Fully Automatic Snowball Machine Gun
After completing an undergraduate degree at BYU, earning a Master’s in mechanical engineering at USC, and then working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab for nine years, engineer Mark Rober has designed the next great engineering masterpiece – a snowball-shooting leaf blower machine gun.
Rober recently published a video of the winter weapon on Youtube. It reportedly fires 13 snowballs in about a half second, and uses nothing more than a cordless leaf blower, some corrugated pipe, a few metal pipe clamps, and duct tape.
First Solid-State Hydrogen UAV Flight
A drone has successfully flown wholly powered by solid hydrogen for the first time ever. The experimental drone ran on pellets that emit only water vapor when they burn, and the aircraft’s fuel is also three times as light as a comparable lithium battery.
The flight was carried out on January 19th at Scotland’s Oban Airport by a team from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. Although the flight only lasted 10 minutes with the drone cruising at an altitude of 262 ft., the fuel cell reportedly had enough fuel to fly for two hours.
World’s Fastest Mobility Scooter Goes Over 100MPH
Two mechanics from Isle of Man spent six months building the world’s fastest mobility scooter. David Anderson and Mathew Hine upgraded a mobility scooter that usually travels at less than 10 mph to an incredible 107.6 mph.
The two mechanics took a ‘Days Strider’ mobility scooter and a racing go-cart chassis and re-designed the chassis to fit the dimensions of the scooter. They then put an 80-horsepower 600cc Suzuki engine and racing slick tires under the scooter shell.