Great Transporter Illusion

Recently in a mall in the UK, a couple of illusionists performed a transporter illusion.  The act was to help promote the new Star Trek movie, "Into Darkness"

When you watch the video, you may be able to catch onto the initial illusion, but I would like to know where the initial subject went to?

Check it out...great demo for a non existent tech!

Thane Heins' Perepiteia device

I will be the first to admit that I am not the brainiest person going, however I think I have a basic grasp of physics and conservation of energy as well as a working knowledge of thermodynamics. So when someones asks what happens when you put an electrical load on an engine or generator, I have to say that the load is 180 degrees in opposition so the net effect of the load is to slow the whole system down by a factor dependent on the work being done by the system and the load applied. That being said, take a look at Thane Heins' Perepiteia device. Quite simply it is an induction engine with a magnetic core inserted into it rotor. To this engine's rotor is coupled a ring of magnets and facing these magnets are inductor coils. In other words a generator. Anyone that understands basic electricity knows as you spin the engine the magnets will induce a current in the coils. If you hook up a light to the coils, which is a load, you will slow the system down because your causing resistance in the coils. Now the exercise here is, what happens when you put a maximum load on the coils or "shorting" them? This puts infinite resistance on the system from the motor's perspective so that to maintain the same level of "work" more power must be supplied to the engine.

Enter the Perepiteia and a major headache. Remember the only difference in this machine and a generator is that the Perepiteia has an inductive core in the rotor. When the device is started all the coils report voltage - as you would expect. Then when Heins shorts out the coils, instead of slowing down the system as you would expect - the motor speeds up. Heins explains that the coils load is back emf (electro motive force) which is inducted into the engine by way of the inductive core in the rotor, thus strengthening the motor's existing magnetic field.

Oh I hear the BS! and capacitive inductance! cat calls....but I watched the videos of this piece of
black magic in action, I can not see the trick. Check it out, I need an asprin.

Here is the Boing Boing article and a link to the videos of the device in action.

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

The talented folks at DaveFilms have produced a full-cast audiobook adaptation of Cory Doctorow's award-winning novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. They're transmitting it in ten parts, as a podcast -- part 1 just went live.

This is the second audio adaptation of Down and Out -- the podcaster Mark Forman read the book aloud on his podcast in August 2005.

On his blog Boing Boing, Cory wrote "I love the different adaptations of the book -- it's amazing to hear my words read by so many different people, with so many different choices about how to dramatize it. Often, the reading isn't how I heard it in my own head when I wrote it, which is cool -- it's wild to hear how your own words sound to someone else. "