Nuclear power could be facing its demise. Political opposition and cheap natural gas are preventing the U.S. from investing in new power plants. Meanwhile the nuclear infrastructure is aging beyond repair, and in June 2012 the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from renewing licenses until the commission evaluates the risks of storing spent fuel. Four reactors were retired in 2013—the first closures in 15 years—and at least a dozen more reactors may be at risk of closure. Proponents are counting on low-input, mass-produced, small modular reactors to revive the industry, but SMRs don’t exist yet in the U.S. Here are three possible scenarios for the future of nuclear. BY SARAH FECHT

0

200

400

600

800

1000

20402010 2020 2030

Aging power plants could begin to cease production as their licenses expire. Utilities compensate mostly by burning coal and natural gas, which means more greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere until new reactors start operations.

Requires operators and power to shut down plant safely.

1970s to 1980s10 to 15 years

Passive safety features rely on gravity and natural circulation to shut down automaticallyduring an emergency.

Under construction in Georgia and South Carolina, scheduled for completion in 2017 and 2018.

Five new reactors slated to come online within the next decade will make up for 2013’s losses, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. After that, it predicts that production will remain steady out to 2040 with no new reactors and no shutdowns.

Three years

Passive safety features like the AP1000. Fewer components means better reliability.

The U.S. has partnered with B&W to produce a prototype by 2022.

Small modular reactors are expected to debut in the early 2020s. Instead of being built individually, these next-gen reactors will be mass-produced and(theoretically) cheaper. Although SMRs are still in the design phase, Navigant Research predicts theycould generate 18.2 gigawatts of electricity by 2030.

Will eventually be made on anassembly lineand built in twoto three years.

Safety Deployment TakeawayBuild Time

We arehere

19.2%of overall

electricitydemand

15.5%of overall

electricitydemand

6%of overall

electricitydemand

Electricity generated fromnuclear sources (terawatt-hours)

0

20018

40037

6005555

80074

100092

20402010 2020 2030

Aging power plants could begin to cease production as their licenses expire. Utilities compensate mostly by burning coal and natural gas, which means more greenhouse gases dumped into the atmosphere until new reactors start operations.

Requires operators and power to shut down plant safely.

1970s to 1980s10 to 15 years

Passive safety features rely on gravity and natural circulation to shut down automaticallyduring an emergency.

Under construction in Georgia and South Carolina, scheduled for completion in 2017 and 2018.

Five new reactors slated to come online within the next decade will make up for 2013’s losses, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. After that, it predicts that production will remain steady out to 2040 with no new reactors and no shutdowns.

Three years

Passive safety features like the AP1000. Fewer components means better reliability.

The U.S. has partnered with B&W to produce a prototype by 2022.

Small modular reactors are expected to debut in the early 2020s. Instead of being built individually, these next-gen reactors will be mass-produced and(theoretically) cheaper. Although SMRs are still in the design phase, Navigant Research predicts theycould generate 18.2 gigawatts of electricity by 2030.

Will eventually be made on anassembly lineand built in twoto three years.

Safety Deployment TakeawayBuild Time

We arehere

We arehere

19.2%of overall

electricitydemand

15.5%of overall

electricitydemand

6%of overall

electricitydemand

NuNumbmberer ooff hohomemess susuppppliliededwith nuclear power (millions)

Electricity generated fromnuclear sources (terawatt-hours)

P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 11

T E C H W AT C H / A V IS I T OR ' S GUIDE T O . . .

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The recently renovated Naval Surface Warfare Center’s “maneuvering and seakeeping” (MASK) basin simulates wave conditions to test the stability and control of scale models up to 30 feet in length so the Navy can predict how the full-scale vessels will perform on the ocean. The improvements to the Carderock, Md., facility—which has been testing the seaworthiness of warships and subs since 1962—mean that MASK can generate a multitude of different kinds of waves, at any angle, and with 99 percent precision. The results provide far more realistic conditions than its predecessor. It can also now be used to explore new ways to extract energy from ocean waves, to test breakwaters and beach-protection architecture, and to fine-tune emergency helicopter landings. The pool’s first tests are scheduled for this year. — S.F.

1. BASIN | MASK has a depth of 20 feet, except for one 50-foot-wide swath with a depth of 35 feet, which is used to test oil rigs and other stationary platforms. Approximately 12 million gal-lons of water slosh around inside the basin, which is as long as a football field and nearly 1.5 times as wide.

2. WAVES | The wave boards can generate waves up to 4 feet high. For a scale model, that height simulates the very worst conditions on the high seas.

3. BRIDGE | Spanning the entire length of the pool, the bridge has a tow carriage on its underside that can pull a model ship around the basin at a speed of up to 15 knots.

4. LIGHTS | Lighting is kept to a minimum so algae won’t grow and clog up the pool.

5. CONTROL ROOM | Before testing, operators enter the desired wave characteristics into the computer controller and run simulations using a virtual wavemaker.

6. WAVE BOARDS | Ocean waves vary in different parts of the world and at different depths. Fingerlike paddles— 216 in all—operate individually to simulate a variety of waves found in nature.

7. SHORELINE | A shoreline made of angled concrete slabs absorbs and dissipates energy—much the way a natural beach helps quiet waves—between test runs.

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T E C H W AT C H / C Y B E R S E C URI T Y


It’s a new realm of international competition, and it’s very much on its way to becoming an arms race. This has the worst aspect of arms races in the past, when countries spend a lot of money competing but end up less secure.

More than 100 countries are building cyber-military-command equivalents; the civilian side [of government and industry] needs to better understand the ramifications. This is a concern in both the U.S. and China, particularly right now when there’s a buildup of capabilities and military doctrines that are not well understood by the civilian leaders.

Cyberwar is not something that will take place in a far-off realm. It’s something that will happen on the Internet that we all use.

Will the big, traditional defense firms compete for government contracts to make cyber weapons rather than airplanes?

Not will—are. This is one, if not the only, growth area within the defense industry today. Fifteen percent of all the mergers and acquisitions in the defense world over the past couple of years have been big companies buying small cyber companies. And those cyber companies range from ones that work on network defenses to ones that essentially develop new kinds of cyber weapons. That is a result of this becoming a new realm of conflict.

What else do we have to watch out for? The rise of a cyber–industrial complex. A few years ago there were only four companies lobbying Congress on cybersecurity issues. There are now over 1500 companies.

Today we have powers that we couldn’t even have imagined when we first heard of the Internet. It’s all about figuring out how to navigate it, so that we manage the inevitable bad but still get all the good. — AS TOLD TO ALYSON SH EPPARD

P.W. Singer / DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR 21ST-CENTURY SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE; SENIOR FELLOW AT THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION; COAUTHOR, CYBERSECURITY AND CYBERWAR

How are countries coming to terms with the ethics of using digital weapons?

60-SECOND GENIUS

PHOTOGRAPH BY W I N N I W I N T E R M E Y E R

That’s why we created the Name Your Price® Tool. We show you a range of options, and you pick the coverage that fi ts your budget. Putting you in control. Now that’s Progressive.

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LEARN MORE. SCAN HERE.

55 YARDS

ELECTROMAGNETICBEAM

T E C H W AT C H / DE F E N S E

I LLUSTRAT ION BY V I G I L I S M


A NEW TECHNOLOGY STOPS VEHICLES AT A DISTANCE.

Dead in Their Tracks

A patient in Linz, Austria, was the first to receive what is now the world’s smallest pacemaker. At less than 1 inch long Medtronic’s Micra TPS pacemaker is

inserted through a small incision in the thigh (so there’s no chest scarring) and threaded through veins to the patient’s chest, where it’s attached to the heart wall. Without wires connecting the pacemaker to the heart, the risk of infection and other complications is greatly reduced. — A .H .

ACTUAL SIZE

micropacemaker

Police today use spike strips and their patrol cars to end vehicle pursuits, but both methods are inherently dangerous. British tech company e2v recently demonstrated a safer concept that uses radio waves to disable vehicles. Its RF Safe-Stop system directs electromagnetic waves toward an incoming vehicle that scramble the electronic controls used in modern cars. Any targeted engine within 55 yards stalls and cannot be restarted. The company hopes to sell the prototype system to law enforcement and the military, which can deploy them in vehicles and helicopters. One hitch: They won’t work on older vehicles with nonelectronic control systems. — ALEX HUTCH INSON

T E C H W AT C H / ME A N W HIL E , IN S PA C E . . .

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DECEMBER 2013JADE RABBITChina’s Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover touched down on the moon on Dec. 14. It was the first soft landing there since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976, and the first rover since 1973’s Soviet Lunokhod 2. In January Yutu devel-oped mechanical difficulties.

SEPT. 24, 2014MANGALYAANIndia’s first mission to Mars left Earth in November 2013 and began its course to the Red Planet about a month later after building up speed in Earth orbit. After a 10-month journey, it will enter Mars’ orbit on Sept. 24, 2014, on a mission to study the Martian atmosphere and surface.

SEPT. 22, 2014MAVENJust two days before India’s Mars mission, NASA’s Maven Mars orbiter will reach Mars for an atmospheric study of its own.

2015MOON EXPRESS/ASTROBOTIC/GLXPThe X Prize Foundation is offering the largest incentive prize in his-tory, the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. Two teams—Astrobotic and Moon Express—are neck and neck in the race to meet the 2015 deadline for landing a craft on the moon with 90 percent private funding.

2017CHANG’E 5China plans to follow up its lunar rover mis-sion of 2013 with a return sample mission in 2017. After landing, a probe will scoop up 2 kilograms of lunar material and carry it to a vehicle that will take off for lunar orbit and transfer the load to yet another spacecraft for the return to Earth.

2018MARS ONEMars One—which also proposes a series of one-way Mars settlement missions—announced plans for an unmanned mis-sion to be launched in 2018. It will include a lander as well as an orbiter that will act as a communications satellite to relay video back to Earth.

W AT C H / ME A N W HIL E , IN S PA C E . . .

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14 2015 201

E10-mwill enon Sept.a mission tMartian atmoand surface.

PT. MAVAA ENJust two dayIndia’s Mars miNASA’s Maven Morbiter will reach Mfor an atmosphericstudy of its own.

SEPT. 24, 201MANGALYAANIndia’s first

Mars le

4

Planetary ProbesA FLEET OF BOTH PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED SPACECRAFT IS STORMING THE SOLAR SYSTEM. BY MICHAEL BELF IORE

Contrary to popular belief, the moon has an atmosphere. It’s just really, really thin. Called an exosphere, it contains only 100 gas molecules per cubic centimeter (Earth’s atmo-sphere has a billion billion times that amount). Understanding how this layer interacts with lunar dust—particularly the way water molecules migrate across the surface—can help scientists answer enduring questions about the moon’s evolution. NASA’s probe LADEE is at the moon this year analyzing this interaction. Data from LADEE will also help in plan-ning missions to asteroids, many of which also have exospheres. — A .S .exosphere

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Over the decades, scientists have peered

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to come…and shared their predictions with

readers of Popular Mechanics.

What did they see? Flying ambulances.

Space suits made from paper. Utopian cities

with elevated sidewalks and sunken streets.

Even the cure for the common cold.

In our brand new book—a collection

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PHOTOGRAPH BY P H I L I P F R I E D M A N P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 21

Inspiration By DesignLEGO’S LATEST BUILDING BLOCKS TARGET FUTURE MAKERS AND ENGINEERS.

When I played with Legos as a kid, I ignored the instructions and followed my instincts, stacking the tiles to create futuristic landscapes. Lego Architecture Studio ($150) is for freestylers like me. While other sets in the architecture series give detailed plans for creating models of landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Guggenheim Museum, this 1210-piece collection consists of classic white and clear blocks, slopes, and plates for awakening your inner Frank Lloyd Wright. The package includes a 272-page primer on architectural design, and even a few construction tips. But what I like best about the set? No instructions. — DAV I D AG RELL

At PopMech we believe ditching the pavement means maximizing the fun.Surf and Turf

U P G R A D E / OF F - RO A DING

The military tested the tires by shooting them with an AK-47, then putting them on an ATV for 1000 miles of riding.


Sea-Doo’s optional Intelligent Brake and Reverse (iBR) system allows the Spark to stop 100 feet shorter than a non-iBR model and offers more precise control when docking or approaching a beach.

intelligent brake and reverse

Twenty-five years ago nearly every personal

watercraft was nimble and weighed half as much as typical

craft do today. The pricey models popular these days are closer

to real boats. That’s great for touring but not for zipping around a lake. The

Spark brings back some of that old-school, affordable joy in a lightweight, powerful

package. Trust us, it’s more fun than tubing behind a cigarette boat. — B EN STEWART

A flat tire quickly turns an all-terrain vehicle into a no-terrain vehicle. But not even a railroad spike can slow down the Sportsman WV850, because it uses nonpneumatic tires. The honeycomb design works by distributing the load throughout the whole tire via tension, the way that spokes support a bicycle wheel. And if you still manage to get stuck in the woods, never fear: A 3000-pound winch is standard. — M I KE AUST I N

At PopMech we believe ditching the pavementmeans maximizing the fun.

prf

Twenty-five years early every personal raft was nimble andf as much as typicaly. The pricey models hese days are closer t’s great for touring g around a lake. The e of that old-school, ghtweight, powerful

more fun than tubing boat. — B EN STEWART

polaris sportsman wv850 h.o.

$15,000 (base price)

sea-doo spark$5000

(base price)

CUTS BETTER. TURNS BETTER.FLAT OUT BETTER.How has Cub Cadet been an American Original since 1961? By engineering lawn tractors that deliver high performance season after season. And with a wide range of models to choose from, every Cub Cadet lawn tractor is strong enough to do more than mow. So whether you want to haul mulch, push gravel or even throw snow from your driveway, Cub Cadet will power through your day. And of course, you’ll always enjoy the consistently beautiful Cub Cadet Signature Cut.™

Test drive a Cub Cadet lawn tractor today and prove to yourself how strength and versatility come together for you. Find a dealer near you at cubcadet.com.

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Specifications and programs subject to change without notice. Images may not reflect unit specifications. © 2014 Cub Cadet

U P G R A D E / P M L A B


In an online forum more than 1000

contributors shared their visions for

Shapeoko 2. The fin-ished product reflects the collective opinion.

Shapeoko founder Edward Ford spent

five years designing a CNC machine

that a capable hob-byist can build in a

single weekend.

While 3D printers use additive manufactur-

ing, creating objects one microlayer at a time, CNC machines use subtractive

manufacturing— a cutting tool removes layers of material along

X, Y, and Z axes.

Shapeoko 2 Desktop CNC Machine $299 (mechanical parts only); $649 (full kit)

Shapeoko has built an impressive—and affordable—desktop milling machine, thanks to years of open-source collaboration. The model cuts wood, plastic, and metal, and features a larger, more accessible work

space than the original. The $649 kit is for any hobbyist, but the $299 kit is for experienced makers: You’ll need to supply your own electronics, motors, pulleys, and a Dremel-type rotary tool. — D.A.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY D AV I D L AW R E N C E ( L I G H T B U L B )


point 65n modular kayak $1200My dad bought a kayak for us to use on the weekends. Then he realized it prevented him from parking his car in the garage—the car that he couldn’t fit a kayak into. Point 65N’s kayaks snap apart into three 24-pound pieces that will tuck into most trunks. Settling into some-thing that can snap apart may be unsettling, but the boat is sturdy. A fourth piece can be added, turning the solo kayak into a tandem. You know, for family bonding. — JEN N I NGS B ROWN

dropled pro $100If I had a buck for every time a work lamp burned me or hit the ground and burst a bulb, I’d probably have enough to buy this pricey new “harsh-duty” light. Compared with the searing 262 F of a 60-watt conventional bulb, the 145 F of this LED bulb feels like cool water against the skin. But it’s also tough—tough enough to take 30 hits (and counting) with a baseball bat and still shine blindingly bright. — J.B.

With Point 65N’s Snap-Tap System,

the boat can be assembled or

disassembled in less than 30 seconds.

15 minutes could save you 15% or more on motorcycle insurance.

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U P G R A D E / BIK E S A ND B O O Z E

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAV I D L AW R E N C E


Neighbor acting smug about making his own beer? His hobby might require basic chemistry smarts—yours takes chemical and mechanical prowess. You can order everything you need to build your own mountain- dew-maker at clawhammersupply.com—the site even has a primer on the legality of moonshine, which really is worth reading. All you need is a plumbing torch, soldering tools, and a free afternoon. — J . B .

rideye $140 to $190Can I get a witness? Now riders can suit their bikes with a 1.5-inch spectator that helps with hit-and-runs and false claims. This small box, made of CNC-machined aluminum, records the last 2½ hours or 10 hours of your ride (depending on the model). If an accident occurs, the rider presses a button and Rideye saves the file. The device also has a built-in sensor that can detect a crash and save a file in case the cyclist is unable to do so. — DAR R EN O R F

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bare conductive electric paint pen $21 (pen only)The pen is mightier than the solder. Bare is a line of ink that can go on nearly any surface and transform it into a circuit. You’ve got a battery on one end and a small device on the other. Simply draw a line to connect the two using this electri-cally conductive paint. Created by four industrial design engineering students at the Royal College of Art, this carbon-based formula, made of food and cosmetic additives and nonmetallic conduc-tive particles, can help teach children the basics of electricity or allow developers to ditch the sol-dering iron and build an interface with a few well-placed strokes. — J . B .

worx aerocart $199The Aero-Cart is a 38-pound hybrid of a wheelbar-row and a hand truck. Swing down its lifting arms to carry pot-ted shrubs, and fold down its front lip to move appli-ances. With a 300-pound capacity and flat-free tires, it can carry bulk loads such as dirt, con-crete, and construc-tion debris. Just don’t tell anyone you have it. You’ll be every friend-in-need’s new best friend. — ROY

B EREN DSOH N

bosch glm 100 c professional $299; free app for iphone/android If you can’t read a tape measure, either put down the saw or pick up Bosch’s Bluetooth-enabled laser measurer. The device takes accu-rate measurements up to 330 feet away and sends them wirelessly to a smartphone app. That’s where the fun starts: Superimpose the dimensions onto photographs, calculate areas and volumes, add notes, create a job folder, and then send it all off in an email. — D . A .

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Its hills, valleys and uneven terrain inspired Husqvarna to create a line of all-wheel drive mowers

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I LLUSTRAT ION BY B E N W IS E M A N P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 33

3 Auto I N T E L

TEST DRIVESTOP TECH

HOT RIDES

Edited by ANDREW DEL-COLLE

A Time to Truce

ANDROID AND IOS ARE COMING TO YOUR CAR’S DASH, BUT CAN THE TWO OPERATING

SYSTEMS COEXIST? B Y A N D R E W D E L- C O L L E

LASER HEADLIGHTS, embedded 4G LTE con-nectivity, an in-car Domino’s Pizza app—there was plenty of automotive news at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas. In fact, more carmakers parked themselves at this most recent CES than in any previous year. But the biggest auto-tech announcement came from Google: Android for the car is coming.

With Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, and chipmaker Nvidia, Google has created the Open Automotive Alliance, which will start integrating the Android OS into infotainment systems—those do-everything screens in our cars—this year. What exactly this means for car buyers, though, is still unclear.

According to Brad Stertz, Audi’s corporate communications manager, we probably won’t


I LLUSTRAT ION BY J A C K DY L A N

The top layer. The UI is what you see on the screen and interact

with either by touch or with knobs and dials. Poor design by carmakers here can create a confusing user experi-ence, or UX, and is often the source of user frustration.

The soft-ware bridge

between the appli-cation framework and the operating system to support multimedia, video, navigation, audio, radio, acoustics, software updates, cloud services, and more. A very important layer.

The core of the infotain-

ment system. The OS controls access to pretty much everything—pro-cessor, memory, storage, the dis-play—in the head unit. Common auto platforms are QNX, Linux, Windows, and, soon, Android.

WHY SO COMPLICATED?

HEAD UNIT

OPERATING SYSTEM

CARPLATFORMSMOBILE

INTEGRATION

APPLICATION FRAMEWORK

Includes the display, hous-

ing, circuit board, CD/DVD player, radio, and multiple processors—col-lectively called the car’s head unit. Must be able to withstand shock, vibration, temper-ature, and humid-ity extremes.

Enables the car to con-

nect with smart-phones. Supports Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and programs such as Mirror-Link to import the phone’s media and apps. This is how Apple’s iOS in the Car will be imported.

Manages everything from your Pandora app to navigation and

interactions with the system, such as text-to-speech and voice command. It controls all application functions and which apps can appear in the head unit. Sorry, but no Candy Crush in the car.

USER INTERFACE

SOFTWARE

HARDWARE

The screens in our cars can be frustrating—slow, confusing, hard to read, impossible to sync with our phones. Infotainment systems have plenty of room for improvement, but as any software engineer will happily remind you, they are unbelievably complex. — A .D .C .

see a screen that looks like an Android smartphone’s in 2014. “I think what you’re going to see are some things that will allow Android devices to work more smoothly with cars,” Stertz says. For consumers that means a cleaner, more intuitive user expe-rience when connecting their Android smartphones and when using Android-based applications in the car.

The news is big, but it’s also expected. Our phones and our cars continue to merge, and Google is actually a little behind in gaining a greater presence on your dash. Apple already has its Siri Eyes Free voice command system in a few vehicles. And at its iOS 7 preview in June, the company announced that iOS in the Car, an interface built specifi-cally for the infotainment screen, will launch this year with a healthy list of carmakers as part-ners—a few of which also hap-pen to be a part of Google’s Open Automotive Alliance.

These developments have spurred a lot of speculation: Mainly, will automakers—and therefore consumers—have to choose one operating sys-tem over the other, as with our phones?

The Case for CoexistenceThe good news is that this doesn’t have to be an either-or situation. Android and iOS in the Car can technically coexist in the same head unit (see “Why So Complicated?”). Whereas Android will be embedded within the sys-tem and live in the background, iOS in the Car will be a very Apple-looking interface imported from the phone when called up, hijacking the stock screen for certain functions such as naviga-

tion or music. How ever, neither Apple nor Google will completely take over the infotainment sys-tem and control all of the car’s functions. They’ll simply add extra features on top of the existing in-car systems.

While a few carmakers have

showed interest in working with both companies, we don’t know yet if that will happen. Google and Apple could stipulate that they don’t want their systems sharing the center console. To do so, though, would be unwise. Although consumers want better

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A U T O I N T E L / T IME T O T RUC E


What a difference a roof makes. The convertible F-Type already has a solid structure, but the Coupe’s lid adds 80 percent more stiffness. So say goodbye to the squishy, on-the-limit handling of the ragtop and say hello to a more powerful 550-hp version of the supercharged V-8. Driving a preproduction V-8 R on the Circuit de Barcelona- Cataluña, the Coupe charmed and seduced in equal measure. It’s certainly fast, with a top speed of 186 mph and 0-to-60 acceleration of 4.0 sec-onds. And with a virtually flat torque curve the engine will heed any call no matter the speed. In fact, there’s so much grunt available the eight-speed automatic seems redundant. The handling is wonderful, with a neutral chassis balance turning into tail-out, drift-happy motor-ing on demand. As with the convertible, there are three versions of the Coupe: a V-6, a V-6 S, and the V-8 R we drove. The first two cost about $4000 less than the comparable droptop, but the V-8 R’s per-formance extras command a premium. That’s a shame, because this is the model we’d take—and tires aren’t cheap. — AN DREW ENG LISH

2015 Jaguar F-Type Coupe PR ICE : $65 ,895–$99 ,895 AVA I LABLE : NOW MPG (C I TY /HWY ) : 1 6 /23

smartphone integration with their cars, they will likely balk at the idea that their options could be limited because of a skirmish over their screens.

Chr istopher Katsaros, a spokesman for Google and Android, wouldn’t speculate on what full Android integration in a car might look like, but he says that carmakers will probably have an option. “That it’s a decision between Android or Apple might not necessarily be the case in terms of how automakers choose to integrate these serv ices,” he

wrote in an email. Audi, which already uses

Google Maps to supplement its navigation, is hoping to bring both operating systems into the car. “We want to have the capa-bility of not forcing people to sacrifice the experience depend-ing on which phone they have,” Stertz says.

And why would a carmaker want to choose one system over the other? Limiting your poten-tial customer base is bad busi-ness, and consumers might very well choose a comparable vehicle

from another manufacturer if it works markedly better with their phone.

It’s also important to remem-ber that Android-based devices and iPhones aren’t the only smartphones on the market, and infotainment systems are still fractious. Because of this, the car’s cabin needs to remain a place of inclusion rather than exclusion. After all, neither car-makers nor consumers want the $300 smartphone in our pockets dictating a $30,000 car purchase.

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For free personal car care advice, go to Meguiars.com or call 800-347-5700 Mon-Fri, 7:00 am to 4:00 pm, Sat, 7:00 am to 3:00 pm PST.

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A U T O I N T E L / T E S T DRI V E S

The setup: Unlike most other all-wheel-drive systems, there is no driveshaft to the rear wheels in the RLX Sport Hybrid. Two 36-hp electric motors at the rear axle, one for each wheel, and a 1.3-kwh battery pack in the trunk provide the AWD. Up front is a 47-hp motor built into the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. The payoff: City fuel economy is 8 mpg better than

in the front-drive RLX, and the EPA figures best all the competition’s, with the exception of the Lexus GS 450h, which isn’t as fun to drive. We managed 30 mpg until the road got curvy and we switched to Sport mode. When it comes to cornering, the RLX simply amazes. The trick: At low speeds the rear motors smooth out any roughness inherent in the dual-clutch transmission, and they provide instantaneous response that makes the car’s 377 total horsepower feel like much more. Best of all, each rear motor can push or drag its respective rear wheel to sharpen handling. The bottom line: Don’t lump the Sport Hybrid with the wallflower front-drive RLX. The way this car drives makes it a worthy alternative to the German sport sedans, the fuel economy is a nice bonus, and the price (even loaded with the $6000 Advance package) makes it a sweet deal. — M ICHAEL AUST I N

2014 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid SH-AWD

PR ICE : $60 ,000 ( EST. ) AVA I LAB LE : NO W MPG (C I TY /HWY ) : 28 /32

a RLX Sporrtt -AWD

A U T O I N T E L / T E S T DRI V E S

BMW makes a 2 Series? It does now. The 1 Series is no more in the U.S., and this slightly larger rear-wheel-drive coupe now occupies the tiny-car spot in BMW’s lineup. Is it better than the 1 Series? You could say that. It’s a bit more sophisticated and a whole lot badder—especially in the M235i trim we drove. BMW reengineered the suspension components (firmer in the M version), weight distribution is now 50/50, and the M235i’s grip is exceptionally tenacious, thanks to a set of fat Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires. The bad news is that it’s heavier.

What’s the power situation? There are two engines—a 240-hp four-cylinder (228i) and a 320-hp inline six (M235i)—that are essentially carryovers with efficiency tweaks. Both come turbocharged, with direct injection, and mated to either a standard eight-speed automatic or a no-cost six-speed manual transmission.Who should buy this car?

Those pining for the best car in its class. Oh, and a healthy stock portfolio helps. — TONY SWAN

P R IC E : $3 3 , 02 5 –$44 , 02 5 AVA I LABLE : NO W MP G (C I TY /HWY ) : 2 2 –2 3 /3 4–3 5 ( I - 4 ) , 1 9 –2 2 /2 8–3 2 ( I - 6 )


2014 BMW 2 Series

From the back seat, the new 2015 Kia K900 is as good as any large sedan. With the $6000 VIP package, the rear seats recline, heat up, and ventilate for comfort. The Nappa leather is so sumptuous you feel guilty for not wearing Armani trousers. Too bad the driving experi-ence is devoid of sensation, which is fine in dentistry but not behind the wheel. The 420-hp 5.0-liter direct-injection V-8 is quiet and unobtrusive, the eight-speed automatic transmission’s shifts can be detected only by German shepherds, and the ride quality is hot-air-balloon floaty. Corporate brother to the Hyundai Equus, the K900 is a competent competitor with the Lexus and Infiniti sedans, if you want road isolation and the ironic statement of a $66,400 Kia over the cachet of prestige nameplates such as BMW and Mercedes. A 311-hp V-6 version should be available by summer. — JOH N PEARLEY H U FFMAN

2015 Kia K900 PR ICE : $60 , 400 AVA I LABLE : NOW MPG (C I TY /HWY ) : 1 5 /23

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THE 2015 FORD F-150 was both the star and the biggest controversy of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The all-new truck carries an aluminum body, resulting in a 700-pound weight savings over the outgoing steel version. The switch in materials is not only a massive undertak-ing—it’s also a huge gamble. The F-Series is America’s best-selling vehicle and the bedrock of Ford’s profitability. If things go wrong, this move could crash the company.

Aluminum as a manufacturing material is nothing new. “The use of aluminum has been proved in other industries—military and avi-ation. And we’ve already had it in the hood for a long time,” Eric Peterson, Ford Truck’s marketing manager, says. Other automakers, notably Audi and Jaguar Land Rover, make entire vehicles out of the metal. But nobody has used so much aluminum on such a large scale. More F-Series trucks sell in a month than Jaguar Land Rover’s yearly total volume.

The main motivation behind the alumi-

num push is fuel economy. According to John Paul, AAA’s Car Doctor, the move to aluminum “makes sense on trucks, which are tradition-ally the most fuel-thirsty.” EPA estimates sug-gest a 2 percent mpg increase for every 100 pounds of weight loss. That guideline means the F-150’s fuel efficiency could jump by as much as 3 mpg with the base 3.7-liter V-6 (or about 20 mpg city/26 mpg highway), and possibly higher with the new 2.7-liter turbo. Considering how many F-150s are made each year, that improvement makes a big differ-ence in Ford’s average fleet fuel economy—more than every hybrid the company sells.

But there’s a flip side to these benefits. Current estimates project steel to end 2014 at $625 per ton and aluminum to finish at $2000 per ton. Even though less aluminum is used by weight, it’s still more than twice as expensive as steel for most applications. The cost difference also means pricier parts, and bigger repair bills could result in higher insur-ance rates.

Repairing these vehicles is also a chal-lenge because the metal’s poor memory makes aluminum difficult to straighten once it is deformed. Working on aluminum requires special tools, so Ford is offering a 20 percent discount on aluminum-repair equipment for a limited time. Still, you won’t be able to get your F-150 fixed just anywhere—fewer than 10 percent of independent repair shops are certified to do aluminum bodywork. But Peter-son says that 75 to 80 percent of owners live within 30 minutes of one of these shops, and he stresses that the aluminum body has “more ding–dent resistance than steel.”

All of this makes for a possibly perilous first year for Ford. On the plus side, the car-maker can tout the F-150’s superior fuel economy and hauling capabilities; the lighter body allows for increased towing and payload capacities. That will surely lure in custom-ers, and the competition can’t allow such an advantage to persist. If Ford’s F-150 experi-ment is even remotely successful, we could see the entire auto industry follow suit.

FINGERS CROSSED FORD IS BETTING THE HOUSE ON THE F-150’S NEW ALUMINUM BODY. B Y J A M E S TAT E

When sheet metal buckles or dimples due to coil, installation, fabrication, or substructure stress. Most commonly occurs on vehicle roofs. The quirky term refers to the old long-neck oil can, where the bottom pops in and out.

oil canning

A U T O I N T E L / F ORD ’ S BIG B E T

Smarter. Sleeker. More advanced than ever before. With standard hands-free Bluetooth®* and an available 8-inch touch-screen audio and navigation system, it might as well be from the future.toyota.com/highlander

Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. iPhone® accessory is not included. iPhone® is a registered trademark of Apple Inc. All rights reserved. *The Bluetooth® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Toyota is under license. A compatible Bluetooth®-enabled phone must first be paired. Phone performance depends on software, coverage and carrier. ©2014 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. Muppets ©2014 Disney

ROOM FOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS.

NO ROOM FOR BORING.


You can get either a liftgate or barn doors

on the back of a Transit

Connect.

You can get either a liftgate or barn doors

on the back of a Transit

Connect.

THAT’LL WORKAMERICA’S CARGO VANS FINALLY STEP OUT OF THE ’70S WITH EUROPEAN-INSPIRED UTILITY. B Y B E N S T E W A R T

THE HUMBLE, TRADITIONAL, AND—LET’S BE HONEST—outdated American cargo van is finally going the way of shag carpet and porthole windows. Just as they’ve done with passenger cars, automakers are going global. According to IHS Automotive senior analyst Stephanie Brinley, by developing these European-style

FORD TRANSIT CONNECTA payload capacity of up to 1600 pounds is basically

unchanged on the second-generation Transit Connect, but there are now two wheelbases. Also, optional

fold-flat passenger seating in a wagon model makes a true minivan that’s about a foot shorter than a Honda Odyssey.

NISSAN NV200

Doubling as an NYC taxi, the little NV is a smart hauler. Nis-san found that the

work crowd typi-cally uses only one cargo door for load-ing, so the NV200’s

curbside rear door is much larger than

the roadside one. And because com-mercial truck driv-ers constantly hop in and out of their

vehicles, Nissan designed the seats with wear patches.

The NV will soon take on a Chevrolet badge as the 2015

City Express.

S M A L L VA N S

RAM PROMASTER CITYThe small van from Ram is based on the Fiat Doblo (pictured

above) but will receive a new face similar to big brother Promaster’s. Dodge Caravan fans need not worry—the Pro-

Master City is aimed solely at commercial customers.

The NV200 comes with a cubby

between the seats that fits a laptop

or file folder for record keeping.

This is the Fiat Doblo. Soon

it will also be the ProMaster City.


vans, carmakers can sell them in worldwide markets and upgrade them more frequently. Don’t call this a van comeback, however. IHS projects the domestic market for all vans will be nearly 400,000 by 2017, which is slightly smaller than the prerecession level. But we will see more choices, which means happier customers. “A

business that might have chosen a larger van in the past will buy a Transit Connect because they realize they don’t need as much space,” Brinley says. IHS fore-casts that smaller vans such as the Transit Connect will make up almost 25 percent of the market by 2015. Here’s a guide to the latest European transplants.

MERCEDES-BENZ SPRINTER

RAM PROMASTERThe Ram’s Fiat-based chassis might be front-wheel drive, but it’s engineered to handle serious work. In many cases the ProMaster matches or exceeds the capability of the

rear-drive competition. And the FWD configuration creates a low cargo floor for easy loading. Forgive the ugly nose—

at least it’s made of three replaceable plastic panels.

FORD TRANSITHow do you replace America’s best-selling van? Very care-

fully. The new Transit will slowly start replacing the E-Series this summer. Ford says the Transit can haul at least

300 pounds more than the Econoline and delivers 25 percent better fuel economy. Max cargo volume gets upped by more

than 270 cubic feet over the largest E-Series.

L A R G E VA N S

Most vans have clipboard cubbies, but this guy has

a spring clip mount-ed to the dash

for holding papers.

The new Becker Map Pilot nav

system’s brain can be removed from

the glovebox for easy vehicle swapping.

One of the Transit’s coolest features is

its rear cargo doors. They swing wide

and can open 270 degrees to provide

unobstructed access to the utility space.

The first-generation Sprinter arrived in

the U.S. in 2001 badged as a Freight-

liner, so the new 2014 model arrives with an established history of reliability

and low operating costs. As for versa-tility, the high-roof cargo models can

swallow items 6.5 feet tall, and

the longest-wheel-base 3500-series

Sprinters can move an incredible

547 cubic feet of stuff and tow up to

7500 pounds.

THE BROUGH SUPERIOR MOTORCYCLE WAS A BIKE AHEAD OF ITS TIME AND A SHINING EXAMPLE OF BRITISH WORKMANSHIP. THAT’S WHY JAY OWNS SIX.

AS MUCH AS I LIKE MOTORCYCLES, I’Mnot about the black-leather, tough-guy, motorcycle-gang image that seems to have strong appeal here in America—you know, that “Yo, bro” kind of thing, riding into town and making noise. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve always admired the Brit-ish and European version of motorcycling, which celebrates bikes as a superior and—certainly in the ’20s and ’30s—a faster form of transportation.

That’s why I like the Brough (pro-nounced bruff) Superior, a legendary Brit-ish motorcycle built from 1919 to 1940. During that time Broughs were the best bikes you could buy and were associated with wealthy, well-educated people. When George Brough split off from his father’s motorcycle company, he called his bikes Brough Superior, so people would know they’d been improved. He was something of a P.T. Barnum, but he was also a successful motorcycle racer. He once won 51 consecu-tive races before a blown tire ended his

Superiority Complex

streak and racing career. But you know what? The bike still crossed the finish line. George just wasn’t on it.

George Brough had no inhibitions about seeing a good design and copying it. His machines had a level of fit and finish that was far better than anything else—certainly in Great Britain. Much like the early Rolls-Royce, the Brough was a triumph of workmanship over engineering. Many models had two of everything—magnetos, carburetors, oil pumps, exhausts, and mufflers. And at a time when the average British motor-cycle was built for two people and could go only 60 to 70 mph, Broughs were built for a single rider, and the most powerful models could top 100 mph.

Visually, Broughs are stunning. When you look at one, it’s like opening the back of a watch. They are a classic case of old-fashioned, with their exposed valve gear and oil lines. You see the rocker arms going up and down, and the Pilgrim oil pump even has a glass window where you can watch the oil pumping through. The Brough still has the best-looking gas tank in motor-cycle history—stretched lozenge shape, chromed side panels, gold-leaf striping, and black lacquer top.

George Brough didn’t like exposed cables; he liked a very clean look. So the throttle cable ran through the

J AY L E N O ’ S G A R A G E B Y J AY L E N O PHOTOGRAPHS BY J O H N L A M M

Jay’s 1939 Brough Superior SS 100

features a Matchless MX V-twin engine built specifically

for this model.

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J AY L E N O ’ S G A R A G E

PHOTOGRAPH BY N A M E T Y E E K AY

twist grip and the handlebars.The brake cables were routed under the tank. If you enjoy using a hand shift, you can feel the lever snick-snick into a gated slot the way you would on a Ferrari. When it clicks you know you’re in that gear, and suddenly you’re going 60 or 70 mph. It’s not like bikes today, where speed is effort-less. There’s a bit of work and concentration involved in a Brough, and it’s all quite linear.

With their large-displacement engines, Broughs were the fastest bikes of the 1920s and 1930s. George Brough designed his motor-cycles around the tank, then he’d have the top engine manufacturers such as J.A. Prestwich (J.A.P.), Matchless, Motosacoche, and Barr & Stroud build engines to his specification. He tried inline fours, V-4s, and even an Austin Seven car engine. In this regard, G.B. was ahead of his time. Most small automotive manufacturers today are boutique operators. They search for the best brakes, like Brembo, and the best engines, like AMG. George Brough was doing that in the 1920s.

Brough built only about 3000 motor-cycles. Back then a new Brough cost the equivalent of a small house in England, and owning a Brough was something to shoot for. They were rare bikes, and most people only ever got to see a black-and-white photo of a Brough Superior. If a Brough went through a village, motorcycle enthusiasts would talk about it for weeks.

Brough prices today have gone crazy. In 1982 or 1983, this one guy wanted $10,000 for a 1929 SS 100. I thought that was just ridiculous. Then they started to go up in value. In 1987, I said, “Okay, I’ll buy it for 10 grand.” The guy told me, “It’s 30 grand now.” I said, “I’m not paying 30 grand for that bike.” Then the ’90s came, and I called him again. “I’ll give you 30 grand.” Let’s just say I finally ended up buying that bike for a lot more money than when we started.

The SS 100 is the greatest bike Brough built. It has a Bonniksen Isochronous speed-ometer with a very accurate watch-type movement and a trip-distance display. The speedometer has two needles that take turns indicating the speed. So while one

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Above: The Brough Supe-rior’s exposed valve gear meant oil was flung every-where, but the bikes were so high-quality that riders didn’t mind.

needle rests at 50, which also serves as 0, the other sweeps around the dial, briefly pausing on the current speed. If you’re going above 50 mph, the indicating needle does a full pass around the dial, and there’s a bit of math involved. Then it’s the second needle’s turn.

I own six Broughs: a 1929 SS 100, a 1939 SS 100 (the most modern, and my favorite), a 1932 SS 80, two 1934 11-50s (they were police bikes), and a 1930 680. They are all great fun to ride. You can hear the valves ticking—CHIH! CHIH! CHIH!—and the Pilgrim oil pump pulsing. It’s all very mechanical. People are aston-ished when I roll up on a Brough. Enthusiasts know about them and remember the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, but most people have never actually seen one. So it’s fun telling them about the bike.

I think it’s fair to say that T.E. Lawrence, whose life was the inspiration for the movie, embodied the Brough mystique. A British army officer and a huge figure during World War I, Lawrence liked fast motorcycles and owned seven Broughs. He died on May 19, 1935, after crashing his SS 100 when he swerved to avoid two bicyclists. The movie opens with his fatal accident.

Fine motorcycles in Britain are cherished; you take care of them. That’s why so many Broughs have sur-vived. They were advertised as “The Rolls-Royce of Motorcycles.” Rolls didn’t like this one bit. The storygoes that when G.B. got wind that Rolls was send-ing a representative over to his factory to tell him to stop, he had his men wear white coats and gloves. The Rolls inspector was so impressed with the attention to detail, he decided Brough had the same standards, and Rolls-Royce let him continue to use the slogan. That was the kind of showman George Brough was. Even if his bikes were the fastest, he would add 10 or 15 mph just to have that extra edge. And Brough Superior motorcycles still have it. PopMech

Left: The SS 100’s Bonniksen Isochro-nous speedometer uses two needles to indicate speed.

97

81

58

81

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YOU’RE NOT PARANOID.

YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

Today, our every activity can be quietly monitored, from who our friends are to all of our fi nancial transactions. And with medical records in the “cloud” and imminent gene sequencing, even our bodies are up for grabs. What can

we do? From phone hacking to identity and credit theft, Who’s Spying On You? tells the stories of real people whose privacy has been violated, describes the technologies used to intrude, and reveals how we can protect ourselves in a world fi lled with spies.

I’M STANDING AT THE EDGE OF A FIELDin southern Florida, strapped to another man in a harness of aluminum tubing and nylon webbing like a pantomime horse. I’m in front; veteran paragliding pilot Paul Czarnecki is in back. It’s early morning, and the air is calm and quiet except for the roar of the 15-hp two-stroke engine strapped to Czarnecki’s back. Behind him, 230 square feet of ripstop nylon lies spread out in an arc. “Let’s go!” he says.

I can feel him pressing forward in the harness as we both start to run. Then we slow down, the wing pulling up into the air behind us like a kite. Now it’s overhead, and we surge forward again, the engine

I ’ L L T R Y A N Y T H I N G B Y J E F F W I S E

PM’S DAREDEVIL-AT-LARGE TAKES OFF IN A POWERED PARAGLIDER.

Becoming an Airplane

roaring louder, the lift of the wing making me light on my feet. It’s hard to gain traction, but I run until my feet are bicy-cling in the air as if I’m a car-toon character who’s just run off a cliff.

The ground moves past in a blur. We’re climbing, the grass of the field and then the line of trees and the canal beyond it all fall away. And now we’re hundreds of feet up, with the islands of the Gulf Coast stretching to a misty horizon. It feels as if we’re dangling from the troposphere, with nothing between us and the fatally dis-tant ground but the thin fabric of our seats. All I can do is con-centrate on not freaking out, because if I do, I could bring us both down.

I met Czarnecki at the Sun ’nFun air show in Lakeland, Fla. He was drumming up busi-ness for the ultralight-aircraft school he operates out of a grass airstrip near Fort Myers. It’s one of the few in the coun-try to instruct in powered para-gliders, or PPGs, a minimal-ist approach to aviation that involves no aircraft per se, just a propeller, a motor, and a fab-ric paraglider wing. The fuse-lage? Your body.

The whole rig costs less than $10,000 and can fit into an SUV. If you can find a field a few hundred feet across,

you can take off, and you need even less real estate to land. The idea fascinated me, but given how little there is to keep you in the air, it seemed terrifying as well. Czarnecki, however, assured me that flying a PPG is easy. “Come down on a Monday,” he told me, “and I’ll have you soloing by Friday.” So I went.

The week starts just after dawn on Monday. Twi-light is prime time for PPGs: Because they’re light and slow—designed to fly around 20 mph—they can be tricky to control in a brisk wind. So, they’re really only used a couple of hours after sunrise and before sunset, when the air is most still.

We start by laying the wings out in an arc, getting familiar with the skein of lines that connect the wings to the pilots’ harnesses, and learning how to pull the lines.

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After leaving the local cinemaplex and watching the latest superhero smashthrough walls and fly at the speed of sound all done with the latest in computer

graphics, I was left a little cold. I checked my TAC-7 watch and that was two hoursand four minutes wasted. What would a real hero do with those precious minutes?

We Only Need to Look Around Us to See the Real Thing. The honors needto go to our live action heroes where every second carries risk: The firefighter in a 3 alarm blaze, the police officer racing to the scene, an ambulance driver trimming lifesaving seconds at breakneckspeed, and the Coast Guard rescue in 20 foot seas.

And without a doubt, there are over 2 million Action heroeswho sign up for danger from the minute they enlist in ourmilitary. Each rely on their training every day so that theysynchronize their actions and save lives.

The TAC-7 was made for our real action heroes. It is made from super toughstainless steel with luminous hands and markers that can be seen in any dark spot.The precision movement oscillates at 32,768 Hz for astounding accuracy. The time-piece is water resistant and carries a two year warranty on the movement so there isno reason to treat it gently.

And since we never really pay our heroes anywhere close to enough, we price theTAC-7 for the real world. The watch was originally $299 but for the next few weeks,the TAC-7 is only $59.

The TAC-7 is for the real action heroes among us. And because of that we will be donating part of the proceeds to the USO and the Red Cross. To the real heroes.

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I ’ L L T R Y A N Y T H I N G

Though they look like parachutes, they’re actually wings that are inflated by their passage through the air. Once we get them up in the air, we practice “kiting”—pulling the control lines to move the wings where we want them to go. It’s tough, but crucial to the most difficult phase of PPG flying: getting off the ground. It turns out that the whole “flying a PPG is easy” idea relates only to the part where you’re in the air. Jeff Goin, a veteran PPG flyer who is also a helicopter pilot and an airline cap-tain, describes launching a PPG as “the most difficult thing in aviation.”

When the wind rises, we do classroom work in the tin-roofed shack that passes for a hangar at Pine Island Airport. The theory of the sport couldn’t be simpler. You’ve got a hand throttle, which determines whether the PPG climbs or descends. (The wing is rigged to always fly at the same speed.) To turn, you shift your weight from one hip to the other while pulling on one of the two brakes. And that’s it, basically. Of course, there are a number of unwise things you could do to collapse the wing and send yourself plummeting to the ground, such as pulling too hard on both your control lines at the same time or flying into turbulence.

Czarnecki has us strap on a 45-pound engine and walk around, playing with the throttle. At half-throttle you have to lean way back against the thrust of the propel-ler, so you feel as if you’re walking down a steep hill. Tuesday we continue to practice our kiting. On Wednesday we take things a step further: Czarnecki ties a rope to my harness and uses it bare-handed to pull me into the air. I’m only a few feet high, but the sensation is unmistakable: I’m flying.

Finally, on Thursday it’s time to tie it all together. My fellow students and I take turns strapping into the front of Czarnecki’s two-man rig. Even with his expertise, get-ting off the ground is no sure thing; the student before me tries four times before giving up. My first time, Czarnecki and I run 20 feet before the wing slips sideways and collapses. On our second try we’re airborne, and it’s another world—a terrifying one. Czarnecki hands me the controls. I’ve spent plenty of time in the cockpits of planes and gliders, but now I’m so alarmed that if I were on my own, I’m sure I’d panic and die. As it is, I’m using all my brainpower just to focus on breathing.

Suddenly the engine goes quiet and

Czarnecki takes control, spiral-ing us down for an emergency landing. Thanks to a loose spark plug cable, the engine has died. Excuse me?

Once we’re back on the ground, Czarnecki says I’m ready:

Tomorrow I’ll solo. I sleep poorly that night. A part of my brain tells me that it’s a remarkably safe form of aviation; another part tells me aaaarrrgghh.

The day dawns clear and calm. Out in the takeoff field, I lay out my wing and strap in. Czarnecki pulls the starter cord, then faces me and grabs my harness. “Stand close,” he says. I sidle up. “Ready?” We move together as the wing fills and rises. Already I’m light on my feet. Czarnecki steps aside. Even as I squeeze the throttle, I feel the wing getting off-center, pulling me to the left, so I run at an angle until the pressure on the harness straps becomes more even. “Add power! Add power!” he shouts. My speed picks up, I lift my feet, and the grass whooshes past. I’ve done it. I’m up.

I’m a foot high, 2 feet, 10. Through my earpiece, Czarnecki tells me to add thrust to keep climbing, then to pull on one brake and shift my weight to turn. I’m surprised at how much less scary it is to fly solo.

Under Czarnecki’s direction I fly up and down the length of the field. I’m concentrating so hard that I barely notice the sunlight reflecting off the ocean to the west or the subtropical greenery all around. Slung under the wing like a pendulum, I’m being pushed this way and that by burbles of air, but I manage to dampen the swinging by adjusting my lines. I’m in complete control. It’s a childhood fantasy come to life.

After 15 minutes Czarnecki has me fly upwind along the middle of the field, easing power all the while. I descend as if on an elevator. A hundred feet up the world seems to shift focus, from aerial view to you-are-here, every blade of grass crisp and discrete. At 5 feet I pull the brakes to slow my descent and step onto the green carpet of the runway. The wing settles behind me. I’ve done it. I’m alive.

Half an hour later I’m rigging up to go again. This time, I promise myself I’m going to enjoy the scenery. PopMech

After four days of instruction at PlanetPPG near Fort Myers, Fla., the author prepares to solo in a powered paraglider. All he needs is a paramotor, a paraglider wing, a harness, and a field.

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Danielle ApplestoneOther Machine Co.

Bre PettisMakerBot

Beth ComstockGeneral Electric

Ben KaufmanQuirky

Yancey StricklerKickstarter

Matthew BurnettMaker’s Row

Tanya MenendezMaker’s Row

2 5 I N N O V AT O R S W H O A R E R E I N V E N T I N G M O V E R S

S e t D e s i g n b y B e d n a r k S t u d i o S t y l i n g b y E r i c L a u n d e r & D a n n y O ' N e i l l

Chris Anderson3D Robotics

Christy CanidaInstructables

Jim NewtonTechShop

Palmer LuckeyOculus VR

Ayah BdeirLittleBits

Limor FriedAdafruitIndustries

Mark HatchTechShop

EricWilhelmInstructables

THE AMER ICAN DREAM BY CHR IS RAYMONDM A K E R S

P H O T O G R A P H B Y P E T E R Y A N G


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PORTRA ITS BY R I L E Y R O S S M O

1.Perry Chen & Yancey StricklerKickstarterIn 2009 this duo unveiled a website that lets ordinary people provide support—often just $5 or $10 at a time—for cre-ative projects by artists, musicians, and filmmakers. Crowd funding has since transformed areas such as game design

and hardware development as well. So far Kickstartermembers have contributed nearly $1 billion to 55,000 projects, helping to launch the Pebble smartwatch, the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, playgrounds, orbit-ing satellites, and 20 movies that were screened at 2014’s Sundance festival. Résumé builder: Chen was waiting tables at a Brooklyn diner when he shared the idea for Kickstarter with Strickler, a regular customer.

2.Carl BassAutodeskFew people have democratized the tools of invention the way Carl Bass has. Autodesk has always been a leader in computer-aided design (CAD) software. In recent years the CEO has led the company’s push into 3D modeling, striving all the while to make digital design and manufactur-ing tools accessible to tinkerers and small business owners. Under his leadership the company has released the Autodesk

The people listed here are changing the world of innovation, the kind that happens in garages, at kitchen tables, and in shared workshops. POPULAR MECHANICS readers have always been passionate about tinkering and invention. But now, as never before, DIYers are being empowered to design, manufacture, and market their creations. Call it the maker movement, a fresh industrial revolution, or the new innovation economy. By any name, this is a great time to be an innovator—and we’re just get-ting started. These visionaries are leading the way.

123D suite of easy-to-use apps, partnered with the MakerBot 3D-printer company, invested in the maker-space TechShop, and bought Instructables, a leading online community for sharing DIY projects.

3.Lisa & S. Scott CrumpStratasysThe Crumps are pioneers in the development of 3D print-ing. In 1988 Scott started working on a toy frog for his 2-year-old daughter, fashion-ing it layer by layer using a mixture of polyethylene and candle wax dispensed from a glue gun. Stratasys, the com-pany he launched with his wife, Lisa, has since used Scott’s Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology to become a leading maker of 3D printers. FDM powers high-end indus-trial machines, but it’s also found in the inexpensive desk-top devices sold by MakerBot, which Stratasys bought in 2013.

4.Nick WoodmanGoProWoodman, a surfer, set out to design a wrist strap for shut-terbugs riding waves. Eventu-

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Paul GrahamY CombinatorGraham didn’t found Dropbox, Airbnb, or Reddit, but all three companies are indebted to him. They are among the 630 start-ups the Silicon Valley guru has shepherded through his ground-breaking business-accelerator program. Twice a year Gra-ham and his Y Combinator colleagues run a few dozen budding entrepreneurs through a high-stakes, 13-week boot camp. The

hopefuls polish their business plans with A-list mentors before pitching them to a roomful of venture capitalists. Kids now drop out of Harvard and Stanford to participate in the program, and the federal government, universities, and thousands of business leaders worldwide have adopted Graham’s idea. Free advice: Aim for “ramen profitability” in the first year of a startup—just enough revenue to buy cheap pasta and keep the repo man at bay.

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ally, his R&D sessions in the ocean led to the world’s most adventurous video camera. In the decade since, GoPro lenses have ascended to space, plumbed the ocean depths, and survived thousands of rough-and-tumble shoots on bicy-cles, skateboards, snowboards, hang gliders, weather bal-loons—you name it. Once every 3 minutes a new clip featuring the exploits of a GoPro user is uploaded to YouTube. And that reveals Woodman’s greatest achievement: unleashing the creativity of millions of ama-teur moviemakers.

GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition

Adafruit MintyBoostMintyBoost

5.Beth ComstockGeneral ElectricBeth Comstock is the chief marketing officer for GE, but her efforts stretch far beyond traditional corporate lines. She firmly believes that the century- old global titan can benefit from aligning itself with the upstart maker move-ment, and so she seeks out new ideas by sponsoring hackathons, funding startups, and partnering with cre-ative hotbeds such as Quirky and TechShop. No surprise, she is also fueling a culture of agility and inventiveness in GE’s own R&D facilities. In doing so, she is blazing a path for other industrial giants.

6.Limor FriedAdafruit IndustriesWhile working on her master’s degree at MIT, Limor Fried used to relax at night by building synthesizers and other DIY electronics projects, then posting the instructions online. After fans started asking for help locating parts, she launched Adafruit. The company now sells electron-ics kits with open-source licenses, encouraging would-be inventors to experiment and have fun. The popular Minty-Boost, for example, is a mobile-device charger housed in an Altoids-size tin. Fried’s site includes vibrant forums and video tutorials, and she awards badges for coding and welding. Her work is clearly making an impact: After watching the pink-haired engi-neer’s webcasts, one girl asked her father, “Are there any boy engineers?” Mission state-ment: Fried calls Adafruit “an educational company that just happens to have a gift shop at the end.”


9.Bre PettisMakerBot“The opportunity for creative explorers has never been better,” Bre Pettis likes to say. He is no doubt speaking from personal experience. The former Seattle art teacheremerged from a subculture of makers who began pains-takingly building their own 3D printers in the early 2000s. He has since made the technology more accessi-ble by creating a ready-to-use printer for everyone. The CEO unveiled the first MakerBot at the South by South-west festival in 2009, using it to print plastic shot glasses for attendees. Today his printers are sophisticated enough to help NASA engineers build early-stage models, and simple enough to find a home in elementary schools. Résumé builder: Pettis once worked for Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in London.

10.Tony FadellNest LabsFadell spearheaded the develop-ment of the iPod and the iPhone at Apple. Having helped rev-olutionize music and mobile communications, he turned his attention to the Internet of Things. His first target? The thermostat—an unsexy device that governs 10 percent of U.S. energy consumption. With the Nest, he replaces a crude tech-

nology that hadn’t changed in decades with a device that intelligently regulates the home environment. His company, which Google recently bought for $3.2 billion, plans to pioneer what Fadell calls the conscious home. Free advice: “It’s all about frustration. I peer into products and think, what’s wrong with these?”

11.Avi Reichental 3D SystemsReichental is one of 3D printing’s chief evangelists. A for-

mer executive at a packing-materials corporation (and onetime helicopter mechanicin the Israeli air force), he enjoys talking up the wonders of 3D-printed layer cakes in TV studios, conference centers, and classrooms alike. The CEO has also upheld the spirit of innovation at 3D Systems, not only at the high end but also at the low—with the $1300 Cube device the company created for everyday innovators.

12.Christy Canida & Eric WilhelmInstructablesMore than the work he did at MIT while earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, it was his passion for kite surf-ing that led Wilhelm to cre-ate Instructables. Launched in 2005 with his wife, Christy, and colleagues at the design firm Squid Labs, the DIY web-site quickly became a forum for step-by-step instructions—the kind Wilhelm had been distrib-uting to fans of his handmade

8.Neil GershenfeldCenter for Bits and Atoms, MITIt started with a class called How to Make (Almost) Anything. Gershenfeld—known as the intellectual godfather of the maker movement—wanted to teach MIT students how to operate computer- controlled machinery. But he soon decided that high-tech tools weren’t just for engineers, and started opening facilities to provide the public with access to laser cutters and milling machines. These “fab labs” have spread from the United States to Peru, Finland, South Africa, and beyond. They form a global community that shares ideas and designs across borders.

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boards and sails. The site, which was bought by Autodesk in 2011, now features more than 100,000 user-generated projects in fields from cooking to woodworking to electronics.

13.Tobias LütkeShopifyIn 2004 Tobias Lütke startedselling snowboards online, working out of his garage in Ottawa, Ontario. Unable to find a turnkey e-commerce platform, he built his own using the nascent Ruby on Rails. Before long, he was out of the snow-board business and into helping others set up online storefronts. Today he counts thousands of small-scale merchants among his customers, not to men-tion big companies such as GE, CrossFit, and Tesla Motors.

14.Palmer LuckeyOculus VRAt the age of 21 Palmer Luckeyhas been granted

$91 million in venture capital to make science fiction come to life. His virtual-reality head-set started in his home work-shop as a solitary four-year labor of love. Once unveiled, it became the world’s most eagerly awaited piece of video-game technology. Already in the hands of developers, the Ocu-lus Rift promises to transform not just our weekend bouts of Doom and other games but also architecture, medicine, brain studies, education, space explo-ration, and warfare.

Ben KaufmanQuirky“Invention is really, really hard, but really, really important,” Kaufman says. “We started Quirky to make invention accessible, and make sure every great idea in the world ships.” His company now fields about 3000 product ideas a week from an online community of nearly800,000 inventors. Members com-ment and vote on each other’s pitches—which vary in complexity

from napkin sketches to working prototypes. Then the Quirky staff selects the best ideas and handles the design, engineering, marketing, and sourcing needed to bring them to market. Community members who contribute to a product’s development share in its profits. Résumé builder: Kaufman started his first company, Mophie, in high school. Using money raised from his parents’ sec-ond mortgage, he flew to China to find a manufacturer to make the lanyard headphones he’d invented.

16.Mark Hatch & Jim NewtonTechShopIf you want to see inventors launching companies along-side hobbyists building birthday gifts, step inside one of the eight TechShops that Hatch and Newton have opened so far. They are creating spaces where people can tinker with laser cutters, welding equipment, CAD software, sewing machines, and 3D printers—all for a $125 monthly membership fee. Think of it as a gym for makers. Tech-Shops have birthed a number of commercial products, including Square’s electronic payment system, DODO-case’s iPad covers, and Lumio’s stylish, booklike lamp. Résumé builder: Hatch is the author of The MakerMovement Manifesto; Newton is a former software entrepreneur and a science adviser for MythBusters.

15Ben Kaufman

Quirky Pivot Power

17.Chris Anderson3D RoboticsEighteen months ago Chris Andersonwas a magazine editor. Today he runs 3D Robotics, a UAV company with a factory in Tijuana, Mexico. (As he wrote in the December/January issue of PopMech: “Yes, a Tijuana

drone factory. Beat that, sci-fi!”) In articles, talks, and his book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution,Anderson argues that desktop manufacturing, the online exchange of files and ideas, and digital mar-keting platforms are creating unprecedented oppor-tunities for inventors. And he’s got the personal story to prove it.

18.Ayah BdeirLittleBitsWith littleBits, Ayah Bdeir is turning electronics into a resource—like cardboard, plywood, or fabric—that any designer can use. Her color-coded bricks snap together with magnets. Each performs a spe-cific function, allowing users to quickly construct circuits that include sensors, switches, and motors. As simple to assemble as Legos, the kits lend some of the technical muscle of MIT Media Lab alumni such as Bdeir to artists, makers, and kids. The CEO has shipped her kits around the world—and to New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, where little-Bits are showcased in the permanent collection.


19.Dale DoughertyMaker MediaCrowds of creators gather at Maker Faires each year to share their projects and inspire one another. The massive meet-ups are the brainchild of Dale Dougherty, w h o l a u n c h e d b o t h t h e festival and Make magazine as forums for a new gen-eration of tinkerers, crafts-people, and entrepreneurs. There are now more than 80 Maker Faire events world-wide—including one planned for the White House later this year.

20.Eric Ries The Lean StartupEven if you’ve never heard of Eric Ries, odds are good you speak his language—especially if you work in Silicon Valley. Years spent working at startups laid the foundation for Ries’s best-selling book. As a writer and a speaker, he has popu-larized notions such as the minimum viable product and the pivot, outlining a phi-losophy of nimble business development now cham-pioned in tech incubators, Harvard B-school lecture halls, and corporate board-rooms. Free advice: Don’t confuse investment fund-ing with the validation of your idea.

littleBits Deluxe Kit

21.Peter WeijmarshausenShapewaysPeter Weijmarshausen calls his Shapeways facili-ties factories of the future. The company provides online access to high-end 3D printers—the kind that can manufacture products using a variety of plastics, metals, ceramics, and sandstone. Cus-tomers can also buy and sell items on Shapeways’ website. The marketplace features more than 1 million products, and 60,000 new designs are uploaded each month.

Matthew Burnett & Tanya MenendezMaker’s RowBy pairing entrepreneurs with domestic facto-ries, Maker’s Row is sparking a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. As a watch and accessories designer, Burnett discovered that working with local partners gave him huge advantages in turn-around time and quality control. The downside: It often took months to find the right facility. Menendez, a former operations expert at Google and Goldman Sachs, saw that as an opportunity. Together they launched the company in 2012.Free advice: “Have courage,” says Burnett. “Don’t be afraid to try a new idea—and then start over if it doesn’t work out.”

24.Danielle ApplestoneOther Machine Co.Danielle Applestone was using a DARPA grant to develop low-cost computer numerical control (CNC) machines for schools when the funding dried up. She didn’t waver. Applestone s imply took a CNC mil l her engineering team had designed and launched a consumer products compa-ny. The Othermill, priced at just under $2000, can etch circuit boards and carve complex 3D shapes in metal, wood, and other materi -als. Best of all, it’s small and quiet enough to sit on a kitchen table. Like desk-top 3D-printer firms, Other Machine Co. is converting an industrial technology into a tool for everyone.

25.Scott Miller Dragon InnovationMiller once built a 6-ton walking t r iceratops for Disney. He created a doll with artificial intelligence for Hasbro. At iRobot, he managed the manufacturing operations for the Roombavacuum cleaner. Now he helps entrepreneurs master the complexities of overseas production, introducing them to qualified manufacturing partners and putting prod-uct managers on the ground in Asia to sort out problems. Among the first 100 firms to enlist Dragon’s expertise were MakerBot, Pebble, and Formlabs. PopMech

23.Jay RogersLocal MotorsThis former Marine is shaking up the car world by enlisting an online community of enthusiasts for R&D—and recruit-ing customers to help build their own vehicles. His Rally Fighter is a street-legal off-road desert race car that was designed and built in an 18-month sprint. When DARPA challenged the company to construct a new combat-support vehicle, Local Motors finished the job in just four months. Résumé builder: Rogers earned a Harvard MBA—and served in Iraq during a nine-year career in the military.

Local Motors Rally Fighter

FLAWED STUDIES, AGENDA-DRIVEN RESEARCH, AND OPEN-DOOR JOURNALS ARE PUTTING THE PUBLIC AT RISK.

PM INVESTIGATES WHO CREATES IT, WHO PROMOTES IT—AND HOW YOU CAN FIGHT BACK.

T Y P O G R A P H Y B Y : J A C K S O N A L V E S

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rules of research in an attempt to legitimize their per-sonal beliefs, says Mark Hoofnagle, a surgery resident at the University of Maryland who runs the science- monitoring blog Denialism.com. “What if your ideology is simply not supported by the evidence?” he says. “You can change your mind or you can hijack the system.” JOE MANGANO IS ADMITTEDLY fixated on the risks of radiation. While low-level radiation can increase a person’s chances of developing cancer over the course of a lifetime, Mangano hypothesizes that it also has short-term effects by exacerbating problems in people who are already sick.

“Saying low-dose radiation is harmless is like saying that if you smoke five cigarettes a day or less, that’s a low dose so you don’t need to do the studies,” he told PM. But the lack of evidence linking low-dose radiation to imme-diate damage was lost in the headline of the RPHP press release: “Medical Journal Article: 14,000 U.S. Deaths Tied to Fukushima Reactor Disaster Fallout.”

“This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fuku-shima,” the press release announced.

Ten days after the paper was published, United Press International ran a story about the study, quoting Mangano as saying the “findings are important to the current debate of whether to build new reactors, and how long to keep aging ones in operation.” A San Diego ABC affiliate later

IN 2012 RADIATION EXPERT Robert Emery examined a research paper in his office at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Hous-ton that declared a health crisis was at his door. Authors Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman claimed they could link 14,000 American deaths to fallout from Japan’s March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Mangano, the executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), holds a master’s degree in public health; Sherman is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. “Public health means prevention,” Mangano told Popular Mechanics. “It means removing any potential harm from our world.”

Mangano and Sherman tallied the number of deaths in about 100 U.S. cities in the 14 weeks after the Fukushima accident, compared with the same time period from the year before. Projected across the entire U.S., the differ-ence amounted to thousands of “excess” deaths. The study was titled “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fuku-shima: Is There a Correlation?”

“I read the thing and was taken aback,” says Emery, who has a doctorate in public health and is a licensed medical health physicist. The study implied fallout from Fukushima caused 484 deaths in Houston. If there had been radiation-related deaths in Texas, Emery was well-positioned to know about them. Following the disaster in Japan, he supervised the effort to set up extra air-sampling stations and Geiger counters throughout Houston to monitor any increase in radioactivity; elevated levels were not found.

Radiation from Fukushima did reach some parts of the U.S., but Emery says the doses were so low that there is no way they could have caused the immediate fatalities the study claimed. Even at Fukushima, where workers absorbed radiation doses thousands of times higher than Americans on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, no one died from acute exposure.

The paper’s conclusions were based on a remarkably simplistic correlation that didn’t stand up to further scru-tiny; at least one scientist pointed out that RPHP saw an increase only because it counted deaths from 119 cities in the year after Fukushima versus 104 cities in the year before. (The authors say the disparity was due to incom-plete data for some cities.)

The Mangano and Sherman paper is a prime example of a troubling new trend in which junk science is becom-ing harder to distinguish from rigorous research. It is an example of activists using the trappings of science to influ-ence public opinion and policy. Today there are cottage industries that produce and disseminate skewed research in publications that masquerade as legitimate science journals. Celebrities and mainstream media outlets then tout the results, so that even retracted or clearly biased research can reach larger audiences than ever before. These studies cause real harm—for instance, by denounc-ing lifesaving vaccines and vilifying foods that could ease famine in developing countries.

People who produce junk science often come from outside the scientific mainstream, and they bend the

P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 65 ran a news segment describing the dangers of fallout from Fukushima, interviewing Mangano and describing “which children may be vulnerable.” On-air reporter Michael Chen noted that “critics say there is no direct evidence” that the low radiation levels could cause harm, but there were no quotes from or on-air interviews with any of those critics.

When a journal publishes a paper outside its area of expertise it should raise a red flag, according to Ivan Oransky, a medical doctor and the cofounder of the Retrac-tion Watch blog, which reports on the retractions of scien-tific papers. The Fukushima study deals with epidemiology. It appeared, however, in the International Journal of Health Services (IJHS), which specializes in public and social pol-icy, including “the articulation of science and ideology in the pursuit of health.”

The IJHS is peer reviewed. Peer review alone, though an important step in establishing scientific credibility, is no guarantee of accuracy. During the typical review process, a scientist submits his or her research paper to a journal. If the journal editors want to publish it, they usually ask two experts to anonymously assess whether the findings are novel, important, and supported by the data. But jour-nal reviewers don’t typically scrutinize raw data, re-run the statistical analyses, or look for evidence of fraud. “What they’re reviewing are mostly advertisements of research rather than the research itself,” Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis says.

With new Web-publishing platforms, it’s easy to set up a journal that publishes papers indiscriminately and calls them peer-reviewed. There are journals dedicated to sequencing Bigfoot’s genome or supporting creationism, for example. All it takes is a website and an email address.

Open-access journals make their articles available for free—instead of charging for subscriptions, they charge authors. “There’s an inherent conflict of interest,” says Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Denver who maintains a list of questionable open-access journals. “The

more papers they accept, the more money they make.” He says some open-access journals, such as PLOS One, man-age that conflict well, but others will publish almost any-thing to collect the fee.

In 2013 scientist-turned-journalist John Bohannon con-ducted a sting operation to determine just how easy it is to publish bogus research in open-access journals. Under a false name, he wrote a flawed paper about a fake drug and sent it to 304 open-access journals. Of the 255 journals that responded, 98 rejected the article and 157 accepted it.

Once erroneous information is rubber-stamped as peer-reviewed, it can be futile for mainstream scientists to try to counter it. Expert push-back did not banish Mangano and Sherman’s work to obscurity. In a paper that came out in the open-access journal Biomedicine International in 2013, Mangano and Sherman link the 1989 shutdown of Califor-nia’s Rancho Seco nuclear reactor to 4000 fewer deaths from cancer in Sacramento County. The study is based on the same sort of speculative correlations and selective use of data as the Fukushima paper. “I think these individuals have a bias toward what they believe to be happening,” Emery says. “They’re drawing conclusions that support that bias. Have you ever heard of the Texas sharpshooter? It’s where a guy goes out in the field, shoots bullet holes in a barn, and then paints the target around the bullet holes.”

Despite his work’s scientific flaws, Mangano is popu-lar with antinuclear activists. Actor Alec Baldwin, a sup-porter of RPHP, wrote an introduction to Mangano’s 2012

book on the risks of nuclear power plants, Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment. In it Baldwin calls him “one of the most dedicated, intelligent, and even- handed public activists I have ever known.”

DURING HIS rounds at the Children’s Hospital of Philadel-phia, pediatrician Paul Offit often sees patients with vaccine-prevent-able i l lnesses. In a recent case, he treated a 4-month-old baby with type B meningitis—an infection of the mem-branes that surround the brain and spinal cord.

Activism masked as science is often quickly amplified by the media. Andrew Wakefield (far left) found a worldwide audience for his research into the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism. His work has been retracted, and authorities stripped him of his medical license. Televi-sion host and antivaccine activist Jenny McCarthy (left) cites Wakefield’s discredited research.

PHOTOGRAPH BY C H A R L I E S C H U C K

asks, the greater its sample size should be. Most reliable papers contain something called a p-value, which measures the probability (p) that a study’s results occurred by random chance. In science a p-value of 0.05 suggests the study’s con-clusions may be meaningful. Smaller p-values are better.

DOES IT RELY ON CORRELATION? Cigarette smoking has declined dra-matically in the U.S. in the past few decades, and so has the national homicide rate. But just because two events occur at the same time doesn’t mean that one caused the other.

HAVE THE RESULTS BEEN REPRODUCED? To find out, search the paper’s name on Google Scholar and click on the Cited By link beneath the name. This will list other researchers who mention the paper in their own publications, and may also give you a clearer view of how other research-ers critiqued the paper.


The inflammation can result in brain damage, hearing and vision impairment, even death. Vaccinations can prevent type B meningitis, but after the baby recovered, the child’s mother still refused to consider vaccination. “Although her child suffered and could have died from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Offit says, “she still believed that she was doing the right thing.”

The modern antivaccine movement can be traced to a paper published 16 years ago in The Lancet, a respected medical journal. In 1998 a team led by surgeon Andrew Wakefield studied 12 children with developmental delays, and found that eight children with autism had developed their first symptoms shortly after they received the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps, and rubella). But the corre-lation was weak. “I could go out and produce a paper that says that eight children developed leukemia within a few months of eating their first peanut butter and jelly sand-wich,” Offit says, “but it doesn’t mean anything.”

Although scores of scientists denounced Wakefield’s claim, Rolling Stone, Salon, and other media outlets issued dramatic headlines linking MMR to autism, calling the vac-cine a lethal injection, and telling the sad stories of chil-dren who developed autism after receiving it.

Numerous follow-up studies failed to find evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. And the Wakefield study turned out to be not just flawed, but fraudulent. Journalist

Brian Deer, writing in the British Medical Journal and The Sunday Times, revealed in 2004 that Wakefield had been hired by a lawyer to find evidence against the vaccine to support a lawsuit and had falsified data in the 1998 study. The study was retracted in 2010, and medical authorities in the U.K. stripped Wakefield of his medical license.

Yet Wakefield’s legacy lives on. One of his chief boost-ers is former model Jenny McCarthy, who became the unof-ficial spokeswoman for the antivaccine movement after she announced in 2007 that her son, Evan, had been diagnosed with autism. She blames vaccines, which she has called “injected toxins.” She said in an interview with PBS, “If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we’d rather have the measles versus autism, we’d sign up for the measles.”

Before the MMR vaccine was developed, in 1963, nearly all children contracted measles, and one in 1000 died from the disease. By the late 1990s, when Wakefield’s paper came out, measles had been all but eliminated. The U.S. is now seeing a resurgence: The Centers for Disease Control

6 JUNK

SCIENCE WARNING SIGNS

WAS THE PAPER PUBLISHED IN A PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL? “If it wasn’t, you have no reason to trust it,” says Ivan Oransky, for-mer executive editor at Reuters and cofounder of the blog Retraction Watch. “The peer-review system, as flawed as it is, stands between us and really poor

science.” Also, find out if the journal or its publisher is on Jeffrey Beall’s list of questionable open-access journals, at scholarlyoa.com.

WHAT IS THE JOURNAL’S IMPACT FACTOR? The impact fac-tor is the average number of times a journal’s papers are cited by other research-ers. You can usually find this information on the journal’s home page or by searching “impact factor” along with its name. Check out the impact factor of other journals in that field of research to see how they compare.

DO THE RESEARCHERS MOSTLY CITE THEIR OWN PAPERS? If so, this is a red flag that they are promoting views that fall outside the scientific con-sensus. Citations are listed at the end of a paper.

HOW MANY TEST SUBJECTS WERE USED? A large number of test sub-jects makes a study more robust and reduces the likelihood that the results are random. In general, the more questions a paper

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and Prevention recorded 189 cases in 2013, compared with an annual aver-age of 60 cases in previous years. The CDC cites lack of vaccinations in America as a primary cause of the increase; David Elliman, a doctor with the U.K.’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, calls these kinds of increases the Andrew Wakefield leg-acy effect.

The antivaccine movement doesn’t stop at measles. Parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated for MMR also refuse vaccines for diph-theria, tetanus, and whooping cough; the U.S. is seeing a resurgence of these diseases as well. A website named Jenny McCarthy’s Body Count uses data from the CDC to tally the num-ber of Americans who have died from vaccine-preventable illnesses since June 2007. As of February 2014 the number had reached 1336.

Jenny McCarthy now costars on The View, a show on the ABC network with more than 3 million viewers. She claims she cured Evan’s autism using diet and detoxification. Meanwhile, Offit, who invented a rotavirus vac-cine that has saved the lives of thou-sands of children, receives hate mail accusing him of being an industry shill; he denies taking money from pharmaceutical companies. “A parent has a right to make a terrible decision based on misinformation that could hurt or kill their child,” Offit says. “But it’s hard to stand back and watch.”

THE FOODS YOU EAT EVERY DAY are killing you, according to a September 2012 study by French researchers. The experiment tested the long-term effects of eating genetically modified corn, and the results were startling. After feeding lab rats genetically modified corn for two years, the researchers reported that some of the animals sprouted tumors the size of kiwifruit and died earlier than rats that ate nonmodified corn.

The results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology under the title “Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-Tolerant Genetically Modified Maize,” run contrary to previous findings.

In fact, up to 88 percent of corn and 94 percent of soy grown in the U.S. is genetically modified, and researchers from the World Health Organization, the National Acad-emy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Medicine have found no ill effects. In 2012 the American Medical Associa-tion determined that “bioengineered foods have been con-sumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no overt consequences on human health have been reported and/or substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature.”

The press release accompanying the French study was sensational. It announced the “severe toxic effects” of a genetically modified organism (GMO), “even when ingested at extremely low levels.” Led by activist and molecular biologist Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen in France, the paper was timed to match the launch of Séralini’s latest anti-GMO book, All of Us Guinea Pigs!, and a film of the same name.

The study was released six weeks before a California vote to label genetically modified foods, and those in favor of the proposition forwarded the report to media outlets. Voters rejected the measure by a razor-thin majority (51.4 percent). But consumers around the world panicked. Food-safety authorities in France launched an emergency inves-tigation. Russia and Kazakhstan suspended imports of GM corn from the United States.

The Séralini paper caused an immediate backlash. Legions of scientists denounced the paper as critically flawed and some accused Séralini of fraud. Among the chief concerns was that he failed to use a large enough

JUNK SCIENCE

CONTINUED ON PAGE 106

“TRUE SCIENTISTS SET UP EXPERIMENTS SO THAT THEY DON’T FOOL THEMSELVES. THEY TRY TO DISPROVE WHAT THEY THINK, BECAUSE THAT WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL EXPERIMENT.” — FERRIC FANG, MICROBIOLOGIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY:

BY: JOE PAPPALARDO

BRIAN FINKE + LANDON NORDEMAN

The arms of the Carnegie Mellon University Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform have treads for travel-ing on all fours.

CHIMPNAME:

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NATIONAL ROBOTICS ENGINEERING CENTER

5 FEET 2 INCHES

400 POUNDS

HEIGHT:

WEIGHT:

A PENTAGON-SPONSORED COMPETITION COULD SPUR THE NEXT STAGE IN ROBOT EVOLUTION: THE ABILITY TO OPERATE IN THE HUMAN WORLD.

ROBOSIMIANNAME:

NASA'S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY (JPL)

APRIL 2014 / POPULARMECHANICS.COM 69

This robot, built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, walks like a spider but can climb and manipulate tools like an ape.

5 FEET 5 INCHES

238 POUNDS

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f r o m t h e

to tap the brake, since the vehicle uses engine brak-ing to automatically slow down. This isn’t Nascar: Six stop-and-go turns take 20 minutes. Applause and cheers fill the morning air when the vehicle crosses the finish line.

The Schaft team has become the first to com-plete the drive, one of eight tasks at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) trials, held late last year.

Sixteen teams from universities, companies, and NASA have gathered at the speedway to com-pete in the most demanding robotic competition ever staged. Each event is designed to prove that robots can help people in the aftermath of disas-ters. DARPA intends to award $1 million for each of the top eight finishers, who will appear in the finals, to be held in 2014 or early 2015.

The DRC winner will take home $2 mil-lion, but those competing believe the stakes are larger. If the robots here perform well, they could jump-start a lucrative industry and re imagine the relationship between man and machine. “Mobile robotics is where the dot-com boom was during the 1990s,” Eric Meyhofer, lead technician of Team Tartan Rescue from Carnegie Mellon University, says. “We’re starting to see real general interest in this market. We’re lucky to be smack-dab in the middle of it.”

Modern robots are very good at a few very particular things. In an auto factory, for example, they are fast, precise, and powerful. But factory robots work in predictable environments and structured surroundings—on a stable base, in the same conditions, using iden-tical tools to perform repetitious tasks. To make robots more useful in daily life, engineers need to get them ready for unpredictable places—like disaster zones.

DARPA modeled events at the DRC on condi-tions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan during its 2011 meltdown. Throughout that disaster, wheeled robots entered radioactively contaminated areas but could only transmit vid-eo images. If a robot had been able to open valves to vent hydrogen gas from the reactor, it might have prevented subsequent explosions. A robot capable of commandeering fire trucks aban-doned in Fukushima’s contaminated zone could

The casual pose is meant to keep the 209-pound machine from sliding in the seat as five young Japanese engineers from Tokyo-based Schaft, wearing blue vests and white hard hats, check power connections and run diagnostics on a laptop. It’s almost time for S-One—which looks like a minifridge with unnaturally long arms and strong legs that bend backward at the knee—to go for a ride.

There are hundreds of spectators at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida this December weekend, but instead of Nascar or IndyCar races, the crowd, pressed to a chain-link fence, is waiting to watch the teleoper-ated bot drive a Polaris Ranger XP 900 down a winding course. The 250-foot route is hemmed in with lane dividers, and empty plastic barrels are stacked two high at each of the six turns. Officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), including director Arati Prabhakar, join the media on the other side of the fence to get a closer look before S-One powers up. Prabhakar is a diminutive woman in a red baseball cap, her trademark white hair poking out the bottom, and a matching red vest that says DARPA Director on the back. She eyes S-One with interest and some suspicion. “People here are pretty comfortable with a robot behind the wheel,” she says of the swarm of technicians and media surrounding the all-terrain vehicle.

The machines have center stage, but the drama is human. The robot is only a tool, con-trolled by human masters. Housed in a garage several hundred yards away, the operators have only S-One’s cameras and laser sensors with which to perceive the outside world.

Finally the humans on the route clear a space and the robot is ready to roll. Its right foot pushes down on the accelerator and the Ranger lurches forward. At the first turn the foot lifts and the ATV halts—there’s no need for S-One

The robot looks relaxedbehind the wheel of the all-terrain vehicle—one three-fingered hand gripping the wheel, the other clamped to the roll bar overhead. One mechanical foot hovers over the accelerator. The bipedal robot has the aspect of a laid-back teenage driver, flouting the rules of every driver’s-ed teacher in the world.

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The DARPA Robotics Challenge aims to prove robots can assist in the aftermath of disasters. Above: Members of Team MIT, inside a garage at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida, prepare to teleoperate an Atlas robot during one of eight events. Right: An Atlas robot navigates uneven terrain. Below: S-One, from the Japan-based firm Schaft, climbs a ladder using legs that bend backward at the knee.


have refilled water in the ultrahot spent-fuel pools. “The world is built for human beings,” Gill Pratt, the DARPA program manager who spearheaded the robotics challenge, says. “Robots need to operate in that environment.”

To take robots out of the labs and factories, Pratt based the challenge around basic skills. Each team’s robot must walk across uneven terrain, climb a ladder, pick up a human tool and use it to cut through drywall, connect a fire hose, and turn valves. These are all tasks that a human being can easily do, and faster than a robot, but not in a radioactive or chemically toxic environment. “You won’t see robots racing to the rescue,” Pratt says. “You’ll see robots being deliberate to the rescue.”

DARPA added another wrinkle by limiting communications between the robot and its operators. Every other minute a black box in each team’s garage disrupts the signal to the robot, cutting the bandwidth to a narrow sliver. Such disrupted communications were a hallmark of Fukushima, and will likely be the case at future disaster sites.

The crucial engineering challenge at the DRC is to field a single robot that can perform all eight tasks. A door-opening robot is easy to envision and program, but mak-ing one that can also drive an ATV and climb a ladder adds a lot of complexity to the challenge. Most of the teams here are using man-size and -shaped robots that can navigate environments built for humans—think of the height of stairs, the size of doors, and the location of cabinets. This also benefits the operators, who can more easily imagine what a robot is doing if it is built like a human. But a few DRC robots have alien aspects: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, creator of the Mars rovers, operates a 238-pound, four-limbed creation called RoboSimian that uses seven actuators (joints) in each limb to brace itself when a limb applies force. Each of the six legs of the spindly, 150-pound Chiron, made by Utah-based Kairos Autonomi, can also perform manipulation tasks.

The most common robot at the DRC is the Atlas, a 6-foot 2-inch, 330-pound humanoid built by Boston Dynamics. DARPA purchased six for teams that earned their way to the DRC by writ-

ing code and defeating rivals in a virtual contest. Atlas has cameras and a scanning laser radar (lidar) where a human’s face would be. Given the DRC’s restricted bandwidth, the cameras provide only grainy views of the surroundings. The flickering lidar forms a rainbow of points on the operators’ screen, giving them the long-distance perception lacking in the cameras. The operator uses a mouse and joystick to tell the bot where to move its limbs. The robot pro-cesses the request, calculating the movement of each joint. These plan-into-motion equations are called inverse kinematics.

The DRC focuses on disaster response, but the teams envision much broader uses for their robots. The tasks here showcase attributes—dexterity, sensory awareness, and reliability—that robots will need to operate as our proxies in various environments. For example, a robotic attendant in a nursing home would have to open cabinets and doors that have different handles, latches, and heights, the same way it would when searching for survivors in a chemical-plant fire.

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To have a future working for and with humans, limb control is crucial. “Robots are ridiculously strong, and things are fragile in the world,” Daniel Lofaro, a graduate student at Drexel University and leader of the school’s team, Hubo, says. “We need good feedback, and really quickly. The robot will turn the doorknob but tear the door off its hinges.”

One of the believers in the future of mobile robotics is Google. It bought eight robot-ics businesses in 2013, a dramatic move that is reshaping the industry. Two of these newly acquired companies are represented at the DRC trials—Schaft, founded by researchers from the University of Tokyo, and Massachusetts-based Boston Dynamics. Google announced its purchase of Boston Dynamics just a week before the DRC, and the news brought fresh excitement

and relevancy to the event. Boston Dynamics employees at

the DRC seem happy about their new bosses. “I’ve been a part of more than seven acquisitions during my career,” one says. “This definitely doesn’t feel like a bad one.” Boston Dynamics made its money by fulfilling DARPA contracts for advanced prototypes, but employees say it’s a good time to trade Pentagon funding for Google invest-ment. In 2015 several high- profile DARPA programs are ending—as is Gill Pratt’s tenure. “We weren’t sure where the next millions were going to come from,” the Boston Dynamics employee notes. “Now we do.”

DARPA, despite its military trap-pings, is fairly open about sharing its marvelous new robots. Google is tight-lipped about its advances. This propri-etary mindset can already be seen at the speedway. The behavior of Team Schaft at the DRC stands in stark con-trast to that of the other groups. Most teams bring along public relations

staff to tout their universities and institutions, but Schaft is represented by one overworked Google employee from the California head-quarters who didn’t even know the DRC existed before she was ordered to Florida to support it. Schaft offers no access and no comment, and even chases off journalists standing in permitted areas outside the garage, where signs establish a cordon and forbid any contact. Like a celebrity baby kept out of the limelight, the Schaft S-One robot draws a crowd whenever it appears. Other teams make sure to check out the cutting-edge machine—and indulge in some robot envy.

Christopher Rasmussen, a computer- science professor at the University of Delaware and member of Team Hubo, aims his camera as S-One begins the terrain task. It must walk 40 feet over a jumble of increasingly uneven and steep concrete blocks.

Virginia Tech’s Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot (THOR) connects a fire hose during a DRC event. Robots that have the dexterity to operate man-made tools would be able to help mitigate damage in post-disaster environments too dangerous for human first responders.

“Robots are ridiculously strong, and things are fragile in the world.” — DANIEL LOFARO, DREXEL UNIVERSITY

Like all robots here, S-One is secured by a safety tether to protect it in case of a fall. The robot takes its first step and the clock starts. S-One is stronger than most other competitors. Instead of using hydraulics, like Atlas, S-One is all electrical. Rather than relying on just a bat-tery, it uses capacitors that can quickly sup-ply lots of current to a limb. These millisecond bursts of power to its motors enable the robot to, for example, quickly generate torque in its knee to stabilize itself if it loses its balance.

Between each step, a cover in S-One’s boxy body tilts open to reveal a laser radar. Rasmussen crouches to peer inside, trying to glean details. “The inside surface of the door could help reflect the laser to the ground,” he guesses. He notes that the knees are constantly, minutely bending. “That makes it easier to balance,” he says, “but it sort of looks like it’s breathing.”

S-One takes a step down from a block and scrapes a knuckle on concrete. “That would have knocked over a lesser robot,” Rasmussen says.

Unfazed, S-One continues down the pile and reaches level ground in less than 15 minutes. The cheers from observers in the stands cause teams at other events to turn their heads. Schaft scores three more points. The team hangs the unpow-ered robot on its wheeled carrier and spirits it off to the garage without a word to admirers.

By the middle of the second day, after S-One performs its final event, it has racked up 27 out of a possible 32 points, a first-place victory for the robot—and a clear win for Google.

The scoreboard tells dra-matic tales as the trials come to an end. CHIMP, made by Carnegie Mellon’s Team Tartan Rescue, is staging an epic comeback. One of the few robots that was designed just for the compe-tition, it has 10,600 mostly homemade parts. CHIMP—a beefy machine encased in a red metalshell and with tracks on its arms for traveling on all fours—scores a perfect four points in two events by turning three valves and cutting a neat

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triangle in drywall. At day’s end it has scored 18 points, enough to place third.

Team Hubo is not so fortunate. Hampered by breakdowns, it finishes with just three points. “Disappointing,” Lofaro says.

NASA has mixed results. JPL’s RoboSimian places fifth with 14 points, but Valkyrie, made by the Johnson Space Center, tips over frequently and doesn’t earn a single point.

Team WRECS and its Atlas robot, Warner, are on the edge. Warner had a strong second day at the DRC, driving the entire ATV course in just 6 minutes. No other team finished the drive as quickly, and no other Atlas drove across the finish line. Now it has to perform well in its last event—the walk through uneven terrain—to secure a coveted spot in the top eight.

The robot picks its way through the rubble, earning two points, then pauses at the top of the third brick pile, teetering as it tries to regain sta-bility. Team WRECS calls this the Atlas dance.

Warner steadies itself, to cheers, but two

steps into its descent, the robot topples and swings like a marionette in its safety harness. The crowd moans, then applauds. Two points is enough to propel WRECS into a tie for sixth place. As one of the top eight teams, they’ll be back for the finals.

The DRC ends at sunset on Saturday.Hundreds of competitors file to the closing ceremonies, held at the speedway under a large white tent. They are exhausted, thrilled, disappointed, giddy, and happy to be here, surrounded by peers who understand what they are up to, and how hard it is to accomplish.

The emcee of the event introduces DARPA bigwigs, who give speeches. They proclaim what these believers already hold as canon—robots are coming. There’s a sense among the crowd that this is the place and time that the mobile-robot revolution found its footing.

It won’t happen again, not like this. Things can begin only once. PopMech

Below: As the S-One robot widens its lead, it attracts crowd and media attention—a throng follows Team Schaft from event to event, much as spectators follow the leader during a pro golf match. Opposite: Handlers from Team Schaft check S-One’s position, power connections, and diagnostics before the robot’s successful drive through a winding, 250-foot-long course.

P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 75P

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Taking a soaking on water bills? Follow our six rules for green grass—and more green in your pocket. p. 88 D I Y HOME

weekend

We don’t call them chores, because we like doing things like building a bike-powered generator and restoring our car’s dull headlight lenses.

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diy

I’m a cycling enthusiast, and when the weather is bad I use a bicycle trainer in my apartment. But riding to nowhere has always felt pointless. This got me thinking about how I could use my ped-aling to produce electricity. By driving a generator with the move-ment of the back wheel, I figured I could run a lamp or charge my phone. Realistically, this wouldn’t do much to cut my utility bills (or carbon emissions), but it would give my indoor riding a sense of purpose. Besides, I was curious to see what the project involved.

BRING YOUR BIKE INDOORS AND GENERATE ELECTRICITY WHILE YOU PEDAL. BY RACH EL Z . ARN DT

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idea as a way to bring environ-mental technology projects to schools. He thought it would be a low-cost, fun way to pro-vide students with engineering experience. “The exercise compo-nent was what made the project engaging,” he says. Plus, he adds, “I like that the project has a lot of room for customization.”

That’s what I did—I custom-ized. I found a combination single-speed/fixed-gear bike that worked well, thanks to its ability to hold a cog on either side of the back wheel. The chain on the right is driven by the pedals, while an added chain on the left spins the motor. On the side that’s driven by the pedals, I used a freewheel, which rotates the wheel when I’m pedaling but allows it to keep spinning forward, without the chain moving, when I’m coast-ing or pedaling backward. On the

D I Y T E C H / B I K E G E N E R AT O R

To skip ahead a bit, I ended up rigging my bike to a 24-volt, 200-watt electric motor, which I modi-fied slightly to generate electric-ity instead of doing mechanical work. I used the motor (now, operationally, a generator) to charge a 12-volt lead–acid bat-tery. And, finally, I added an inverter to convert the battery’s DC current into an AC current, which is what’s needed to power anything you’d normally plug into a wall outlet, and to store power so you can use appliances even when not pedaling.

Pedal to MetalI found a lot of the build details on Instructables, the online project- sharing community, where user saullopez52 had done basically what I had in mind. While intern-ing at an educational startup in L.A., Saul Lopez developed the

left side of the wheel, I attached a fixed cog, which spins in the direction of the chain as long as the wheel is turning.

To keep the bike steady I ded-icated a bicycle trainer to the project. A nice thing about com-mercial trainers is that you can easily detach the bike if you want to go out for a ride. But you can also build your own stand; you just need a setup that allows the rear axle to spin freely while raising the back wheel slightly off the ground. To get the bike stand ready for generating power, I removed the resistance unit, which is the spinnable metal cyl-inder that rubs against the wheel to mimic the feeling of riding on pavement. (Once you attach the motor, you’ll also feel resistance as you generate a current, but it really doesn’t take much effort.)

With the resistance unit gone, there was space to attach a wooden board extending from the rear of the bike, to hold the motor, battery, and inverter. Because I was using a narrow board (a 2 x 4), I needed to add a crossbar to hold the electrical equipment. (Note: Before attach-ing anything, you should measure how far the chain extends from the back of the bike. Position the motor so a chain from the left side of the rear hub runs parallel to the wheel, straight back to the motor. With a V-belt, you have to measure precisely; with a chain, you can add and remove links with a chain tool.)

With the motor screwed into the center of the crossbar, I posi-tioned the battery and inverter on either side as counterweights for each other. That helped keep the bar parallel to the ground. I secured them with industrial-strength Velcro, which would hold up when I was moving the contraption around but allow me to fiddle with the parts.

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CHAIN, $10

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DIODES, $2 EACH

BATTERY LEADS,$8 EACH

BATTERY, $38

MONSTER SCOOTER PARTS MOTOR (MY1016), $38

POWERBRIGHT INVERTER, $30

Before linking up any of the electrical components, I tested the connection between the bike and the motor to make sure pedal-ing actually spun the motor shaft. The shaft of the motor I used is slightly grooved, and the chain gripped well. If you find your-self with a motor that refuses to spin, you can connect a cog to the shaft, guaranteeing that the chain will have a good grip.

Going ElectricA motor is designed to spin rather than to be spun. So, when con-nected to a charged battery, it will want to draw power from the battery to turn the bike wheel. To prevent electricity from flow-ing the wrong way, I inserted a diode between the motor and the battery. A diode directs a current in only one direction, from the anode to the cathode; in my cir-cuit, the anode faced the positive terminal of the motor, while the cathode faced the battery’s posi-tive terminal. I wrapped the ends of the diode around the motor’s exposed wire and an alligator-clip-tipped test lead, which fastens to the battery, and insulated the connections with electrical tape. Then I wired the motor’s negative lead directly to the negative ter-minal of the battery.

Ideally, the battery should be kept charged above 50 percent, but to prevent corroding it, don’t continue to give it electricity after it’s fully charged. To keep an eye on this I hooked up a mul-timeter to the battery terminals. Be careful to set the multimeter to the correct measurement— 12 volts in the DC range (though, if that’s not available, choose the next number higher than 12). I overlooked the setting on my first ride and the multimeter went up in smoke.

I also used a multimeter to monitor how hard I needed to

pedal. To charge the battery I wanted the generator to put out 13 to 14.5 volts. By keeping my eye on the multimeter as I rode, I was able to get a good feel for this. (In retrospect, it would have been worth it to buy a voltage regulator so I could pedal as hard as I wanted without feeding too much voltage into the battery.)

The final step was to con-nect the leads from the inverter to the battery. When choosing an inverter, make sure it can handle the maximum peak load you’re anticipating. (Loads are mea-sured in watts, which is a unit of power.) Since I wasn’t planning to do anything more strenuous than run a 100-watt lamp, I bought an

inverter rated for just 200 watts.When it was all assembled, I

pedaled my bike and the current flowed. Even better, if I had a few batteries on hand whose charge I monitored monthly, I could store up enough energy to power small electronics during a power out-age. And, yes, the generator did make indoor bike riding fun. After a while, however, the rig made my apartment feel pretty cramped, especially since I already had two other bikes. Luckily, it caught the eye of a neighbor who had some extra space and who was happy to take the contraption. And now when I want to charge my phone while exercising, I know just where to go.

A diode [1] keeps electricity flowing from the motor to the battery instead of vice versa, as it normally would do. A second chain on the bike runs from the rear cog backwards to turn the motor [2], where mechanical energy becomes the electricity that’s stored in the battery [3]. That electricity is converted from DC to AC by an inverter [4] so it can power regular household appliances.

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Unusual story of a usual vehicleWe want to tell you a story of vehicle, a 2006 heavy loaded

truck Volvo 670 with Cummins ISX engine.

Usually the owners of such heavy-loaded trucks apart from

the regular general inspection and ongoing maintenance make

engine diagnostics basing on used oil analysis. Checking for

antifreeze or fuel in motor oil can help prevent major problems.

The same is true for increased content of metals in oil.

A Chief Mechanics of a truck fleet Antanas Uikus sent

his first oil sample to a laboratory in August 2011. He had

788 thousand miles on his odometer at that time. The result

witnessed of the imminent troubles: content of copper and

especially lead was several times higher than acceptable

rates. That pointed to the fact of severe engine wear and

possible major overhaul.

And here comes the most interesting part! In a year and

a half having added 270 thousand miles on his odometer,

Antanas made the next oil testing. And it showed

striking results: there were noticeably fewer metals in

motor oil! Iron in oils was less than half of the last

test, and copper and lead witnessed of engine

running almost without wear. And let’s keep

in mind that all this time the truck was operating

in a heavy-loaded mode (carrying 40,000 lbs).

The fi nal oil test was done in October 25, 2013. The

total mileage was 1,108,000 miles. Thus there were 2 years

and 320 thousand miles between the fi rst and the last test!

And what do we have as a result? Let’s give the fl oor

to experts: «Wear metals look better than ever».

«These metals are fantastic! Iron is impressive. Nice report». these were the comments of experts from an

independent oil testing laboratory as per Antanas fi nal oil samples.

So what has happened to the engine during all that time?

Why has metals content in used oil steadily gone down?

In fact the vehicle has driven more 320 thousand miles

and engine wear should have been progressing.

Revitalization technology reveals

answers to these questions.

Revitalizant (from lat. vita

– life) is a medicine

against ageing for

It is not enough to make a revolutionary discovery. To be able to get this message out is even more important task.

Here you will find information about XADO Chemical Group’s breakthrough called Revitalizant – a product that reverses

mechanisms ageing. XADO scientists state that Revitalizant should be in every quart of motor oil and in every vehicle!

One more proof for that was obtained due to the spectrum analysis of used oil.

THESE SMART NANOTECHNOLOGY FOR YOUR CAR

«The cost of a new engine is more than $20 thousand.

That’s why I understand all the responsibility on me and try to

keep our vehicles in almost perfect state. I’ll be honest, the fi rst report

made me feel nervous: high rate of copper and lead witness of bearings wear,

and iron left a lot to be desired. And I believe everybody understands that repair means

not only direct expenses, but also downtime, violation of delivery time, penalties, etc. When

applying XADO AMC Maximum for Diesel Trucks I expected to see positive results. But I didn’t expect to

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Q ADigital ClinicBY DAVEY ALBA

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Drone LawsI’m interested in building a backyard drone, but I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. What FAA regulations and privacy laws should I be aware of before I jump in?

If you intend to build and fly adrone recreationally, you face only a few restrictions, which come to you courtesy of the Federal Aviation Administration. Just make sure your unmanned aerial vehicle flies within your line of sight, less than 400 feet above the ground, during the day, and more than 3 miles from any airport. (You’ll be in even better shape, according to the FAA’s recommendations, if you choose an operating site far from noise-sensitive and densely populated areas such as parks, schools, and hospitals.) These rules, detailed in FAA Advisory Circular 91-57 and published in 1981, were writ-ten for model aircraft, but for now the FAA is applying the same rules to UAVs (see “Drone Skies,” September 2013).

It gets more complicated when individuals or companies want to fly UAVs for commercial purposes. One example would be Amazon’s

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If you take the time to fi x something, you want it to last. Amazing Goop is perfect for repairs because it holds just about anything – wood, metal, ceramic, glass and more.

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proposed drone delivery service, but more here-and-now ideas in-clude shooting advertising videos or conducting real estate surveys. There’s currently no legal way to operate drones for profit. Under FAA rules, the only way for a com-pany to fly drones is to apply for an experimental airworthiness cer-tificate, which the agency hands out to groups with research-and-development goals.

Changes are on the way, how-ever. Congress has directed the FAA to devise rules by late 2015 in order to integrate UAVs into the nation’s airspace, with an earlier deadline of August 2014 to formulate regulations for small, recreational UAVs weighing less than 55 pounds. This could be an opportunity for lawmakers to establish new rules that allow hobbyists to fly drones with even more freedom.

Meanwhile, all but seven states have proposed or adopted laws relating to the use of domes-tic drones. A number of these laws focus on civil rights—for instance, requiring police departments to procure warrants before they can use UAVs in criminal investi-gations. But some states, nota-bly Texas and Idaho, have passed limitations on the private use of drones. Idaho’s legislation bars cit-izens from capturing photographs of private property without the owner’s permission. And the law in Texas severely restricts recre-ational drone use while granting wide exemptions for police, real estate agents, and oil and electri-cal companies.

Omniscient ObjectsI’ve started to welcome more and more smart gadgets into my home, like thermostats, smoke detectors, locks, and lightbulbs. But I’m concerned: These devices collect data on my habits and power usage.

D I Y T E C H / D I G I TA L C L I N I C

Who has access to it—or can demand access to it?An increasing number of objects—in the home, the car, and even the office—are being embedded with sensors and are acquiring the ability to communicate. They help make up the so-called Internet of Things, a rapidly growing product category, with items that range from gratuitous (Internet-con-nected toothbrushes) to lifesav-ing (water- leak sensors that can help you catch floods in your home when they start). Google, for one, apparently expects it to be an en-during trend: In January the com-pany paid $3.2 billion to buy Nest Labs, which makes smart thermo-stats and smart smoke alarms. Competing product lines include Lowe’s Iris system, and a range of modular sensors made by Smart-Things, a connected-home startup.

The way the companies deal with user data varies with the archi tecture of their products and how they link up to the Internet. For example, Nest devices collect and process data locally, but the data is sent to the servers peri-odically to be analyzed for feature improvements and energy reports. The company says only a handful of members of an internal-quality team see any information, and it’s a mere sampling of what’s gener-ated by all the Nest products in people’s homes. Of course, users themselves have access to a snapshot of their data via the company’s mobile apps.

In contrast, most Smart Things products rely on cloud services to operate. For instance, a user can receive a push or text notifica-tion if a water leak is detected, or simply when a child gets home from school. The company’s CEO, Alex Hawkinson, says that Smart-Things analyzes some of the data to help it improve its products and services but that the information is anonymized.

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“There’s no way for us to know, for example, that somebody in New Jersey has an 8-year-old daughter named Katie, just because they use our system,” Hawkinson says. He promises the company would try to resist any government re-quest to access the data, though it hasn’t come up. “We believe that consumers should own their phys-ical graph, and all of the data that results from that physical graph,” Hawkinson says.

Nest cofounder and engineer-ing vice president Matt Rogers says his company has never received a government request for customer information. “Our con-tract with our users is that we will keep their data private,” he says. The company has publicly stated that any data sharing that hap-pens with Google, its new owner, will be transparent and require the user’s permission. But Nest has also hinted that deep-data integra-tion with Google could be coming soon. In the future, conceivably, information gathered from one’s quantified home could be used for commercial purposes.

Video Podcasts on TVsI regularly watch TedTalks, NASACast, and other video podcasts on my computer, but I would rather use my smart TV instead. I know I have to go to each individual podcast channel, or Web feed, to access episodes. Is there an easy way to queue them up chronologi-cally on my smart TV without having to involve my computer each time?You’ll have to involve your com-puter just once in order to set this up. If you happen to be an unabashed Apple fan and own a Mac, along with an Apple TV, this will be a no-brainer: Just create a smart playlist on iTunes and beam it to your AirPlay-compatible TV.

If you have a different prod-

uct ecosystem, there’s a bit more work to do, but a solution does exist. You’ll need the following third-party hardware and soft-ware: a Roku player; the myPlex cloud-service app, which orga-nizes your personal media; and an account with If This Then That (IFTTT), an automating service, which is where this trick starts.

IFTTT lets you create “recipes,” which pull data from one Web app and use it in another when a trig-ger is tripped. In this case, what you want is to add new videos from an RSS feed to your myPlex queue. A shared recipe for this already exists on ifttt.com and is searchable through the Browse function. (You’ll have to join IFTTT first, but signing up is free.)

Open the recipe, enter the URL for the video RSS you’re interested in, as well as your dedicated my-Plex email address (which is auto-matically generated by the Plex service), and repeat the process for each subsequent podcast. The idea is that IFTTT “watches” for new RSS items in real time; when an episode gets posted, it’s beamed into your play list using an automated Gmail message.

The one weakness of this hack is that it doesn’t grab any previous episodes from your RSS feeds—it scans for new content only, from the moment you set up the system. But that’s a small quibble when the rest of your job is to kick back on the couch and wait for new episodes to roll in. PopMech

GOT A TECHNOLOGY PROBLEM? ASK DAVEY ABOUT IT.

Send your questions to [email protected] or over Twitter at @PopMechDigital or to Digital Clinic, Popular Mechanics, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019-5899. While we can’t answer questions individu-ally, problems of general interest will be discussed in the column.

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Still attached to an oscillating sprinkler? There are better ways to keep your grass healthy while also using less water.

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A well-tended lawn is desirable and, for many American homeowners,essential. But recently it’s become a target of sustainability advocates, and for good reason. Not only are fertilizers and pesticides required to maintain that lush green carpet, a lawn also needs water—and lots of it. In fact, turf grass is the largest irrigated crop in the U.S. On a hot summer day a typical 3000-square-foot lawn can gulp as much as 360 gallons. That kind of water use can be costly. One Texas homeowner—whose water rates were nearly three times the national average of $2 per 1000 gallons—calculated that he spends up to $120 a month to irrigate his 22,000-square-foot lawn.

Antilawn advocacy is affect-ing how we landscape, especially west of the Rockies, where record low precipitation has depleted reservoirs and triggered water-use restrictions. One trend in that part of the country: garden styles, such as xeriscaping, that replace water-hungry plants with drought-resistant ones. Meanwhile, sales of artificial turf have increased by 30 percent per year for the past five years. But your front yard doesn’t have to resemble the Sonoran Desert or a miniature golf course to reduce the work, water, and waste of your lawn. Here are some alternative—and reason-able—solutions.

1

RescheduleFirst things first: If you don’t have an auto-matic sprinkler system, install one. It takes the guesswork out of watering so you don’t overdo it. Your goal is to moisten as much of the root system as possible at one time. Avoid frequent, shallow watering; soak lawns in clay soil once a week, and sandy soil every three days, depending on the sea-son. Set the system to operate in late evening or early morning, when water doesn’t evapo-

rate as quickly and pressure is generally optimal. Don’t water the entire lawn simulta-neously; instead, rotate through the zones, covering each area at least twice.

2

RenovateHealthy lawns use less water and have fewer weeds and insects than neglected ones. But don’t assume that means you must use fertilizer. Pick up

a soil-test kit first to determine whether your lawn has any nutrient deficiencies. When mowing, set the deck to about 3 inches, and remove no more than 30 percent of the height. Leave clippings in place to recycle nutrients and moisture, as well as to shade the lawn. When a layer of thatch ½-inch thick forms just above the soil surface, use an aer-ator to remove cores of sod (for best results, wait until spring or fall). Then top-dress the turf with compost.

3

ReconfigureProperly mowed turf loses less water through evaporation, or, in garden-speak, evapotranspiration (ET), so make cutting it as easy as possible. If you don’t have a zero-turn riding mower, shape your lawn’s corners with curves so you never need to back up. Curves also accommodate pulsat-ing, revolving sprin-klers, which are more

3” GRASS

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I LLUSTRAT ION BY T H E D E S I G N S U R G E R Y

→ Northeast, upper Midwest, Pacific Northwest: Fine fes-cues (hard, creeping red, chewings, and turf-type sheep fescue) make great drought- tolerant, low-maintenance turf.

→ Mid-Atlantic, upper Southeast: Turf-type tall fescues are out-standing choices because their deep roots can draw on reser-voirs of soil moisture between rainstorms.

→ West: Improved cultivars of buffalo grass such as Prairie or Bison are standard choices for reduced-irrigation lawns, as are blue grama and crested wheatgrass.

→ South: Bahia grass and Bermuda grass are preferred because they are hardy, drought-tolerant, and generally happy in sandy soil. Zoysia is also recommended.

SMART TURF Tom Christopher runs Smart Lawn in Middletown, Conn., which designs lawns that are far less thirsty than traditional ones. He recommends the following alterna-tives to typical turf grasses.

SMART SPRINKLER Lono Sprinkler Controller ($199)

This Kickstarter-funded automatic sprinkler system is primarily oper-ated via a smartphone app. It’s more than just a fancy remote-control device, though. Lono uses weather and temperature monitoring, as well as real-time local evapotranspiration data and soil-type information to help you irrigate your yard more efficiently. The company claims water savings of up to 70 percent, depending on your location and current use.

efficient than oscillat-ing types because they shoot water directly over the lawn rather than straight up. You can also lighten your workload by install-ing edging below grass height; that way you won’t need to clean up the perimeter with a string trimmer.

4

RemoveWhile you’re recon-figuring the shape of your lawn, ask yourself when was the last time you played Frisbee in the front yard. Con-sider which areas of the lawn are under-used, such as beneath trees or in out-of-the-way spots. Keep turf only where it serves a practical function, such as a children’s play area. A simple con-version might involve replacing the lawn near your home’s entrances with patios or decking. Remove grass under mature trees, where

it likely struggles to grow, and surround each base with mulch or ground cover as far as the outermost edge of the canopy.

5

ReplaceThough hardscape such as decking, path-ways, and patios needs no irrigation, replacing the lawn with, say, a concrete slab would bring its own draw-backs—not to mention incur the wrath of the neighborhood asso-ciation. Instead, swap underused lawn for less thirsty perennials, shrubs, and ground cover. Studies show these can deliver water savings of 20 to 50 percent. On average, a lawn requires up to 2 inches of water per week. By contrast, vegetable gardens require only 1 inch

per week, as do most mixed plantings, shrubs, and even some small trees.

6

ReplantUse water-efficient grass varieties that are suited to your region. Your Cooperative Extension office can recommend the most drought- tolerant grass type for your area and advise whether to plant from seed or sod. Eco-lawns that contain a mixture of meadow grasses and other plants have been devel-oped for different areas of the country, as have alternatives to tradi-tional turf grasses (see “Smart Turf”). Sedges and other ornamental grasses are popular choices for less mani-cured meadow plant-ings. Keep in mind that some of these plants have periods of dor-mancy, when the lawn will not look its best.

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MINI TILLERS

Tool Test CUB CADETCC148

Price: $300

Weight (fueled): 26 lb

Engine: 29-cc/four-cycle

Tilling width/depth: 12 in./5 in.

Likes: Aggressive yet precise, this machine digs in nicely without straining the operator. It’s also a good choice for shallower cultivation. The Cub Cadet’s performance is underpinned by sturdy construction; access to the oil-fill spout, purge bulb, and spark plug is all good.

Dislikes: Choke lever is inconveniently located, and its cold-start versus run positions are poorly marked.

EARTHQUAKEMC440

Price: $300

Weight (fueled): 34.2 lb


Tilling width/depth: 9.5 in./8 in.

Likes: A powerful engine and a robust drivetrain helped this model clinch four stars for its deep-tilling capability. A spring-loaded axle assembly and a depth stake make changing tilling depth a breeze, which is particularly useful when breaking ground for different crops or where the soil conditions vary from deep to shallow.

Dislikes: Poorly marked choke positions. Handles are short for tall users.

EARTHQUAKEMC43

Price: $220


Engine: 43-cc/two-stroke

Tilling width/depth: 9.5 in./4 in.

Likes: This two-stroke version of the four-cycle Earthquake offers reasonably assertive tilling and cultivating along with rapid depth adjust-ment. A large gas tank (36 ounces) makes this machine a good fit for gardeners who prefer long cultivating sessions, with run after run down vegetable rows.

Dislikes: Same problem with choke position and handles as in the four-cycle machine.

A mini tiller/cultivator is surprisingly powerful for its size. Full-on rototillers used for sod busting large areas have engines five to eight times the size of those found on minis, but they’re too much for working in small beds for flowers and vegetables or for uprooting weeds without damaging adjacent plants. Mini tillers excel at small-scale tilling and are great for turning compost. We gath-ered seven machines, some with traditional two-stroke engines and others powered by four-cycle powerplants. Then we went to work in a farm field at Delaware Valley Col-lege in Doylestown, Pa., turning ground that first saw a plow in the early 1800s. It was a tough test, but one that provided reliable data to go along with the rewarding aroma of freshly tilled earth. BY ROY B EREN DSOH N

D I Y H O M E

BEST OVERALL

BEST OVERALL


HONDAFG 110

Price: $390




Likes: Typical Honda. The rig is solidly built, with good weight distribution that makes it easy to lift and use. The well-engineered wheel-and-axle assembly has two positions: one for transport and one for storage. Plenty of oomph for all but the deepest cultivation. Clearly marked and easy-to-use start switch.

Dislikes: Black-on-black choke markings are tough to read.

MANTIS7262

Price: $430




Likes: By far the fastest and most productive tiller in the test, with true dirt-churning capability in tilling and cultivating modes. The Mantis’s sharp tines, powered by the torque-rich Honda engine and worm-gear transmission, give it an impressive performance.

Dislikes: Needs an intermittent (not two-position) start switch and better choke-position graphics.

MANTIS7225

Price: $330


Engine: 21.2-cc/two-stroke


Likes: We found the added weight of the four-cycle engine gave the winning Mantis a slight edge over this two-stroke relative. If you already own other two-stroke gardening equipment, however, this machine is a good fit, given your existing oil–gas fuel supply.

Dislikes: Same gripe that applies to the winner: oddball choke- position graphics. Assembly instructions have clunky text and outdated photography.

TROY-BILTTB225

Price: $200


Engine: 25-cc/two-stroke


Likes: We’re always glad to see features that reduce fumbling, such as Troy-Bilt’s common-sense graphics that clarify the start procedure. Firing it up is made simpler with a three-position choke similar to those on string trimmers and leaf blowers, with a running start (choke off), an intermediate start (midway choke), and a cold start (full choke). We also liked its light weight and spunky performance.

Dislikes: None.

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← Like wood lumber, composite decking is available in a variety of colors, textures, and weights. Unlike wood, it requires little main-tenance to keep it look-ing good for years.

←

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAV I D L AW R E N C E94 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 / P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M

Home ClinicBY ROY BERENDSOHN AND DAVID AGRELL

D I Y H O M E

When Wood Won’t Do

People choose wood–plastic composite (WPC) or even plastic lumber (PL) over wood because they want the finished project to resist rot, wood-eating insects, harsh sunlight, and mold and mil-dew, and they never want to paint it. So, do these materials deliver? In many respects, yes. But are they maintenance-free? No material is. Though many of these products carry 25- to 50-year warranties that protect against things like rotting, split-ting, peeling, and insect infesta-tion, we’ve seen these decks fade, buckle, and harbor mildew in certain conditions—especially the stuff that contains wood fibers. But, generally speaking, WPC and PL decks don’t require the annual makeover that wood decks do, and most last for decades with little more work than soap and water rinses. Expect to pay around $3 per linear foot for 1 x 6 decking mate-rial, which puts it somewhere between the cost of western red cedar and ipe lumber.

WPC and PL products usually contain a thermoplastic, such as polyethylene, that has been recycled from old plastic bot-tles and bags. Composite lum-bers add other materials such as wood flour, sawdust, or ground-up peanut shells. They can be solid throughout, or they may have a hollow, ribbed center to reduce weight. (Some solid-core products can weigh as much as 5 pounds per foot, which is three times the weight of cedar.) High-end composite decking is often encased in a plastic shell that

I’m thinking of replacing my wood deck with composite lumber because I’d like it to be maintenance-free. I’ve never worked with this material before. What can I expect?

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Accessory Cord Though it’s barely thicker than a shoelace, this multicolored stuff is extremely strong—some brands carry a rating of a few hundred pounds. We’ve packed it with our tools for years and have used it for everything from suspending a ceiling fan to tying back shrubs to bundling building materials. Pick up a loop for about $10 at a camping store.

WHY WE LIKE

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Local radio is pretty much awful these days, which is why many of us play music and stream our favor-ite channels from our smartphones. Now you can send your phone’s

audio wirelessly from over 100 feet away to Milwaukee’s industry-first Bluetooth-equipped job-site radio. It also charges your M18 batteries as well as your portable electronic devices. Miss the chitchat? Simply switch over to the digital AM/FM tuner.

Bluetooth means you can keep your phone within reach. When an AC outlet is unavailable, power the radio with an M18 battery pack. As you’d expect from Big Red, the overall build is top- quality. Bonus: The built-in bottle opener turns this into a por-table party machine for your next tailgate.

TOOLS & TECHMILWAUKEE M18 JOBSITE RADIO/CHARGER ($229)

D I Y H O M E / H O M E C L I N I C


GOT A HOME- MAINTENANCE OR REPAIR PROBLEM?ASK ROY AND DAVID.

Send your questions to [email protected] or over Twitter at @PopMechHome or to Home Clinic, Popular Mechan-ics, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019-5899. While we can’t answer questions individually, problems of general interest will be discussed in the column.

resists fading, staining, scratch-ing, and mold.

It’s important to look at the manufacturer’s directions before installing this material. When it gets warm, it expands more than wood along its length but less across its width. The longer the piece of decking, the greater its expansion—and the more you have to account for this when building your deck. Check the product’s end-gap chart, which correlates the space needed between the ends of two deck-ing pieces with the length of each piece, the temperature dur-ing installation, and the highest ambient temperature you expect in the deck area. For example, a 12-foot-long piece of Bear Board PL installed at 60 degrees Fahr-enheit could expand by as much as ⅛ inch on each end of the board, so you’ll need a ¼-inch gap between the ends of two boards. Blow this critical design detail and your decking could buckle on a hot day.

Keep in mind that, compared with wood, this stuff is bendy.

Don’t just assume it can span joists on 16-inch centers. Some are engineered to work on 12-inch centers. The flip side is that you can create curvy designs not pos-sible with wood lumber.

You can use standard wood-working tools to cut, drill, and fas-ten this lumber, though we rec-ommend carbide-tipped blades, which stay sharper longer. Use a moderate feed pressure to avoid melting the plastic or jamming the cutting tool. If the manufacturer recommends predrilling screw holes, do so. Some lumber has grooves milled along its edges for installing hidden fasteners that allow the material to move with temperature changes. You can also drive decking screws or stainless-steel trim-head screws through the top of the board,

but be warned: This allows mois-ture to seep into the wood fibers, which can lead to rotting.

Finally, most consumer-grade WPC and PL can’t be used struc-turally, such as for joists or cor-ner posts. For those you’ll need a specially engineered plastic lum-ber that has been fortified with fiberglass. Make sure you use the material as the manufacturer intends or you’ll void its warranty.

Cracking UpI have a crack in my driveway that I patch with mortar every year, but it keeps coming back. What am I doing wrong? The ground below the slab is moving, and there’s not much you can do about that. And with-out an engineered joint in place to alleviate that stress, the crack will keep reappearing unless you use a flexible patching material.

First, widen the crack with a cold chisel to about ¼ inch to create a joint, and then fill it with a flexible polyurethane product, such as Quikrete’s Polyurethane Concrete Crack Sealant. That stuff should move enough with the concrete surface to provide a strong, long-term repair. PopMech

di i l l f 100 f t

IN THE TOOLBOX

Grass Seed IsFor The Birds!Stopwastingmoney, timeandwork sowing new grassseed each spring, onlyto see birds eat the seed –or rainwash it away –before it can root. Plant agenuine Amazoy™Zoysialawn fromour living Plugsonly once… and never plant a new lawn again!

Zoysia Grows WhereOther Grass Doesn’t!Zoysia is the perfect choice for hard-to-cover spots,areas that are play-worn or have partial shade, andfor stopping erosion on slopes. North, South, East,West – Zoysiawill grow in any soil, no ifs, ands or buts!

Eliminates EndlessWeeds And Weeding!Nomore pulling out weeds by hand or weedssprouting up all over your lawn. Zoysia Plugs spreadinto a dense, plush, deep-rooted, established lawnthat drives out unwanted growth and stops crab-grass and summer weeds from germinating.

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Our Customers LoveTheir Zoysia Lawns!One of our typical customers,Mrs.M.R.Mitter ofPA, wrote how “I’ve never watered it, only whenI put the Plugs in… Last summerwe had itmowed2 times... When everybody’s lawns here are brownfromdrought, ours just stays as green as ever!”

Order Now And Save!ThemoreAmazoy™Zoysia Plugs you order, themoreyou SAVE! And remember, once your Zoysia lawn isestablished, you’ll have an endless supply of newPlugsfor plantingwherever you need them.Order now!

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Mail to: ZOYSIA FARM NURSERIES3617 Old Taneytown Road, Taneytown, MD 21787

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©2014 Zoysia Farm Nurseries, 3617 Old Taneytown Rd, Taneytown, MD 21787

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Improving America's Lawns Since 1953

Most headlights are made of polycarbonate plastic, which is durable and scratch-resistant. But over time polycarbonate clouds over, mostly due to UV rays that degrade the outer layer

of plastic. Fortunately, there are plenty of products on the market designed to help you restore your car’s 20/20 nighttime vision. To test the latest brands, I headed over to the Town & Country salvage yard in Ann Arbor, Mich., where Mike, the guy behind the counter, proudly showed me our shared name on his work shirt and loaned me the dirtiest, cloudiest headlights in the lot; I promised to return them clean. Back in the PopMech garage, I polished half of each headlight with a different product to demonstrate what I hoped would be dramatic before-and-after improvements. I wasn’t disappointed. These headlights went from filthy to fancy after less than a half-hour of work. I also applied all the products in strips to a single headlight

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PHOTOGRAPH BY K A R L - F R E D R I K V O N H AU S S W O L F F98 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 / P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M

Degree of Difficulty: 3/10

Saturday Mechanic:

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTYdiy

T R A N S F L U I D C H A N G E SS E RV I C E E X T R AS

W I N D OW F I X O R D O N ’ T F I X

Auto

MAKE YOUR HEADLIGHTS LOOK AS GOOD AS NEW, EVEN IF THE REST OF YOUR CAR ISN’T. BY M ICHAEL AUST I N

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to judge the results side by side. After soiling a stack of microfi-ber towels and raising plenty of sanding dust, I found out that all the products restored clarity to the lenses, but a few emerged as our favorites.

Basic Headlight CleaningPrep Wipe as much grime as pos-sible off the headlights with glass cleaner or soap and water. After drying the area, tape around the headlights to ensure you don’t end up sanding your car’s paint. You can also remove headlights for cleaning, but you might have to align them after reinstallation. Sand All of these products use an abrasive such as sandpaper to scuff away the outer layer of haze. This is the most impor-tant step, so be thorough. When you’re done, the entire headlight should be clear of any yellowing and have a rough, dull surface.Polish A fine polish cleans up the sandpaper scratches and makes the headlight lenses clear again.Apply UV Sealant There’s a rea-son we tested only headlight lens restorers with a UV protec-tant. The sanding step removes any protective layer that was originally applied to the headlight, and if you don’t reapply that shield your lights will haze over again in as little as a few weeks. Some products, such as the ones from Sylvania and Lenz Solution, promise extended protection.

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAV I D L AW R E N C E P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S . C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 4 99

LENZ SOLUTION

Ranking: 3.5 stars Price: $30

Likes: This consumer version of a professional product uses a heavy-duty sealant that cures hard in sunlight and comes with a two-year warranty. Dislikes: The sealant can streak like spray paint, so care is a must. We had to redo it.

MEGUIAR’S HEAVY DUTY SERIES HEADLIGHT RESTORATION KIT


Likes: Sanding by hand and polishing with a drill seemed odd, until we saw the high-gloss results. One observer com-mented that the headlight we worked on looked brand-new. Dislikes: None.

RAIN-X HEADLIGHT RESTORATION KIT


Likes: Not just the best buy but also one of the best over-all. The foam-backed sanding squares are small, but they’re easy on the hands, and the microfiber towel included in the kit helps with cleanup. Dislikes: None.

● Ranking the RestorersFOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER AND EVERY PRODUCT WILL GIVE YOU

GOOD RESULTS, BUT THE BEST PRODUCTS HAVE A MORE FOOLPROOF PROCESS.

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Step 1 On a level surface, park the car a few inches from your garage door or the wall of a large building.

Step 2 Use chalk to mark the loca-tions of the head-light beams.

Step 3 Back up 25 feet (about two car lengths); the low beams should still be level and pointing straight ahead to within a few inches of the chalk marks.

Step 4 If not, adjust the beams by turn-ing the headlight’s two setscrews—one for up/down, one for left/right.

3M HEADLIGHT RENEWAL KIT WITH PROTECTANT

Ranking: 4 stars Price: $30

Likes: We used our cordless drill for the three different sand-ing steps, as well as for the polishing, which made quick work of our beat-up test headlight. Dislikes: On curves and where the flat drill couldn’t reach, we had to sand by hand.

SYLVANIA HEADLIGHT RESTORATION KIT

Ranking: 5 stars Price: $20

Likes: We were impressed by how clear this makes head-lights, and we love the lifetime warranty. If your headlights haze again, Sylvania will refund your money. Dislikes: Good results take work: This kit required the most elbow grease.

● Adjusting Your Headlights

IF YOU’VE REMOVED

YOUR LIGHTS TO CLEAN

THEM, YOU NEED TO

LINE THEM UP PROP-

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THEM BACK ON. HERE’S

A QUICK WAY TO EYE-

BALL THE AIMING.

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Q ATrans Fluid Turnover

Car ClinicBY BEN WOJDYLA

D I Y A U T O

My owner’s manual says I should change the transmission fluid every 30,000 miles, but my father swears it should be changed as often as engine oil—every 4000 to 5000 miles. Will frequent changes damage my transmission?

The only thing frequent fluid changesharm is your pocket book—assuming, of course, those changes are performed properly. Frequent changes increase the chance that you or an absent minded mechanic might pour incompatible ATF into your car, strip out a transmission pan bolt, or incorrectly install a new gasket or filter. I always recommend following the manufacturer’s sugges-tions to the letter: The safest course is to change the fluid and filter as speci-fied in the owner’s manual. That said, the life of transmission fluid is highly dependent on operating temperatures. Frequent stop-and-go driving, towing, or snow plowing heats up the trans-mission and shortens fluid life. Those extreme cases are also usually covered in the manufacturer’s service schedule, so, again, just follow the instructions. If you’re still worried about the life of your auto matic transmission, install a temper-ature gauge that lets you know exactly how hard your gearbox is being pushed.

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Getting Down With Window RepairsI’m replacing the window regulator on the passenger-side front door in my 2004 Honda Accord. Seems like it busted from age and use. I’m wondering if I should replace

D I Y A U T O / C A R C L I N I C

Dos and Don’ts of Service Add-Ons

Dubious services and repairs can drain your wallet and do nothing for your car. Out-and-out scams are less common these days, but it’s hard to tell the difference between a good dose of preventive mainte-nance and a waste of money. We asked James Halderman, author of numerous mechanic’s textbooks, to weigh in on whether the follow-ing types of services are necessary.

FLUSHING THE RADIATOR OR TRANSMISSIONIt turns out that vocabulary is important here. A fluid exchange, where old liquid is swapped for new, is fine. But flushing often means that additives are thrown in to clean out a fluid system (such as the radiator), and Hal-derman says to skip it. “What you should avoid is flushing with harsh chemicals.” The trouble is, often those chemi-cals aren’t completely removed, and they can degrade whatever new fluid is being put in. Make sure you know how the shop defines flushing before saying yes.

INTAKE CLEANINGEvery time you visit a quickie-oil-change place, the pit jockeys practically blackmail you into an upper-intake cleaning. What is it? A solvent sprayed into the intake air-stream as the engine idles is supposed to remove carbon buildup on the intake manifold and valves and improve performance. You only need to do this every few years, if at all. “It depends on the manufacturer,” Halderman says. “Some use coatings to avoid buildup.” In general, say no unless it’s part of the recommended maintenance.

NITROGEN-FILLED TIRESAtmospheric air is already 78 percent nitrogen, and claims of improved fuel economy are dubious. “Nitrogen-filled tires originated in aviation, where tires go from ambient temperature to freezing every cycle,” Halderman says. “It makes sense in that industry because nitrogen is so much more stable.” Racing teams use nitrogen for the same reason, but you’ll save more gas by filling your tires with regular air and checking the pressure once a month.

TOP-TIER FUEL AND SYSTEM CLEANERSFuel is a solvent, but some extra cleaning is a good thing. Over time carbon deposits can build up on the back side of the intake valve. Top-tier gasolines—toptiergas.com lists companies certified to sell it—contain additives that pre-vent this buildup. Fuel-system additives such as Techron dissolve crud on injector nozzles as well as in pumps and on valve seats. “I use a bottle every six months to a year,” Halderman says, “and I rarely see any issues.”

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Send your questions to [email protected] or over Twitter at @PopMechAuto or to Car Clinic, Popular Mechanics, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019-5899. While we can’t answer questions individually, prob-lems of general interest will be discussed in the column.

GOT A CAR PROBLEM? ASK BEN ABOUT IT.

broken window regulators, and almost every time the problem is in the driver-side unit—and logically so. The driver’s window sees sig-nificantly more action than the other windows. It’s used every time at drive-through restaurants, parking garages, tollbooths, and ATMs, and when the driver just wants some fresh air. A dead pas-senger-side unit is a bit more ominous. It could mean there’s some type of ticking time bomb in the design—a vinyl gear that has become brittle with age, a grommet that fails due to road vibra-tion and allows the wires it’s protecting to short out and ruin the motor, or a pulley bearing that has given up the ghost. A window regulator usually fails without warning: It could stop working tomor-row, or it could work for 10 more years. If it does go south, that’s a major inconve-nience. Still, a single window- regulator replacement costs $200 to $300 with parts and labor. Do you really want to spend that swapping out a part that is still working fine? If it were ball joints, brakes, or some other safety item, our advice would be different, but for nonessen-tials on an old car, we say don’t bother fixing what ain’t broke. PopMech

Stop wasting hours mowing and raking — and start enjoying the warm weather. Clear acres of grass, overgrown fields, sticks and debris quickly and efficiently. Plus, in the fall, you’ll pick up ALL your leaves! The Cyclone Rake hitches to your riding mower or ZTR. Its streamlined, engine-driven vacuum system gives your mower 10 times more lifting power and it’s huge hauling capacity means spending less time emptying. The best part, when you’re done, it folds up flat, just 8 inches thick and hangs right on the wall.

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JUNK SCIENCE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 67

number of rats to tell whether the results were real or merely due to chance. (He used 200 rats, divided into 20 treatment groups of 10 rats apiece. A significantly sized study would have used 20 groups of 50 rats apiece.) The low numbers are particularly problematic because he used a rat breed that spontane-ously develops tumors up to 87 per-cent of the time even when eating standard lab rat food. “It would fail as a lab project from students in an undergraduate class,” says Michael Eisen, a geneticist at the Univer-sity of California, Berkeley. “Any-body who was a critical statistician would look at this paper and say that it shouldn’t be published.”

When PM interviewed Séralini, his first line of defense was to sug-gest that his critics have financial ties with Monsanto, the world’s big-gest producer of GMOs. He stands by his use of the tumor-prone breed because it is typically used in long-term cancer studies; he dismisses the statistic that 87 percent develop tumors, since standard lab-oratory food may contain GMOs and pesticides.

The Séralini paper was retracted by Food and Chemical Toxicology in November 2013, causing more controversy. Papers are typically retracted because of fraudulent data or because the results can’t be reproduced. The journal found no evidence of fraud, and no one has

yet tried to reproduce the study, prompting speculations that pub-lic outcry led to the retraction. This set a bad prece dent, further erod-ing public trust in the scientific pro-cess and becoming a lightning rod of paranoia for those who believe mainstream science and media are suppressing self-anointed truth tellers. In January 2014 a pair of Georgetown University professors wrote on the Bioethics Forum blog of the Hastings Center think tank that the retraction “reeks of indus-try pressure” and is a “black mark on medical publishing.”

By the time the paper was retracted it had been cited in 28 other studies. The discred-ited paper still provides anti-GMO ammunition for groups such as Greenpeace, the Organic Consum-ers Association, and GMWatch, which described it in January 2014 as a “pioneering study.”

The anti-GMO campaign has had real-world ramifications. In the Philippines, a potentially life-saving strain of golden rice has been trapped in regulatory limbo for years. The rice, engineered to produce beta carotene, would help fight vitamin A deficiencies. Dur-ing the 12-year delay, an estimated 3 million children worldwide have died from vitamin A deficiency and many more have gone blind, according to World Health Organi-zation statistics.

In November 2012 Kenya banned imports of genetically mod-ified food as a result of the Séralini study. Ten million Kenyans already

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POPULAR MECHANICS (ISSN 0032-4558) is published monthly except for combined July/August and December/January, 10 times a year, by Hearst Communications, Inc., 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019 U.S.A. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Catherine A. Bostron, Secretary. Hearst Magazines Division: David Carey, President; John P. Loughlin, Executive Vice President and General Manager; John A. Rohan, Jr., Senior Vice President, Finance. © 2014 by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Popular Mechanics is a registered trademark of Hearst Communications, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at N.Y., N.Y., and additional entry post offices. Canada Post International Publications mail product (Canadian distribution) sales agreement no. 40012499. CANADA BN NBR 10231 0943 RT. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: send address corrections to Popular Mechanics, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Printed in U.S.A.

suffer from chronic food shortages and poor nutrition, and now they’ll have one less tool with which to battle worsening hunger.

INSTITUTIONAL changes could help the media and the public differentiate good sci-ence from agenda-driven efforts. Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia is a found-ing member of the Center for Open Science, which aims to make it easier for scientists to check each other’s work by providing a plat-form on which to share data and research protocols. Promoting openness deters fraud, Nosek says. “If everyone is transparent about their research process and data, then faking becomes really incon-venient,” he says.

A new site called PubPeer allows readers to leave comments, which anyone can view, on published jour-nal articles. According to the web-site, its anonymous founders want to foster post-publication discus-sion—its founding principal is that the entire scientific community is much better at evaluating a paper than just two reviewers.

It’s easy to blame the impact of junk science on sloppy experiments, irresponsible reporters, or a fail-ure of peer review. But even after it’s debunked, junk science sticks because it preys on the public’s fear and distrust. Ultimately, junk sci-ence can be dispelled only if individ-uals think like scientists: Evaluate all the evidence and try to disprove your own preconceptions. PopMech

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SubmarineA B r i e f H i s t o r y o f t h e . . .

From retrofitted rowboats to amphibious drones, we delve deep into the history of the submarine. Prepare to dive! BY AMANDA GREEN

1620: Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel, a Dutch engineer, covers a rowboat in greased leather. A dozen oarsmen row beneath the surface of the Thames, breathing through snorkel tubes.

1900: John Holland wins a U.S. Navy submarine design competition. The USS Holland is the first to use gas and electric power, and becomes the standard sub during WWI.

1863: The French Plongeur is propelled by a compressed-air engine, not human power. The ship’s size (due to 23 internal air tanks) limits dives to 33 feet.

2013: The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory launches the XFC drone from the submerged USS Providence.

1775: David Bushnell builds the Turtle, the first submarine used in combat. The wooden vessel uses a large screw to attach to the hulls of ships and affix a time bomb.

HEY, THIS ISN’T AN

OCTOPUS’S GARDEN!

AHA! I’LL RACE YE TO THE BOTTOM!

1915: A German U-boat torpedoes the ocean liner RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, killing 1198. After continued attacks on passenger and merchant ships, the U.S. enters World War I in 1917.

1918: Loose blips sink ships: Britain and the U.S. locate subs with sonar. Still, “sonar” doesn’t become an acronym (for SOund NAvigation and Ranging) until World War II.

1943: A snorkel mast that gets air to the engine allows the German U-264 to recharge at shallow depths.

NO, “YELLOW

SUBMARINE” IS NOT ABOUT

DRUGS . . .

I THOUGHT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT

SANDWICHES.

1955: A year after Disney’s adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea implies the Nautilus runs on nuclear energy, the real-life USS Nautilus is the first sub to do just that.

1960: The bathyscaphe Trieste is the first submersible to reach Challenger Deep, the ocean’s deepest point.

2012: James Cameron’s one-man Deepsea Challenger becomes the second sub to reach the Challenger Deep. The 70-minute journey back is 64 percent shorter than his 1997 film, Titanic.

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UGS . . .

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YOU BLUE MEANIE.

2004: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, starring Bill Murray, honors Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso with a sub named after “King of Calypso” Harry Belafonte.

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