Many tunnels in Sydney, Australia aren't tall enough to permit tractor trailers to move through safely. This animated gif shows a warning system that informs truck drivers when they're about to crash into a tunnel entrance. When sensors detect a vehicle that is too tall, the system pours water across the entrance to the tunnel and projects a stop sign onto that water curtain.
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What lies beneath Moscow's most iconic buildings? These clever print ads are commissioned to promote the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow, Russia. Via Web Urbanist
The reason mad scientists are pictured in film in labs with interconnected beakers and machinery that does incomprehensible things is because that's the way labs looked at one time. io9 has a collection of pictures of the laboratories where huge scientific and engineering breakthroughs occurred, from Edison (top) and Tesla (bottom) to the development of cellophane and computers. Link -via Nag on the Lake
For a series on the brain for Men's Health magazine, UK designer Kyle Bean (previously) decided to recreate the ol' noggin with a few interesting stuff like toothpaste, newspapers, and fruits.
Link - via Design Stories
With macro and wide angle lenses, French photographer Pierre Carreau takes stunning pictures of ordinary waves of water. Colossal's Christopher Jobson calls them "liquid sculptures," which I think is a perfect description. You can view more photos at the link.
If one lens is good, then hundreds have got to be better! A team of researchers have created the world's first digital camera that mimic the compound eyes of bugs:
Taking cues from Mother Nature, the cameras exploit large arrays of tiny focusing lenses and miniaturized detectors in hemispherical layouts, just like eyes found in arthropods. The devices combine soft, rubbery optics with high performance silicon electronics and detectors, using ideas first established in research on skin and brain monitoring systems by John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his collaborators.
“Full 180 degree fields of view with zero aberrations can only be accomplished with image sensors that adopt hemispherical layouts – much different than the planar CCD chips found in commercial cameras,” Rogers explained. “When implemented with large arrays of microlenses, each of which couples to an individual photodiode, this type of hemispherical design provides unmatched field of view and other powerful capabilities in imaging. Nature has developed and refined these concepts over the course of billions of years of evolution.”
A married couple of the town of Roermond in the Netherlands are forever separated by cemetery walls. According to Varik and Church Records of the 17th Century,
In 1842 a twenty-two year old Catholic woman of nobility (J.W.C. van Gorkum) married a colonel in the Dutch Cavalry. He was not of nobility and was Protestant as well. That must have been the scandal of the century in Roermont. However, the marriage had lasted almost forty years, when the colonel died. Eight years later the woman past away also. She had refused to be laid to rest in the family's large tomb and, instead, had ordered the monument that you can still see today. She lies on one side of the wall, he on the other, still holding hands.
Apparently, while the church had rules about who gets buried where, there were no hard and fast rules about such monuments. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
It may not provide much illumination, but I'll bet this mood light reminds you of fresh toast. Chris Killham, an artist in Chicago, made this lamp with a toaster and kiln cast glass.
For his son's 11th birthday, redditor crujones43 set up a treasure hunt. The boy had to read maps, collect clues at various locations, use a compass, solve puzzles, and hike through the woods to find a box containing real money. The fun of getting there was worth even more! Thirty pictures of the adventure are posted, in case you want to try something similar. Link -via reddit
This footage was filmed around 1900 in the cities of London, England, and Cork, Ireland. However, it doesn't look like any 100-year-old film you've seen, because it's been altered to make it more like being there than the film technology of the time could produce.
This video has been dramatically enhanced in quality, using modern video editing tools. The film has been motion stabilized and the speed has been slowed down to correct speed (from 18 fps to 24 fps) using special frame interpolation software that re-creates missing frames. Upscaling to HD quality was done using video enhancer software.
-via Nag on the Lake
Leigh Lahav made her husband Oren Mendezitsky a birthday video by inserting them and their circle into TV show intros. How many do you recognize? There's a list at the YouTube page. (via Tastefully Offensive)
Bring back life form. Priority One. All other priorities rescinded. Chinese sculptor yanchuan1111 didn't nuke it from orbit. Rather, he completed the mission and brought us this: Link - via Geek Art
Judge Raymond Voet of Ionia County, Michigan has a simple rule: if your cell phone goes off in court, you will be held in contempt of court and fined $25. He's consistent about enforcement. When his own cell phone rang, he imposed the penalty on himself. It's a new phone and Judge Voet wasn't sure how to operate it. But that excuse didn't cut it:
"That's an excuse, but I don't take those excuses from anyone else. I set the bar high, because cell phones are a distraction and there is very serious business going on," he said. "The courtroom is a special place in the community, and it needs more respect than that. I tow a tough line, and I got to back it up this afternoon."
At the next recess, Voet held himself in contempt of court, fined himself $25, and stated on the record "If I cannot live by the rules that I enforce, then I have no business enforcing these rules."
Link -via Kids Prefer Cheese | Photo: Karen Bota
Samuel Lee of Prince Armory crafted these fantastic medieval Batman and Aquaman custom leather suits of armor. We are duly impressed! Link - via Fashionably Geek
Medieval
Batman - Photo: Christina Mendenhall
(Image credit: Flickr user Mark Herpel)
I dig out tiny caves, and store gold and silver in them. I also build bridges of silver and make crowns of gold. Sooner or later, everyone needs my help, yet many people are afraid to let me help them. Who am I?
Continue reading for the answer.
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