Paul Breed - Slashdot User

Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By 148

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 21, 2009 @11:46AM from the close-enough-to-feel-the-vacuum-breeze dept.

c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @01:09PM from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.

iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Hand Written Clock 86

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:11PM from the up-to-the-minute dept.

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 09, 2009 @03:10PM from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Malcolm Gladwell Challenges the Idea of "Free" 206

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @06:46PM from the crying-out-from-a-world-of-hurt dept.

An anonymous reader brings us another bump on the bumpy road of Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which we discussed a week ago. Now the Times (UK) is reporting on a dustup between Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Recently Gladwell reviewed, or rather deconstructed, Anderson's book in the New Yorker. Anderson has responded with a blog post that addresses some, but by no means all, of Gladwell's criticisms, and The Times is inclined to award the match to Gladwell on points. Although their reviewer didn't notice that Gladwell, in setting up the idea of "Free" as a straw man, omitted a critical half of Stewart Brand's seminal quote.

Comment Patent Claims... (Score 1) 603

by Paul Breed on Monday December 22, 2008 @05:08PM (#26205081) Attached to: EEStor Issued a Patent For Its Supercapacitor

The basic concept "store ennergy in parallel caps" is not new. The process and construction is new. The level of performance claimed is astonishing. I've read a fair number of patents and this one reads "Funny" The Claims are supposed to be very broad to capture as much area as possible. The claims in this patent are very very narrow.... it almost seems like it was not written by a patent professional, it reads more like a research paper. An example: Claim 2: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of 0.64um. Why put any specific number in a patent? So if you use a powder with an average size of 0.63um it will probably still work. Properly written claims should be very broad. My version of Claim 2 would be: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of less than 1 um. A lot of things just seem funny with eestor: They publish things like : "an independent company certified EEStor's production line's process as producing 99.9994% purity barium titanate powder " but don't publish things like: "an independent company verified that a prototype unit met the claimed energy density of xxx" Makes me leery of hype, the proof is in the product not the view graph, I don't care how pure your barium titanate is, I only care if your capacitor works.

Comment Lots harder than they think. (Score 1) 59

by Paul Breed on Friday September 21, 2007 @04:41PM (#20702583) Attached to: Carnegie Mellon To Compete In Google Lunar X-Prize

The robot is less than 10% of the work. If you put the communications on the lander you could do the whole robot part with an off the shelf RC car with new wheels and geared way down. I'd score it as follows: If you are Buying a ride to orbit: Robot 5% Communication 20% LEO to softland 70% Launcher integration 5% If you are also building a launcher: Getting to LEO 70% Softland 25% Everything else 5% I know something of what I speak I just spent a year preparing for the XPC and did not make it. (Unreasonable Rocket)

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