Can you guess? The number of trees in New York City? (click to link)
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Category: Bowl Of Noses
Sniffing out the stuff that kids really get best
The history of Maglevs is pretty darn fascinating. Did you know they could go up to 4000 mph! They were invented in 1902! Why do we have to wait for them to come to our city? We’d like to write a much longer post, but the Maglev Wiki is pretty swell.
Sorry that we didn’t have time to add photos. Let us know if you have any to add.
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Jam With An Awesome Band!
Iron Fred G-nose knows of The H2Y’s love of Daft Punk, the Bowl’s greatest techno band. He served up the tools and Mr. M-nose took it higher.
Want to play alongside the robot guys’ who get the whole world moving? Here’s what you gotta do:
Step 1: Boot up the kickin’ keyboard synthesizer where you too can play the robot voices with a flick of a finger: http://www.najle.com/idaft/
Step 2: Open a new tab in that window on your browser.
Step 3: Open YouTube and find Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger”. Load it. Play.
Step 4: Shuttle back to the iDaft keyboard and play along. You are now jamming!
We suggest to do it all standing up so you can dance along as you play, just like if you were wearing your robot suit too.
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Styles Of Animation #6: Praxinscope
The zoetrope was replaced by the Praxinscope. You’ve seen a zoetrope in the museums. You know you spin the wheel and look through the slots.
“The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.”
In the video below, the filmmakers took that method and applied it. No camera tricks at all.
Pretty darn neato if you ask me.
Thanks Brainpickings!
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360 Degree Views
Panoramic photography is pretty darn cool — particularly on the internet. Click on the controls and spin around. Check this out and swim through the coral reefs without getting your hair wet!
They’ve got a lot of other places to visit too if you got the wants but not the jets.
Well, the same goes for the grown-ups. This guy is pretty amazing; he gave us several jaw-dropping moments. We had been reading that effort is more important than ability when it comes to accomplishment and victory. I wonder how many hours of practice went into these stunts? Still they produced an excellent five minutes of bicycle brilliance.
If Bowl Of Noses had a summer camp, one of the electives would be Mad Science 101. Definitely, we’d have lots of stuff that explodes and makes stinky smells, but hey, it’d be educational too (we’ve got another 20 fun things to do on the list too, so best sign up for the whole fantasy summer!).
Dave at The Paris Bar tipped us to the Cool Hunter tip on these neato kits. If our dreams were real, we’d more than enough for everyone to play with each twice. Here’s what Cool Hunter had to say:
Although the Rhode Island-based Thames & Kosmos has only been around since 2001, the science kit manufacturer has a roster of more than 57 award-winning kits. This prolific output has been possible, no doubt, through partnership with the respected German publisher Kosmos, which has been producing experimental sets since 1922. (Its chemistry set won a gold medal at the 1937 World’s Fair.)Thames & Kosmos has been publishing eco-driven science kits since its inception. In fact, the first product to be introduced to the States under the label was the Fuel Cell kit. At last week’s NYC Toy Fair, the company introduced four new kits in its Alternative Energy and Environmental Science line-up, one of which was a revised and sportier (see above) version of the Fuel Cell Car and Experiment kit. Available this fall for $169, we’re guessing this kit might be a popular holiday gift for automotive executives.
Another revised edition is the new Power House Green Essentials Edition. A follow-up to the best selling Power House Kit, the new edition is geared towards kids ten and up, and features 30 experiments over ten energy-related models: the power house itself, a greenhouse, a solar cell array, a passive solar collector, a solar oven, an air conditioner, a refrigerator, a hydrometer, a lemon battery and a wind power generator.Entirely new for 2009, the Hydropower kit is geared towards kids ages eight and up. It focuses on teaching the power of water through twelve experiments and building projects. Kids learn age-old hydropower schemes through building a water wheel, sawmill and hammer mill, while gaining insight into water pressure through a water tower, communicating vessels and a fountain. And for those budding ecopreneurs out there, the kit elaborates on how electricity can be generated by harnessing the power of ocean waves, tidal flows and rivers. Hydropower will be available this summer and sell for $50.
Lastly, and just in time to prepare today’s youth for tomorrow’s raging climate crisis, is the Global Warming kit. This one features experiments that teach about the Earth’s delicate climate system and the role we humans play in shaping it through experiments that model the atmosphere, wind and ocean currents. Global warming scenarios are developed with experiments involving carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. Although this kit is geared primarily for children ages 10 and up, we can’t help but think it might be a helpful learning device for the lingering group of global warming naysayers out there. Available this summer, the kit will sell for $35.
