Transportation

Watermelon car

Watermelon car

The biggest and best-quality versions of these watermelon car images I can find come from a members-only forum post on this South Korean site, which appears to be some kind of auto marketplace and/or enthusiast’s hub. Problem is, the plates on the car do not appear to be Korean. Can anyone identify their nationality, or […]

Awesome custom skateboards

Awesome custom skateboards

Alan Argondizza of Ithaca, NY, wrote in to share the super cool skateboards that he builds from scratch using sheets of birch plywood cut with a jigsaw and hand-held router, then decorated by hand with paint pens, spray paint, and sharpies. Interested in making your own? Alan’s provides an excellent how-to on his site.

How-To: Liquid-Cooled Carseat

How-To: Liquid-Cooled Carseat

Instructables user kstruve writes: I currently live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, which gets mighty hot in the summer. This summer, we’ve had several days around or above 110 degrees. I have twin baby boys, and despite cracking the windows, using reflective seat covers and running the A/C full blast when driving them around, their […]

Visualizing American air power with models

Visualizing American air power with models

In 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt committed the U.S. economy to the production of 60,000 warplanes that year, and suggested that as many as 185,000 aircraft might be produced by the end of 1943. He turned out to be almost correct. In June 1944, TIME reported 171,257 aircraft produced since Pearl Harbor. In 1942, however, those were Herculean goals, yet to be achieved, and as part of an effort to help Americans understand the task before them, a fleet of 4,500 model airplanes was suspended from the ceiling of Chicago’s Union Station. Once you absorb the spectacle of 4,500 planes, of course, then comes the whammy: That’s only 1/48th of the production goal. The image above is 600 pixels wide. At that scale, if your monitor’s pitch is 72 dpi, an image of all 185,000 planes would be 33 feet wide. [via NOTCOT]

Land steam record attempt

Land steam record attempt

By way of Steampunk Workshop comes news of the U.S. Land Steam Record (USLSR) Team and their attempts to build and race the fastest steam-powered vehicle on Earth. They plan to try for that record on the famous Bonneville Salt Flats, as early as August, 2011. The previous land steam speed record is held by […]