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Origami inspires new structural design
Miles Wu folded a variant of the Miura-ori pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight.
Sitting in his family’s living room in New York City, 14-year-old Miles Wu was astonished to find that a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight. For a total of more than 250 hours, Wu had diligently designed, folded and tested copious variations of the technique—a series of tessellating parallelograms that can fold or unfold in one fell swoop—to find one that could be used to build deployable shelters for emergency situations like natural disasters.
“I was really shocked by how much [weight] these simple pieces of paper could hold,” says Wu, who’s currently a ninth-grade student at Hunter College High School in New York City.
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Enclose.horse puzzle game
Enclose.horse is a tile based puzzle game where you attempt to create a fence to prevent a horse from escaping. You try to create the largest possible area.
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A credit union inside a high school
A Missouri credit union opened a real, working branch inside of the high school.
That’s because this school year, a CSD Credit Union branch officially opened inside the high school, making it the second student-run credit union in Missouri. Winnetonka students and staff can make deposits, open accounts and even apply for loans without leaving campus.
Working at the school’s credit union wasn’t as simple as enrolling in a class. Students who were interested in the job had to fill out applications and undergo extensive training. After getting the job, they’re managed by a credit union supervisor.
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Respect the parking spot chair during winter
In cities that experience blizzard accumulation of snow, unwritten rules exist surrounding parking spots, and who gets to use them, especially if you do the work of clearing the space. The people of Pittsburgh use a chair to claim their snow cleared spot.
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Sabbatical, a.k.a. the adult gap year
There appears to be a growing trend of working adults taking sabbatical or gap years between jobs.
Mini-sabbaticals. Adult gap years. Micro-retirement. Extended career breaks go by many names and take many forms, from using the time between jobs to explore or taking an employer-approved leave to becoming a digital nomad or saving up for a monthslong adventure. Creating space for a reset, whether mental, physical or spiritual, is the common thread.
Cost, personal responsibilities and fears of being judged by colleagues, friends and family members are some of the obstacles that prevent people from hitting pause on their work lives and setting out in search of new perspectives, according to sabbatical experts and people who have taken sabbaticals.
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3D printed batteries
A superpowered Formula 1 car, a buzzing drone, a soldier’s pack, and a wearable smart device have this in common: They all need batteries. Ideally, those batteries could fit into oddly shaped nooks, curves, and voids, something that today’s cylindrical or rectangular cells struggle to do. Engineer Gabe Elias, who helped design the Mercedes-AMG Petronas racers that won seven consecutive F1 championships, cofounded a startup to 3D print batteries onto surfaces, flowing into those unused spaces in all kinds of devices and vehicles.
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Bad Bunny’s half time bush people
All the plants that made up Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl 60 set were people.
Hidden inside the sugarcane grass beside him were humans hired to stand there in costume. The realization that real people were cast to play hundreds of bushes at the Super Bowl turned the inconspicuous performers into a social media sensation overnight.
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Why everyone hates data centers
Why everyone hates data centers: raising utility bills, drinking all the water, and a persistent hum.
There are some obvious reasons. First is just the speed and scale of their construction, which has had effects on power grids. No one likes to see their power bills go up. The rate hikes that so incensed Georgians come as monthly reminders that the eyesore in your backyard profits California billionaires at your expense, on your grid. In Wyoming, for example, a planned Meta data center will require more electricity than every household in the state, combined. To meet demand for power-hungry data centers, utilities are adding capacity to the grid. But although that added capacity may benefit tech companies, the cost is shared by local consumers.
