This demo video from some video game show demonstrates the Havok physics engine with a bunch of different materials. They throw objects through various materials (wood, glass, jelly, metal) and they break up, dent, or bounce back like they would in the real world (no pre-animation).

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This video shows off a prototype of a house building robot. The robot has a pattern that it follows and it just builds one layer on top of another by laying out material (like concrete) and contouring it. The initial robot in the video is a small prototype which seems to be using clear and near the end of the video it moves to larger prototypes using concrete.

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In this video a guy demonstrates an accordion chair coach. It seems like a bunch of pieces of cardboard or similar material in the shape of a chair which is attached togather like an accordion. It seems pretty light.

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In this commercial there is a guy who builds machines similar to Leonardo Da Vinci. He calls himself a kinetic sculpture and his sculptures are made of light materials and powered by the wind. The sculptures look like robotic crop sprinklers with wings. The main idea of the commercial is that the only thing standing in the way of innovation is ourselves. This is somewhat hypocritical because the commercial is for the car company BMW. BMW has been making the same cars for the last 50 years. An innovative car company. What a joke.

Check out the hypocritical BMW commercial below or click over and view it on the host site.

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This video features an interesting material that only repulses a magnet while at a certain temperature. In the video they have the black cube material in what I assume is a styrofoam bowl. Next they place the magnet on the black cube to show that it doesn't repulse the magnet. Next they pour liquid nitrogen into the styrofoam bowl to cool down the black cube. This time when they place the magnet over the black cube the magnet is repulsed and floats above the black cube. When they take it out of the liquid nitrogen and it heats up a little bit it no longer repulses the magnet. For the win.

Check out the video of the material that only repulses a magnet if it is a certain temperature below or click over and view it on the host site.

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This video features a material that is called 'magic sand' by the narrator of the video. Apparently it acts like normal beach sand until it comes into contact with water. The narrator states the 'magic sand' is hyrdrophobic which he states means that it minimizes it's surface area or some such when it comes into contact with water. Instead of dispursing and absorbing the water like normal sand when it's poured into the water it sticks togather and keeps the water out. When the narrator pours the water out of the glass again the sand is instantly dry.

Watch the video featuring the magic sand below or click over and view it on the host site.

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Here is a Japanese computer animation simulation video of a meteor striking Earth and what it would look like and cause planetwide. The commentary is in Japanese so good luck with that. One thing I did notice is that they used a spherical meteor whereas other such 'Earth being hit by an asteroid' video the asteroid is never round. In the video the meteor strikes and causes a large amount of material to be ejected up into the atmosphere. Some of the things in the video seem a bit suspect like the fact that there isn't much (if any) burn up by the atmosphere on the meteor. The only explanation I came up for this was that the meteor was so big (much larger than 300 miles wide) that the atmosphere wouldn't effect it much. Second it seemed like the whole ejection area hundreds of miles above where the meteor hit was filled up with lava which didn't seem plausable. Is it just a bad particle effect or? Lastly, the buildings left standing (like the Greek pillars) seemed like they should have been blown away and were only left for effect in the video.

Watch the full computer animated Earth meteor strike simulation video below or click over and view it on the host site.

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So you may have seen the self replication robot cube video and this video is a somewhat more practical application of a similar idea. In this video it starts out with a chair sitting in the middle and then the chair falls apart onto the floor. Next up the chair starts to re-assemble itself automatically (as in it's a robot chair). The seat of the chair puts out some wheels and then moves around re-attaching the legs and back of the chair to itself. Finally, the chair stands up back into it's regular chair shape all by it's self. I couldn't come up with a real world application where you would need a robot chair to assemble itself because the materials involved are so much greater than say a molder plastic chair. It's rather Jetsonesque though.

Watch the video of the self assembling robot chair below or click over and view it on the host site.

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Here is another funny "Ask A Ninja" video from the same guy who brought you the "Santa Clause Is A Ninja" video. In this video the question is something like "Where do you buy your ninja gear? Is there a Ninja Mart?". The ninja guy explains that ninja suits are the only true black material in the world as all other black dyes are really just dark dark red or green. The true black comes from the heart of a dragon according to the ninja giving the interview. Additionally, all ninjas make their own gear because otherwise they wouldn't be able to trust it. If another ninja made their gear it might be poisoned or some such. One thing he does note is that the ninjas don't make their own wings (for some reason there is a 4000 year contract with someone who makes the wings). It goes on and on like this for some time.

Check out the full video about the Ninja Mart and where ninjas get their black below or click over and view it on the host site.

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We posted a photo of a puppy with green fur before but up for today is the photo of the glowing green pigs. Mutants for the win. Some scientists in Taiwan adding some jellyfish DNA to pigs which made green and glow in the dark. There is a second photo of the pigs in the day where you can see how "green" they actually are. They aren't dark green or anything like that. The "pinkness" of the pigs instead looks "greenish" and they glow in the dark. The point apparently is to be able to inject the green stem cells into regular pigs so they can track the green genetic material or some such.

Head on over and read the full article about the green pigs and see the day time photo.

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