BY THE TIME you read this, I will either be out on the trail, or would have already completed the five-day hike some of my friends and I have planned to celebrate the end of 2020, and the dawn of the new year. And I’m sure I’ll hear no objections fro

SITTING DOWN FOR my Zoom chat with Patrick Davidson, one wouldn’t think he spends much of his time upside down in an aircraft travelling at speeds and pulling off manoeuvres that can only be likened to the way UFOs travel in sci-fi movies. I’m not su

SUBSEA CABLES CAN SEND 3 840 GIGABITS OF DATA PER SECOND THE INTERNET IS a physical network connected on land and under the ocean by around 380 undersea cables worldwide that form the backbone of the internet. The more than 1.2 million km of submarin

WRITE TO US popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za AFTER READING the letter in last year’s March edition, I thought of the projects that I enjoy doing with my children, and the value of the time spent together as a family. I remember how I, as a child, w

AT HIS MOST POWERFUL, Alec Wilson’s biceps measured a foot and a half around, and his quads were each three hands wide. On a good day, he could dead lift 212 kg, the equivalent of a lion, and bench press 158 kg, not far off twice his own weight. In t

TEXT: LAUREN ENDRODY; PHOTOGRAPHY: PIXABAY, PUBLIC DOMAIN ■

WHETHER IT’S just a quick snack hurriedly enjoyed mid-morning or -afternoon at your desk, or a more substantial meal around lunchtime, we all need good and healthy nutrition during our workdays. With the new year having kicked off and the work year n

More than 100 years ago, this cover story told of the Duluth aerial ferry, which was the first structure of its kind in America. The steel-trussed superstructure spanned the Duluth shipping channel, and loads of up to 50 US tons could be transported

WE ALWAYS try to give our workshop-made tools a bit of style and flair – after all, they will adorn the walls of your workshop and should be a pleasure to build, view, hold and use. On the end of our panel-gauge beam, we fitted a standard pencil. The

FOR THE PAST several months Perfect Laser’s PLT-3040 has been set up next to the window of my home office. It’s the baby of the company’s laser-cutter line-up, a tool that is also known as a CO2 laser machine. More accurately, it’s a laser cutter and

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I DON’T ALLOW myself to be distracted by WhatsApp messages, emails and texts while driving. Unless it’s a call – which I’ll answer reluctantly if I need to – I try to ignore my phone when behind the wheel. But there’s something to be said about the c

If we’re not going to listen to Sir David Attenborough about saving our planet, then who? SIR DAVID Attenborough is 94 years old and over the course of his life he has written, directed and narrated more than 100 documentaries. He’s an international

THIS COMPACT SUV surprised me in several ways, the biggest among them being the upholstery-denting power delivery, and utter drivability of the car. Really, it’s a riot – settle in behind the steering wheel and you won’t want to stop driving. Throttl

LAST YEAR was a very good year for sci-fi. With no major Avengers blockbusters (thanks to Thanos’s shenanigans in 2019) and Star Wars going on a cinematic hiatus, other films were given a chance to have their own moment. Because of the pandemic, a fe

BMW MOTORRAD’S raison d’être has always been touring, touring, touring, either on- or off-road. Exceptions aside (the nutty S 1000 RR springs to mind), Markus Schramm’s team has served up clinical, superbly engineered continent flatteners for close o

TIK TOK HAS OUR children’s home addresses. The FaceApp has our photos and the ability to predict what we’ll look like over the course of our lives. Our hotel check-in apps show our travel destinations, room preferences, and upcoming stays. This might

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THERE IS a reason why the mobile-gaming industry is booming – mobile games are inexpensive, accessible and addictive. And, even better, you don’t need to splurge on a console to play, when all you need is your smartphone. Here are three of our recent

Wearing a face mask due to COVID-19 is now a necessity, however, many people with glasses will be well aware of the annoying situation of their lenses fogging up while wearing one. Remedies such as rubbing shaving cream on the lenses or washing them

THE MORNING OF the powered exoskeleton finals at the 2016 Cybathlon opened on a less-than-promising note. Mark Daniel, a 26-year-old former welder who’d been paralysed from the waist down in a car accident at 18, was rushing down a ramp at the venue

Photographers looking for high-end specs in their hardware but who want to pay mid-range prices are in luck. Fujifilm has launched the X-S10, a camera with in-body stabilisation and several other sought-after attributes found in the brand’s high-end

Charles Anderson’s Star Destroyer stretches almost 1.5 m long, but opposite the enormity is an attention to detail – the filigree of LEGO figurine hands ringing the docking bay; the barnacle-like swath of pipes that make up the vents, pipes, and cann

AS I’M NEITHER a Pixar employee nor a YouTuber, I don’t require a Mac Pro. Even the base model is complete overkill. Spend a few (tens of) thousands of rands on options, and you can get a 28-core CPU, and 1.5 terabytes of DDR4 memory. Those numbers i