Tag Archives: melt

These ‘melting’ mirrors add a surreal Dali-inspired touch to your interior spaces!

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While the Melt Mirrors aren’t exactly functional enough to really be the kind of mirrors you’d use to check your outfit or fix your hair, they use mirrors to provide a unique effect on plain walls. The curved, almost fabric-esque mirrors hang on your wall like a curtain or towel hangs on a hook, creating an interesting effect by looking like a portal into another dimension. These mirrors ‘drape’ themselves on wooden dowels and instantly turn blank walls into conversational elements.

The mirrors explore “reality vs. perception” through material as well as through form. They come in four shape variants, and are available across multiple glass-colors, including Clear, Bronze, Peach, and Black-tinted glass options. The wooden dowels come in dark walnut and light oak wood options too, really helping customize your ‘melting mirror’ to suit your space. Perfect for indoor as well as outdoor use, the mirrors are best placed on a plain wall, facing a dramatic arrangement like a rug, planter, pool, or the skies. That allows them to reflect what’s in front of them, instantly turning your boring wall into something more attractive and surrealist!

Designer: Bower Studios

Robot Scales Walls with Sticky Plastic Feet

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A team of researchers in Switzerland have been working on a new robot that’s able to climb vertical surfaces of all sorts using unique sticky feet. The robot can climb all sorts of surfaces including walls, rock, aluminum, and others. The developers behind the robot believe it could be used to help with mountain rescues, construction crews, or painting walls and ceilings.

wall climbing robot

The wall climbing ‘bot was developed by Liyu Wang, Lina Graber and Fumiya Iida at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.

wall climbing robot 2

The robot is able to cling to vertical surfaces using special plastic footpads that heat rapidly causing them to melt. When the plastic melts, the compound slimes into the nooks and crannies on the surface it’s climbing allowing it to stick. The robot then uses thermoelectric effect to cool the plastic allowing the foot to release so a step can be taken. The adhesives in the plastic feet melt at about 70°C.

While sticky feet made of melting plastic may not sound particularly strong, the researchers claim that the robot can carry five times its own mass up a vertical wall.

[via New Scientist]

DARPA Wants Electronics That Melt into the Environment on Command

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DARPA is looking for input from companies in the electronics industry, researchers, and other interested parties on technology that sounds like something out of a Mission Impossible movie. No, they don’t want exploding sunglasses or anything like that. The research group is looking for electronics that are able to disappear into the environment by dissolving on command.

darpa melting electronics

According to DARPA, after a military battle it’s not uncommon for key electronic devices to be left lying on the battlefield. The fear is that these devices could be picked up by the enemy and repurposed or used to glean intelligence that could harm the United States, its soldiers and allies. DARPA is seeking input on a way to develop electronics that could simply dissolve into the environment on command.

The program is called Vanishing Programmable Resources VAPR. DARPA has issued a special announcement for a Proposers Day could be held before a full solicitation. Participants are asked to conduct basic research into materials, devices, manufacturing, and integration processes as well as design methodology to develop electronics such as an environmental and biomedical sensor that can communicate with a remote user. The key aspect of this is for the electronics to be able to dissolve into an unusable state on command. Last year, researchers showed of self-dissolving electronic circuits which melt after a pre-set amount of time, but offered no on-demand triggering mechanism.

“Commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, electronics made for everyday purchases are durable and last nearly forever,” said Alicia Jackson, DARPA program manager. “DARPA is looking for a way to make electronics that last precisely as long as they are needed. The breakdown of such devices could be triggered by a signal sent from command or any number of possible environmental conditions, such as temperature.”