WHAT ! ? ! ? ! ?
In the upper-left corner of each box we find the following statement: "This work by Zbigniew Libera has been sponsored by Lego" - as the project was made possible thanks to the bricks presented by the polish department of the Danish company.The work has become an icon and - in various versions - was exhibited in galleries and museum collections across the globe. One of sets was purchased by the Jewish Museum in New York.
I wonder if anyone would buy this for their kids.
Black Friday
If you're a Black Friday newbie, you might want to check out this shopping guide from Consumer Reports. It has links to the best Black Friday information sites, as well as tips for grabbing the best deals. [Consumer Reports]
Bruce Lee ping pong
I promised myself I wouldn't post this because it's EVERYWHERE - but I was weak...
Gotta get me one of these...
In the September, 1956 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, directions for a lightweight, wooden speedster powered by a motorcycle engine caught the eye of some deranged boat builder on the west coast. Here's the result: a modified version of the Speedball Special. Best news? It's for sale. The car was originally built in 1959 and is equipped with an impossibly rare 1952 Ariel Square Four motorcycle engine, a smooth-running four-cylinder 1000 cc engine able to push out about 42 HP. That might not seem like much, but when driving the sequential four-speed and with a weight of only a mere 750 lbs this little wooden car has got to be a rocket.The car seems fairly true to the original, with an independent suspension from a Citroen (three lug wheels!), single wheel drive, a Renault steering box, and various pieces of brightwork from a Cadillac. Cool barely even describes the car and it's hard to believe anybody would want to sell it.The listing is up on eBay and at the time of posting it's current price is sitting at $22,456 with a measly buy-it-now price of only $29,000. That's dangerously close to sounding like a reasonable price for some magnificent workmanship on a very unique and hairy-knuckled roadster.
[eBay Listing, St. Louis Car Musem and Mechanix Illustrated
The Demon Core...
I know someone who was involved in this testing and he is a pretty interesting guy to talk to.
In 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian was working on a 6.2 kg (14 lb) spherical mass of plutonium at the Los Alamos laboratory. He was stacking bricks of tungsten carbide around the plutonium core when he noticed a nearby neutron counter signaling that the addition of the final brick would make the assembly supercritical. Daghlian immediately withdrew his hand ... and the brick slipped onto the center of the plutonium core and the assembly went critical. Daghlian was able to dissemble the bricks (the core didn't explode), but he died from radiation poisoning 28 days later.
Nine months later, physicist Louis Slotin, an expert in triggering devices, and seven other scientists gathered in the laboratory to perform a dangerous experiment he called "tickling the dragon's tail." The experiment involved creating the beginning steps of a nuclear fission reactor by placing two half-spheres of beryllium around the plutonium core. The trick was to keep the beryllium from touching the plutonium core, which Slotin had done many times before.
But on that day, Slotin decided to use a screwdriver instead of shims, and his hand slipped and the beryllium hemisphere touched the plutonium core, which instantly went critical. Slotin realized his mistake, and used his hand to lift the beryllium just a fraction of a second later ... but that was enough to give him a lethal dose of radiation. The other scientists saw a "blue glow" of air ionization and felt a "heat wave" - they were saved from immediate death (though later 3 of them died from side effects of radiation years later). Slotin, on the other hand, died 9 days later.
Both of Daghlian and Slotin's accidents were on Tuesday the 21st, both used the same plutonium core, and both died in the same room at the same hospital. The plutonium core was later named the "Demon Core" and was put to use in the Able test of the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon test at the Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946.
In 1945, physicist Harry Daghlian was working on a 6.2 kg (14 lb) spherical mass of plutonium at the Los Alamos laboratory. He was stacking bricks of tungsten carbide around the plutonium core when he noticed a nearby neutron counter signaling that the addition of the final brick would make the assembly supercritical. Daghlian immediately withdrew his hand ... and the brick slipped onto the center of the plutonium core and the assembly went critical. Daghlian was able to dissemble the bricks (the core didn't explode), but he died from radiation poisoning 28 days later.
Nine months later, physicist Louis Slotin, an expert in triggering devices, and seven other scientists gathered in the laboratory to perform a dangerous experiment he called "tickling the dragon's tail." The experiment involved creating the beginning steps of a nuclear fission reactor by placing two half-spheres of beryllium around the plutonium core. The trick was to keep the beryllium from touching the plutonium core, which Slotin had done many times before.
But on that day, Slotin decided to use a screwdriver instead of shims, and his hand slipped and the beryllium hemisphere touched the plutonium core, which instantly went critical. Slotin realized his mistake, and used his hand to lift the beryllium just a fraction of a second later ... but that was enough to give him a lethal dose of radiation. The other scientists saw a "blue glow" of air ionization and felt a "heat wave" - they were saved from immediate death (though later 3 of them died from side effects of radiation years later). Slotin, on the other hand, died 9 days later.
Both of Daghlian and Slotin's accidents were on Tuesday the 21st, both used the same plutonium core, and both died in the same room at the same hospital. The plutonium core was later named the "Demon Core" and was put to use in the Able test of the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon test at the Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946.
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