Mmmmm, fresh street paint! 

This is often my exact example when I explain retro-reflectives, street paint.  Daytime shows a white line, but darkness and directional headlights reveal: Shine! This is accomplished through the use of retro-reflective micro-spheres, high strength glass spheres that have be half coated in aluminum. As light enters through the clear hemisphere it is reflected off the aluminum coating on the other side, bouncing back toward the light source at a slightly different angle.

The application technique is interesting as well, carefully optimized for maximum durability and reflection. First a hot fluid polymer is layered down in a given pattern or design by a spigot on the back of a truck, think tar. Next a worker with a bucket full of microspheres and a broom pours the spheres onto the design and brushes them over the surface of the setting paint. this maximizes surface coverage, and ensures that the spheres don’t get masked by the paint. Safety First!

First thought, Science! 

Second thought, Breaking Bad?

Third thought, Caffeine. 

If you’re in NYC take the opportunity to (over) caffeinate with Birch ‘Cold Brew’ Coffee this summer. Chemically designed to rock your work day! 

Hydrophobins, naturally produced by mushrooms, are a self assembling layer of proteins that create hydrophobic surfaces. (They can also create phillic surfaces! What!?) And are probably responsible for that “slimy cap” feeling they get when I wash them.

Learn more by clicking above!

brucesterling:

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The Design-Fiction Slider-Bar of Disbelief 
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10. Holy relics, attributes of sainthood and divinity; transubstantiated Hosts, Arks of Covenant, teeth of Buddha

9.5 Supernatural objects and services associated with elves, vampires, fairies; magical charms, garlic, silver bullets etc

9.4 New age crystals, lucky charms, protective pendants, mojo hands, voodoo dolls, magic wands

9.3 Quack devices, medical hoaxes

9.3 Fantasy “objects” in fantasy cinema and computer-games

9.2 Physically impossible sci-fi literary devices: time machines, humanoid robots

9.2 Perpetual motion machines; free-energy gizmos, other physically impossible engineering fantasies

9.0 State libels, black propaganda, military ruses; missile gaps, vengeance weapons, Star Wars SDI

8.9 “Realplay” services, “experiential futurism” encounters, military and emergency training drills, props and immersive set-design, scripted personas

8.8 Online roleplaying scenario games

8.7 Net.art interventions, diegetic performance art, provocative device-art scandals

8.6 Guerrilla street-theater; costumes, puppets, banners, songs, lynchings-in-effigy, mock trials, mass set-designed Nuremberg rallies, propaganda trains

8.5 Fake products, product forgeries, theft-of-services, con-schemes, 419 frauds

8.0. For-profit frauds and false commercial advertising

7.9 Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson devices, chindogu “unuseless objects”, parodies, whimsies and comical contraptions; Albert Robida satirical prognostications

7.0 Vaporware; “Fear Uncertainty and Doubt” campaigns

6.0 “Design Fiction” diegetic prototypes from sci-fi media, “concept cars,” “conversation pieces,” provocative laboratory curiosities

5.9 Blue-skying Internet-based “theory objects” and congealed techie pundit scuttlebutt; socially-generated rumor and tech speculation; crowdsourced speculative objects and services; Kickstarter projects

5.0 “Brand Management” by design

4.9 Design pitches to the board of directors; untested business-models

4.8 The plans and schematics for as-yet-unborn yet genuine objects and services

4.0 Real-life product descriptions and users instruction manuals

3.5 Product reviews and opinions; user feedback, public assessments

3.0 Design criticism; material-culture assessments; scholarly studies

2.0 Legal regulations and government protocols concerning objects and services

1.0 Engineering specifications, software code

0.5 Historical tech assessment of extinct technologies, the “judgement of history’

0.0 The ideal and unobtainable “objective truth” about objects and services

I love a Venn Diagram, the world needs more graphical explanation.

10 stories of new and innovative materials which are inspired by and emulate natural systems.

freshphotons:

Surface Tension.

One of my top five phrases.

I’m always amazed at the scientific precision and beauty of the 1800’s. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for a time when a scientific demonstration and lecture was the society event of the month.

microscopicexpressionism:

Victorian Microscope Slides.

Various Crystallized Chemical Compounds in polarized light with filters; crystals of Sulphate of Strontium, and 3 variations of Salicine crystal mounts by J.T. Norman.

Fund your local scientist!

freshphotons:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Overwhelmed? Stressed? Difficulty sticking to New Year’s Resolutions? Nothing can get you down with your own personal crab cheerleader. Not only does the boxer crab have charming dance moves, they also share the lesson of interdependence and mutual-benefit. Thanks for keeping our sprits high little buddy!

astronomy-to-zoology:

Genus Lybia

(Boxer Crabs)

also known as pom-pom crabs, Boxer Crabs are a genus of small crabs in the family Xanthidae (mud crabs). the name pom-pom/or boxer comes from the mutualism that they hold with sea anemones, in which they hold the cnidarian in their claws and use them for defense, and in turn the sea anemone gets more food by moving around.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Arhtropoda-Crustacea-Malacostraca-Decapoda-Branchyura-Xanthidae-Lybia

Source,Source

(via staceythinx)

Yesss! Structural color you rock me! 

Learn more about structural color, another crazy berry, and other amazing nanophotonic university creation Polymer Opals from Cambridge. 

harvardseas:

A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter (UK) have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. The fibers replicate the unique structural elements that create the bright blue color of the “bastard hogberry,” a tropical fruit. Read more about color-tunable photonic fibers!

Images courtesy of Mathias Kolle and Peter Vukusic.