Learning from MacGyver

Students at Freyberg High School in Palmerston North, New Zealand are learning what to do in life-threatening situations from MacGyver reruns.

During screening of the MacGyver epsiodes, computing teacher Gareth Bell pauses the video to ask if the science behind what MacGyver is doing will work in real life. Afterwards, the students try to repeat some of the experiments with varied results.

As previously posted on MuzGadgets, MacGyver episodes are available on YouTube (but not in all countries).

Seen on Stuff.

Solar panels from grass clippings

Plants naturally convert solar energy and now scientists at MIT have found a way to extract the molecules responsible for photosynthesis and use them with a stabilizer to keep them "alive" and harvest electricity.
This video describes how the process could be used to provide very low cost energy to remote and developing places.

As seen on Inhabitat via DesignTaxi.

Fabricating origami pop-up microbots

This fascinating video shows the detail of fabricating millimeter scale robots with laser cut pieces sandwiched together and then folded into the 3D shape like pop-up origami.

As seen on Robots.net

Sonication - healing with focused sound waves

Ultrasound for medical imaging has been used for a long time now, but focused ultrasound in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging produces some amazing breakthroughs in non-invasive surgery.

Watch this inspiring Ted Talk from Yoav Medan.

Getting geekier - upskill with these online learning sites

Looking to improve your geek skills this year?

Here are some online tech education resources that look interesting:

• Kahn Academy - brush up on your math, physics and chemistry skills with lots and lots of video tutorials and exercises
• Some Stanford Courses:
• Computer Science 101
• Human-Computer Interfaces
• Software Engineering for Software as a Service
• TeamTreehouse - Web design, Web development, iOS apps
• CodeAcademy - Learn to code