Awesome Etc

With the holidays upon us, the fragrance of pine is in the air. After buying some pine cones from the market, Boxlapse plucked and planted one of their seeds to see if it would grow into a tree. This captivating time-lapse footage condenses 300 days of growth to about two minutes. Perhaps it’ll be big enough to use as a Christmas tree in a few years.

The portable NOMAD is a grill and smoker you can carry like a briefcase. It burns charcoal for fast heating and offers 425 square inches of grilling space with its optional second grate. It smokes, sears, bakes, and barbecues and has features like a heat-dissipating shell, lightweight stainless steel grates, adjustable air vents, and a built-in thermometer.

Both the Loch Ness Monster and some of the world’s best whiskeys hail from Scotland. This stainless steel Nessie swims in your rocks glass and keeps scotch or other spirits cool without watering them down. The little dude rides atop a food-safe silicone suction cup to keep him upright and peeking out of his boozy lake.

When The Slow Mo Guys and How Ridiculous got together, they didn’t just crush some heads. After all, if you’ve got a cannon that fires bowling balls at 500 MPH, you want to destroy all the things. With the help of the cannon’s maker, BealsScience, they tested the strength of bulletproof glass and polycarbonate along with a fiberglass-lined safety door.

It’s common knowledge that octopi are intelligent creatures. After he purchased an octopus from a pet store, engineer Mark Rober wanted to release the animal back into the ocean. Before he could do that, he built a challenging maze to confirm that Sashimi would be able to hunt for food after being hand-fed for most of her life.

Here’s one from the “don’t try this at home” file. TikTok user ex9g6oxt has posted a series of videos in which he uses firecrackers to launch metal bowls and rice cookers into the air. He starts with the smallest firecracker and gradually ups the size to see how high the explosion can launch each object.

Using large syringes, Tom Stanton shows us how the vacuum captured inside can be used to drive gears, a belt, and an axle. The result is a mini dragster that travels an impressive distance compared to the short distance that the syringe’s piston moves.

When we’re dragging, one of our go-to snacks is peanut butter and cheese sandwich crackers. They offer a savory mix of carbs and protein and help us power through. Science Channel’s How It’s Made goes inside the Lance factory to see how they’re baked, cut, and assembled, and where that orange color comes from.

Get your daily dose of engineering porn with this video from Uwe Krumm GmbH. The company makes precision tooling for manufacturing, including the press brake tools shown here. It’s a hypnotic and satisfying 6-minute sequence of sheet metal being bent into complex shapes through the simple application of force.

Red Side has compared the speeds of aircraft, spaceships, and other vehicles; now they’re back to show the differences in flying speeds of birds – or, in the case of penguins, chickens, and kiwis, how fast they can walk or run. Who here knew a seagull was faster than Usain Bolt?

While the use of physical currency continues to dwindle, there’s still a need for coins to be produced. Process X takes us on an in-depth tour of Japan’s only coin factory for a look at how they make coins. The Osaka mint produces six kinds of coins, from aluminum 1 yen coins to the copper, nickel, and zinc 500 yen coins shown in the video.

So you’re driving down a road in your Jeep when a wild rhinoceros comes out of nowhere. You could try to go around the beast, but you’d risk an impact. Based on this video, the better move is to back away as fast as possible. We’re equally impressed with the driver’s skill and the speed at which such a heavy animal can move.

We would say, “Don’t try this at home,” but most of us don’t have a cauldron of molten lava or a vat of acid lying around. Mark Rober’s video includes a series of experiments in which he and his pals tested the destructive abilities of lava, acid, and some wildcards. The video culminates in a challenge to see which could kill a car engine quicker.

Today’s most satisfying video comes in the form of this clip from the Brick Experiment Channel. Their goal? Create the longest possible chain of 1×1 LEGO Technic gears while retaining the same gear ratio from start to finish. We’re impressed that a single motor can drive that many gears.

Halloween may be over, but we would have loved to have this cast iron skeleton coin bank on display. TysyTube Restoration did a fantastic job cleaning up its rusty old bones. We love the creepy action as it tosses coins from its bony hand into its eyeball. If you like the idea, Design Toscano still sells a similar bank.

Inspired by how hummingbirds hover in flight, Works by Design wanted to see if he could build a flying machine that lifts off vertically and stays aloft by flapping its wings. It uses compressed gas for propulsion and a custom-built air motor to move its wings. It’s not an efficient method of flight, but it was cool to observe the engineering process.

Gav and Dan of The Slow Mo Guys met up with Brett and Scott from How Ridiculous to see what kind of damage a bowling ball cannon can do. Their subject: ballistic gel heads filled with fake skulls. For something a little less gruesome, enjoy some bowling balls vs. trampolines.

Super73 teamed up with Macguffin Makers to create this epic Halo-themed electric bike kitted out with futuristic body cladding and UNSC graphics. They built it for a giveaway sponsored by Doritos, Mountain Dew, and Rockstar Energy. Be sure to check out Super73’s gallery for more great custom builds.

We still don’t know if there’s extraterrestrial life out there, but if there is, there’s a chance that they won’t like us Earthlings and will want to get rid of us. Kurzgesagt takes the aliens’ side in this theoretical conflict and offers strategies to help them wipe out humanity forever. Though they assume our enemies are more technologically advanced than us.

Slip into REEF’s Swellsole Scallywag, a lightweight, waterproof boot to protect the crew in all kinds of wet conditions. It sports a molded TPU upper with a neoprene lining and a soft EVA insole with arch support. The no-slip rubber outsole maintains traction whether you’re sailing, SUP’ing, fishing, or walking a slippery plank.

Bradley Mountain craftsman and designer Andrew Nguyen illustrated this unique deck of playing cards featuring 52 brief survival tips. Each deck is printed in the U.S. with a gold foil letterpress box. Pre-orders start shipping on 11.22.2023, in time for holiday gift-giving. It’s also available in a charcoal version.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are found everywhere these days, so they must be produced in mass quantities. Scotty Allen from Strange Parts scored a tour of China’s World Semi factory for a fascinating look at how they crank out millions of RGB LEDs that can be programmed to change colors. The automation used in the process is truly incredible.

Jonny Builds set out to make a tabletop using a similar style to Micarta knife handles. After testing with large sheets of paper, he started over with thousands of small sheets of colored paper and laminated them with epoxy in a vacuum bag. After flattening its surface with a CNC machine, he carved a water ripple pattern and coated it with clear epoxy.