A Japanese company named Yumetai seems to have given some serious thought to the matter, creating dieter's sunglasses with deep blue lenses that make the food you're eating look, well, disgusting.
There's more to it than that - according to Yumetai, there's a scientific explanation behind these sunglasses and the lenses are blue for a very good reason: the color blue acts to calm the brains appetite center.
At the same time, the lenses block rays of red light which tend to stimulate the appetite. Make sense?
Link, has established since 2005, is aimed to exhibit at the international design trade fairs as not just students in the product designcourse of Tohoku University of Art and Design but independent professional designers.
So Sakai, of the link design group, exhibited this piece as part of the designersblock exhibition in london. phase of sound #08 'reflection' vibrates the surface of the water, creating interference patterns from the waves produced by the two or more motors. the various patterns produced draw out a visual expression on the water of the inputted wave form and its boundaries.
Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude), starting from a picnic.
Magic sand, also available under other names, e.g. Mars Sand or Space Sand, is a special type of hydrophobic sand. It can be blue, green, or red in color. Magic Sand was originally developed to trap ocean oil spills near the shore. This would be done by sprinkling Magic Sand on floating petroleum, which would then mix with the oil and make it heavy enough to sink. However, due to the expense of production, it is not being used for this purpose. It has also been tested by utility companies in the Arctic areas as a foundation for junction boxes, as it never freezes. It can be also used as an aerating medium for potted plants.
Due to its water repellence, grains of the sand will adhere to each other in the presence of water. When sprinkling grains onto the surface of water, they will at first form a "sand raft," until the weight of the agglomerate is large enough to break the surface tension. The mass will then sink to the bottom as a single object. When immersed, the sand forms columns in order to reduce the surface area in contact with water. As soon as the sand is taken out of water, it is completely dry and flows freely.
Though blue, green, or red in color, immersed columns of magic sand appear silvery because of a layer of air that forms around the sand.
These remarkable properties are achieved by covering ordinary beach sand with tiny particles of pure silica and exposing them to vapors of trimethylsilanol (CH3)3SiOH, an organosilicon compound. Upon exposure, the trimethylsilane compound bonds to the silica particles while forming water. The exteriors of the sand grains are thus coated with hydrophobic groups.
Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials at extremely low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect).
Superconductivity occurs in a wide variety of materials, including simple elements like tin and aluminium, various metallic alloys and some heavily-doped semiconductors. Superconductivity does not occur in noble metals like gold and silver, nor in most ferromagnetic metals.
The Stirling engine is a heat engine that is vastly different from the internal-combustion engine in your car. Invented by Robert Stirling in 1816, the Stirling engine has the potential to be much more efficient than a gasoline or diesel engine. But today, Stirling engines are used only in some very specialized applications, like in submarines or auxiliary power generators for yachts, where quiet operation is important. Although there hasn't been a successful mass-market application for the Stirling engine, some very high-power inventors are working on it.
A Stirling engine uses the Stirling cycle, which is unlike the cycles used in internal-combustion engines.
:: The gasses used inside a Stirling engine never leave the engine. There are no exhaust valves that vent high-pressure gasses, as in a gasoline or diesel engine, and there are no explosions taking place. Because of this, Stirling engines are very quiet.
:: The Stirling cycle uses an external heat source, which could be anything from gasoline to solar energy to the heat produced by decaying plants. No combustion takes place inside the cylinders of the engine.
The movies above show some examples of stirling engines running on just hand heat and a cup of warm water.
Roots is a dreamlike screen that follows an old persian image: a bush growing heads. – In a green and brownish fluid iron crystals grow steadily...Bubbles ascend like jellyfish. Branches break off and sink to the dark ground. They start to dissolve and become thick clouds hovering over the scene.
Sound and Electricity Electricity is pulsed through the whole Sculpture. It is the key to the constant transformation. Growth changes the flow of the current. The modified flow changes the growth. Software and Hardware leave the next step to the material. The voltages at each wire are put through a resonance filter and thus transformed into sound. The 4/4 pulse results in a sublime rhythm.
Utopian Screen The installation is based on the model of a chemical computer by Gordon Pask in the early 1950s. It was open to the environment and it managed to grow to a configuration which was able to distinguish between different frequencies. Roots refers to a time when the big synthesis and simulation of image, sound, thinking and memory was soon to be started.
The interior of an 18" square x 1" piece of Plexiglas was charged to 2.2 million volts (MV) using a 5 MV particle accelerator. A layer of excess electrons become trapped deep inside, When discharged, the excess charge escaped with a bright flash and a loud bang. The hot, lightning-like discharge created thousands of microscopic fractures inside the acrylic, resulting in a branching "Captured Lightning" sculpture (or Lichtenberg Figure).
The branching, self-similar patterns observed in Lichtenberg figures exhibit fractal properties. Lichtenberg figures often develop during the dielectric breakdown of solids, liquids, and even gases.
Two-dimensional (2D) Lichtenberg figures can be produced by placing a sharp-pointed needle perpendicular to the surface of a non-conducting plate, such as of resin, ebonite, or glass. The point is positioned very near to, or in contact with, the plate. A source of high voltage, such as a Leyden jar (a type of capacitor) or a static electricity generator, is applied to the needle. This creates a small electrical discharge to the surface of the plate.
Another type of 2D Lichtenberg Figure can be created when an insulating surface becomes contaminated with semiconducting material. When a high voltage is applied across the surface, leakage currents may cause localized heating and progressive charring of the underlying material. Over time, branching, tree-like carbonized patterns are formed on the surface of the insulator called electrical trees. These may ultimately bridge the insulating space, leading to catastrophic failure of the insulating material.
A new electronic music interface from Sebastian Tomczak using lasers, photocells and water.The laser shines through the water in the dish, and light dependent resistors on the other side respond to the position of the laser points.
Quiet simple test but inspirational. The clue is that sulphur hexafluoride is much denser than air and therefore light things can float on it, which is obvious. So... lets make those floating dishes!
What do ice wedge networks, meandering rivers, sorted patterned ground, beach cusps, sand dunes, and humans have in common?
Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from more basic constituent parts. Emergent structures are patterns not created by a single event or rule. Nothing commands the system to form a pattern. Instead, the interaction of each part with its immediate surroundings causes a complex chain of processes leading to some order. One might conclude that emergent structures are more than the sum of their parts because the emergent order will not arise if the various parts are simply coexisting; the interaction of these parts is central. Emergent structures can be found in many natural phenomena, from the physical to the biological domain. For example, the shape of weather phenomena such as hurricanes are emergent structures.
It is useful to distinguish three forms of emergence structures. First-order emergence structures occurs as a result of shape interactions (for example, hydrogen bonds in water molecules lead to surface tension). Second-order emergence structures involves shape interactions played out sequentially over time (for example, changing atmospheric conditions as a snowflake falls to the ground build upon and alter its form). Finally, third-order emergence structures is a consequence of shape, time, and heritable instructions. For example, an organism's genetic code sets boundary conditions on the interaction of biological systems in space and time.
FERRO FLUID EXPERIMENT WITH ROTATING MAGNETIC FIELDS
A fluorocarbon-based ferrofluid is placed within a glass Hele-Shaw cell of 1.1-mm gap. Magnetic fields are applied that have in-plane clockwise rotating and dc axial magnetic fields. The ferrofluid is surrounded by a 50/50 mixture of isopropyl alcohol and deionized water, which prevents ferrofluid wetting of the glass plates.
The first experiment uses a 50-µl drop of ferrofluid. The ferrofluid drop is circular before the magnetic field is applied. When the dc magnetic field is applied, the ferrofluid drop forms a spiking labyrinth pattern. Then the clockwise rotating field is applied, and the spikes begin to curl in on themselves, forming a smooth spiral pattern after some of the spikes are absorbed into the larger structure. The smooth spirals form from viscous shear as the clockwise rotating magnetic field causes counterclockwise flow on the outside ferrofluid surfaces, which return on the inside surfaces.
The second experiment uses a 200-µl drop of ferrofluid. First, the clockwise rotating field is applied, which causes a counterclockwise flow that holds the circular fluid drop together without spikes. Then a 100-G dc axial field is gradually applied. This results in the ferrofluid drop appearing to expand before a phaselike transition at a critical dc magnetic field strength around 100 G. Careful observations show that the pattern forms at slightly less than 100-G dc field under a thin ferrofluid coating on the top glass plate, which then abruptly peels away at slightly increased dc axial magnetic field. The magnetic field is then increased from 100 to 200 G to form an intricate internal pattern surrounded by a circle of ferrofluid with spiraled arms. The second experiment is repeated again three more times under essentially identical conditions, with common features but it appears that the fine features are different each time.
While the aesthetics and symmetry of Fibonacci spiral patterns has often attracted scientists, a mathematical or physical explanation for their common occurrence in nature is yet to be discovered. Recently, scientists have successfully produced Fibonacci spiral patterns in the lab, and found that an elastically mismatched bi-layer structure may cause stress patterns that give rise to Fibonacci spirals. The discovery may explain the widespread existence of the pattern in plants.
Fibonacci number patterns and triangular patterns with intrinsic defects occur frequently on nonplanar surfaces in nature, particularly in plants. By controlling the geometry and the stress upon cooling, these patterns can be reproduced on the surface of microstructures about 10 micrometers in diameter. Spherules of the Ag core/SiOx shell structure, possessing markedly uniform size and shape, self-assembled into the Fibonacci number patterns (5 by 8 and 13 by 21) or the triangular pattern, depending on the geometry of the primary supporting surface. Under proper geometrical constraints, the patterns developed through self-assembly in order to minimize the total strain energy. This demonstrates that highly ordered microstructures can be prepared simultaneously across large areas by stress engineering.
Scientists of the University of Twente in The Netherlands won a prestigious place in the 'Hall of Fame' of videos about fluid-in-motion. They have made a video of leaping shampoo, in which they explain the so-called Kaye effect. Scientifically interesting but also of great aesthetic beauty!
The Kaye Effect is a strange property of complex liquids which was first described by the British engineer Alan Kaye in 1963.
While pouring one viscous mixture of an organic liquid onto a surface, the surface suddenly spouted an upcoming jet of liquid which merged with the downgoing one.
This phenomenon has since been discovered to be common in all thixotropic liquids (liquids which thin under shear stress). Common household liquids with this property are liquid hand soaps, shampoos and non-drip paint. The effect usually goes unnoticed, however, because it seldom lasts more than about 300 milliseconds.
An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.
"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."
The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
Most of us know what happens, when a bucket of water is rotated around its central axis: if the rotation is even, the water will slowly come to rest in the rotating frame, and the only effect of the rotation is that the surface will be curved into the shape of a paraboloid.
Now, what happens if only the bottom rotates? Recently, a team at the Physics Department at the Technical University of Denmark performed such an experiment. A cylindrical container, where the bottom plate can turn, is filled with water up to a certain height, and a motor sets the bottom plate rotating. Right away, the situation looks like what we are used to: the surface starts to bend since the water is forced out against the sides. Surprisingly enough, however, the surface can spontaneously deform, break the axial symmetry and create shapes that are most aptly described as “polygons”. They are stationary in a rotating frame - not, however, one that rotates with the speed of the bottom, but considerably slower.
The team consisted of three bachelor-students from the University of Copenhagen - Thomas Jansson, Kåre Hartvig Jensen and Martin Haspang - a visitor from Paris - Pascal Hersen - and Tomas Bohr from the Physics Department.
Currently there is no theory for this experiment, so it is a challenge for all those who believe that Fluid Dynamics is a closed, well-understood part of physics.
Food for design wants to be an open source for design, food and science cross-over. We are not interested in creating hypes, but in long term co-operations, where everyone benefits. Promoting quality and collective creativity are the things that count... So please take a seat and have a bite! Best view [res: 1024 x 768] x [browser: firefox]
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_m[eat]ing 003
17.03.2007::MATERIALS ::
Food for design was invited by the Meat & Fresh expo and will install a creative food laboratory at the rambla during the fair,
where people can find inspiration towards form and taste.
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_m[eat]ing 002
18.11.2006::MATERIALS ::
A feast of surfaces, textures, colors and other sensorial elements, using a large palette of food materials.
The objective is to inspire new uses for food materials and provoke new applications within a design context.
[+ more]
_seminar
20.09.2006::MG SEMINAR IN BELGIUM ::
This seminar [ 20 november 2006 ] is organised by the innovation and knowledge centre of food for every one who is interested in food science, technology and cooking processes. This can be chefs, scientists, recipe developers, foodies,...
The guest speakers tell and demonstrate how food science and technology can inspire gastronomy...
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_manifesto 001
03.02.2006::FOOD for design::
The first aim of this project is to explore and understand the physicochemical properties of materials / ingredients and apply this under-standing when designing.
_manifesto 002
28.01.2006::food for DESIGN::
A different way of thinking : abandoning the role of "creator" and "descending" to the role of a participant playing within the rules of an experimental process.
All experiments come into being as a result of self-formation processes.
_manifesto 001
22.01.2006::food FOR design::
In exploring the materials the main focus lays on the food as in exploring the structure the primary focus lays on the process.
The goal of this cross-fertilisation project is to add more senses / experience to design, it is a way of sustainable, random, natural thinking to in-spire others, giving food for the future.
