Daily Archives: April 26, 2012

Don't Use Duct Tape for This; it Tastes Terrible

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The Food Lab: My Favorite Cooking Hacks

I already covered their beer-cooler sous-vide hack. For the wok hack,

When filled part way with coals and allowed to ignite, the well-ventilated chimney channels all of that heat energy upwards.

True for the convection, which is the most important heat transfer going on. (But the radiation is still pedantically being emitted out the other sides.) And the ice-cream-without-an-ice-cream-maker sounds intriguing. I’ve had liquid nitrogen ice cream, which is a truly geeky hack that achieves the same goal of quick freezing so you get small crystals.

via @rjallain (via @seriouseats)

Flipping Out

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Flying object propels itself by flipping inside out

The design is based on the inverted cube shape discovered by inventor and mathematician Paul Schatz. By dissecting a cube into three parts, two star-shaped units can be produced at either end with an invertible belt in the middle section which is the same shape as the flying band. The system reproduces the entire structure: it opens to release the band while the ends remain on the ground as a docking station.

The video seems odd, though — it looks like they speed it up in spots, making it more difficult to tell what’s actually going on.