PopularMechanics.com hits the asphalt to break down the latest rush of (pricey) fitness gadgetry. After two weeks on the course, we find the “running system” worth its weight on your feet — whether you’re in marathon training or out for a morning stroll.
In the first of a miniseries for his bi-weekly column on why robots are tougher than you, PM's Resident Roboticist goes in-depth (literally) with autonomous underwater vehicles—the Navy's metallic Jacques Cousteaus mapping the sea floor, immune to Mother Nature but vulnerable to five treacherous danger zones.
After finding one body in Oregon, rescuers led by Steve Rollins (at left, profiled below) gave up on their search for missing climbers at Mount Hood. In the world of outdoor adventure, one wrong turn can land you in a do-or-die test of will. The good news? You can make it.
When exploring the great outdoors, what you bring with you makes all the difference. With the gear on these pages, you’ll be ready--whether you’re camping by car or living off what you carry on your back. Plus: learn a better way to fillet a fish and start a campfire.
In what may be the first big step toward avoiding the dawn of a “Digital Ice Age,” Microsoft wants you to be your own afterlife communications agent. Plus, a killer app for batteries, evidence questions in the Duke lacrosse trial, more helicopter issues and shark video.
The average football sack can produce a bone-shattering 1600 lbs of force. Armed with new tools, researchers are now studying the science of a gridiron fundamental: The tackle.
Trevor Williams, our blogging geologist, files his first report from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, where he's getting used to the ANDRILL team's Extreme Cold Weather gear and taking initial measurements from 1600 feet below the sea floor.
Meet geologist Trevor Williams as he travels to Antarctica, where he'll be blogging for PopularMechanics.com over the next six weeks while with an international team of scientists at a massive ice-shelf drill site, examining the effects of climate change in the very deep ...
Will the spread of bubble-free rebreather systems change diving forever?
As teams battle in a high-stakes auction for the rights to Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, PM gets more on the physics behind his "gyroball" from the man who invented the pitch and a 19-year-old in Indiana who decided to stop throwing it.
With the country’s military secrets already at risk, the U.S. government apparently posted online a detailed how-to for building an atomic bomb. Meanwhile, the world's fishing grounds could be gone by 2048, major airports are falling short and NASA's got some hot new ...
Sixty scenic miles east of Fairbanks lies Chena Hot Springs, home to the lowest-temperature geothermal energy resource in the world.
A couple of months after I earned my sport pilot certification, we posted an e-mail from John McAfee—the man behind McAfee antivirus software—introducing us to a new, relatively unknown subset of recreational flying: Aerotrekking. Needless to say, I wanted to know a ...
Eat my root vegetables! MSNBC anchor and tuber launcher Tucker Carlson joins me on the Popular Mechanics Show to discuss the wonders of spud gunning, and to share some of the more elaborate potato cannons (a propane-powered semi-automatic) he has in his arsenal. ...
Here at PM we've been playing with spudguns, those armaments of the starch-loving, in which a Yukon gold is blasted from a homemade cannon at hundreds of miles an hour. These are flex-fuel munitions: they use anything from Static Guard to hairspray, but Right ...
The days here start early. I’m up at 3:30 a.m. on my first morning with this areotrekking crew—which goes by the name Sky Gypsies—and out to the hangar near Tucson, Ariz., at 4 a.m. to preflight the vehicles. Here, in June, kite wing pilots fly early and fly ...
You too can wield the awesome power of the spud gun, revel in the sheer stealth of the kite aerial photography rig, create your own flex-fuel powered rocket car, create and fly your own custom balsa glider and wreak havoc with your own personal trebuchet...all the guidance ...
In the crowded field of deer hunting gear, it's easy to confuse overpriced gadgets with genuine improvements. Here's our wish list of the season's most innovative equipment.
The sport of hill climbing is simple: Race a nitrous-fueled, titanium-paddled snow sled straight up a mountain — without maiming yourself or the fans.
