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The science of why stepping on Legos makes you want to die “I hope you step on a Lego” is such an apt curse that it has become a meme. Pages upon pages of YouTube videos detail the experience’s excruciating agony. The comedian Steve Ranazzissi perhaps described the moment the best: “Last week I stepped on a Lego with my bare foot and I almost murdered my whole family.” But why are the Lego blocks your 4-year-old leaves strewn around such nuggets of hell under the soles of your feet? And how does she manage to trip through them herself and continue on her merry way unscathed? Well, science has the answer. There are a few factors that come together to make this such a painful experience, wrote Karl Smallwood of Today I Found Out (via Yahoo). And those plastic blocks are designed to be pretty astonishingly hard, with sharp corners to boot. The sharp corners also exacerbate the pain, New York University physics professor Tycho Sleator tells Quartz via email.

Thymio II - Robots en classe Vue d’ensemble du robot Le Thymio II est un robot éducatif et à prix abordable. Il se base sur trois piliers: 1) une grande quantité de capteurs et d’actuateurs, 2) une interactivité très poussée, surtout en ce qui concerne la compréhension du fonctionnement des capteurs, 3) une programmation facile grâce à l’environnement d’Aseba. Un des principaux atouts pédagogiques du robot Thymio II tient à l’usage qu’il fait de la lumière pour rendre visible son fonctionnement. Cet artifice permet de faire comprendre aux élèves que pour fonctionner, et à l’instar de ce qu’ils font eux-mêmes avec leurs sens, un robot doit être en mesure d’appréhender le milieu dans lequel il évolue. Capteurs et actuateurs Thymio utilise aussi la lumière en affichant extérieurement les six différents types de comportement qu’il peut adopter par le biais de six couleurs: Vert: Thymio l’amical suit un objet situé devant lui Jaune: Thymio l’explorateur explore le monde tout en évitant les obstacles Enseigner avec Thymio II

Microfluidics from LEGO bricks MIT engineers have just introduced an element of fun into microfluidics. The field of microfluidics involves minute devices that precisely manipulate fluids at submillimeter scales. Such devices typically take the form of flat, two-dimensional chips, etched with tiny channels and ports that are arranged to perform various operations, such as mixing, sorting, pumping, and storing fluids as they flow. Now the MIT team, looking beyond such lab-on-a-chip designs, has found an alternative microfluidics platform in “interlocking, injection-molded blocks” — or, as most of us know them, LEGO bricks. “LEGOs are fascinating examples of precision and modularity in everyday manufactured objects,” says Anastasios John Hart, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT Indeed, LEGO bricks are manufactured so consistently that no matter where in the world they are found, any two bricks are guaranteed to line up and snap securely in place. Modular mechanics

Robot : les machines de demain | A Fond la Science La robotique est une des grandes thématiques science qui intéressent le grand public. La couverture est très attrayante avec un robot humanoïde en relief. Ce documentaire va montrer, en six grandes parties, tout ce que les robots sont capables de faire dans différents milieux et comment ils fonctionnent. Plusieurs pages sont consacrés à l’histoire des robots depuis les premiers automates, les merveilles mécaniques, les créatures fantastiques jusqu’aux robots actuels, classés en dix catégories. Ils sont présentés dans cet ouvrage selon leurs milieux d’utilisation, à la maison, au travail, au quotidien, dans les lieux extrêmes et les super robots. Chacun est présenté avec une carte d’identité en haut de page avec des icônes indiquant l’origine, la taille, la source d’énergie, le constructeur, son année de fabrication, son poids et ses spécificités.

MIT Scientists Use Lego Bricks To Build a Modular Experiment K.S. AnthonyThursday, 29 May - 4:15PM Color me hypervigilant, but I'm just a little skeptical when it comes to the benevolence touted by tech companies when it comes to devices, applications, or technology that purport to make my life easier by predicting my needs, analyzing my spending behaviors, tracking my whereabouts, or recording data about my physical health. It's not just that those data points are valuable to marketers, advertisers, and other breathless adherents to the Cult of Big Data that aren't giving me a cut of the profits, it's that I don't want corporations or governments embedding themselves in my every transaction, walk around the block, or trip to the gym. In a world where every other person seems to be demanding 15 minutes of fame, I'm still holding out for 15 minutes of anonymity. Suffice it to say the announcement by Bloomberg News that Amazon is working on – and perhaps beta-testing – an emotion-detecting wearable device raised the bar for my skepticism. U.S.

Bibliothèque départementale du Lot - Cultive ta science ! Conférence sur l’évolution de l’homme et le patrimoine local préhistoriqueEn partenariat avec le Parc Naturel Régional des Causses du QuercyIntervenants : Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu et Les PaléonautesMercredi 13 novembre à 20 h - La Grange du Causse à Soulomès Un siècle de découverte d’art pariétal en Quercy !Exposition en partenariat avec le Parc naturel régional des Causses du Quercy et le Réseau des PaléonautesDu 13 novembre 2019 au 11 janvier 2020 En libre accès aux horaires d’ouverture Labo « Cultive ta science ! Escape game « Recherche à risque »Vendredi 24 janvier à 19h Atelier « Fais ton expérience »Janvier 2020 - Sur inscription ContactsBibliothèque Pajatoutage :05 65 53 60 07 ou bibliotheque@cc-labastide-murat Exposition : Les découvreuses anonymesaccompagnée de la sélection d'ouvrages '' Femmes de savoir''Du 13 janvier 2020 au 15 février 2020Aux horaires d’ouverture ContactsMédiathèque : 05 65 20 34 37 Labo « Cultive ta science ! Atelier numérique : les volcansJeudi 13 février à 15h

How Many Combinations Are Possible Using 6 LEGO Bricks? Mathematician Søren Eilers was intrigued by a LEGO-related math problem. Let's say you have six "standard LEGO bricks" (the rectangular 4x2 bricks seen in the original LEGO patent). If you fit them together, how many possible structures can you make? This question was first officially "answered" in 1974, and LEGO mathematicians arrived at the number 102,981,500. Eilers was curious about the mathematical methodology behind that number, and soon discovered that it only covered one kind of stacking—thus, it was dramatically low. (Incidentally, Eilers encouraged high school student Mikkel Abrahamsen to write another program in a different programming language, on a different computing platform, without consulting on the solution or methodology. Then, of course, Eilers had to ask what happened if you added a seventh brick, or an eighth, and so on. Here's a brief clip from the documentary A LEGO Brickumentary in which Eilers explains how it all came together:

Painting With Sphero When talking about using Sphero in the Art room, our first thought was to paint with them. In our research of robots, we have seen Sphero used in paintings. This was what connected this tool to the Art room initially. This is how we did it! We first decided we needed a frame to contain the Sphero when painting with it. We placed paper under the area where we would be painting and then rolled out the paper. From everything we read online, it appears that people just plop the Sphero in paint. We placed a plastic bag down with tape to the paper. And then they painted... they laughed when they rolled the Sphero through the paint. A Brief History of the Lego Minifigure Looking at the history of action figures over the last 50 years, there isn't a single style of figure that's as widely recognized and loved as the Lego minifigure. The diminutive blocky yellow figures have captured the imagination of kids for the last 35 years, and still have the action figure community's interest today. Their allure probably lies in their simplicity. They are composed of nothing more than legs, a torso, a head, and typically hair or headgear of some sort...but those four basic combinations can be arranged into approximately 864,993,504,100 unique figures based on parts currently available! So it's not too surprising that Lego minifigures are such an integral part of the action figure industry. Creating the Minifigure In their earliest iterations, Lego minifigures weren't action figures at all. It wasn't until 1978 when the Lego minifigure as it's known today entered the market. The First Figure It was 1978 and Lego Set 600 first introduced the minifigure to the world.

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