Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Coventry Light Tram

In the centre of England, In the small English city of Coventry, they are currently developing a small single car battery powered tram system called CVLR (Coventry Very Light Rail). 
The idea is to obtain a tram rail network without installing overhead power lines or reinforcement in the road. They simply bolt the steel rails to the ground and the tram powers itself until it needs charging. 

They are obtaining a rail network at a small fraction of the cost. 

According to their reports they want to have the new tram system installed across the whole city. 

Sunday, 15 June 2025

Hybrid Arcade Console

Have you ever wanted to have a games console that takes cartridges and is also a small arcade machine in one. 

Such a machine exists, it's called the evercade bartop 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

This is the website for the system 
Evercade. They make retro style games consoles that take multi game cartridges so you can build up a licensed game collection. 

Saturday, 7 June 2025

Moon Day

One day on the moon lasts for 28 earth Days(4 weeks), Two weeks of day and two weeks of night. This has caused probes to fail their missions as they freeze in the long moon night. 

The orbital period of the moon is also 28 days so we always see the same side of the moon on Earth. They call this rotation synchronization tidal locking. The moon is tidally locked to the Earth. 

Monday, 2 June 2025

Lane Loitering

In Great Britain many people don't know it is illegal to loiter in the overtaking lanes. All lanes to the right of the first lane are earmarked for overtaking unless the first lane is closed or the lanes are bifurcating into separate roads. It is listed as one of the stipulations of the Dangerous Driving law. 

Motorists that loiter in the overtaking lanes without overtaking can receive 3 penalty points on their driving licence and receive a £100 fine. 


Sunday, 25 May 2025

Grand Tree

The Giant Sequoya redwood tree is so big that it can dwarf over 40 blue whales, the largest animals known to ever exist on Earth. 

The tree is known to weigh close to 6000 tons and the average blue whale usually weighs 150 tons, still impressive considering humans usually weigh less than 100kg, a small fraction of 1 ton. 

According to scholars, the rings on the trees show an age close to biblical times, some where around before the time of Jesus, over 2000 years ago. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

Sources 

Ai estimation by Gemini. 
Let's calculate how many blue whales match the weight of a giant sequoia tree.
First, let's establish the average weights:
 * Blue whale: Blue whales can weigh between 100 to 200 tons (200,000 to 400,000 pounds), with an average often cited around 150 tons (300,000 pounds or 136,000 kg). Some sources state up to 330,000 pounds (150 tons).
 * Giant Sequoia tree: The largest giant sequoia, General Sherman, is estimated to weigh around 6,167 tons (or 2.7 million pounds). Other large sequoias can weigh over 600 tons, and some estimates go up to 1300 tons or even 2105 short tons (1,910 metric tons). We'll use the General Sherman's weight as a prominent example.
Now, let's do the math:
Using the General Sherman tree's weight of 6,167 tons and an average blue whale weight of 150 tons:
6,167 \text{ tons (sequoia)} / 150 \text{ tons (blue whale)} \approx 41.11
So, approximately 41 blue whales would match the weight of a giant sequoia tree like General Sherman.
It's important to note that these are estimates, and the exact weights can vary for individual whales and trees.

~ Website https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/blue-whale?hl=en-GB




Sunday, 18 May 2025

Hidden VMU

The DreamCast was so advanced that even the memory cards were games consoles in their own right. Certain games on the Sega would send an 8 bit game to the memory card and you could play a dot matrix side scrolling game similar to that of game boy game. 
~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

When the Memory card was plugged into the game controller the screen would be used to display game stats. The memory card was refered to as a VMU. It would keep record of your game progress and allow you to play games retro style. 

Saturday, 17 May 2025

Heavy Ice Cube

If you froze water that contains the heavy isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium, the ice cube would sink in normal water. This is because it is 10% more dense than normal water. 
~image generated by artificial intelligence(chatGPT) 

Water that is formed of Deuterium hydrogen is often called Heavy water.  Heavy water is also known is Deuterium Oxide.