Do you crave hamburgers but also want to minimize your interaction with fellow human beings? Then your unicorn-riding white knight has arrived, in the form of White Castle's new online ordering service. Thought not quite as handy as Domino's UK-only SMS ordering, the feature is rolling out to all 400 US locations. The website lets you "customize your sack" however you please; it also has a pretty high (or non-existent?) limit on quantities, meaning 1,000,000 Bacon and Cheddar Sliders will set you back $1,190,000. That could be a bug or a feature, depending on how hungry you are. Sadly, no matter how large your order you'll still have to go to the burger joint to pick it up -- delivery is still just a beautiful, beautiful dream. Maybe they can partner with MIT for a print-on-demand service.
As you may know, crafting a katana is a delicate process that involves carefully constructing a razor-sharp high-carbon edge around a soft shock-absorbent core. One day though, smiths and forging fires could be replaced by electrode-wielding mad-scientists, with the technology to selectively harden and soften metal at will. At least that's what we envisioned when we read about Jörg Weißmüller's breakthrough research in the field of nanomaterials. The German scientist discovered that by placing precious metals in acid he could create tiny ducts through corrosion. Once those channels are flooded with a conductive liquid, electrical currents can be used to harden the material and, if you change your mind about the brittle results, the effect can easily be reversed to make it soft again. The tech could eventually lead to self-healing vehicle armor or scratch-resistant cellphones -- but, really, we just want to zap our way to a high-quality samurai sword. Physorg
Comments
Post a Comment