Sometimes, after a hard day of gadget blogging, you just want to sit down at your terminal and watch a funny, heart-warming video of a hamster running furiously (as they will) in a plastic ball attached to a Strandbeest traveling across a table to the delight of watching children. Right? Video is after the break.

Continue reading Hamster-powered miniature Strandbeest proves that sometimes, cute is a gadget

Hamster-powered miniature Strandbeest proves that sometimes, cute is a gadget originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Green Tech: Stop raping the earth when you use your computer. Here’s how to create a huge hamster wheel that will power your PC, your monitor, and everything in between! It’s like solar, wind and water power, but it runs on kibbles and bits!
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Green Tech: Stop raping the earth when you use your computer. Here’s how to create a huge hamster wheel that will power your PC, your monitor, and everything in between! It’s like solar, wind and water power, but it runs on kibbles and bits!
Video Rating: 5 / 5

Green Tech: Stop raping the earth when you use your computer. Here’s how to create a huge hamster wheel that will power your PC, your monitor, and everything in between! It’s like solar, wind and water power, but it runs on kibbles and bits!
Video Rating: 5 / 5

I was just outside trying to shoot a water rocket I bought at a science museum, recalling the heady days I once spent shooting a similar rocket into the air when I was a young lad. Sadly, the poorly built rocket failed and the pump started just sucking in water, leading me to the Internet for solace.

The sweet Internet doth offer succor, friends, in the form of the Aquapod Bottle Launcher. While you could just make your own water rocket out of a water and some piping, this $24.99 kit allows you, with the aid of a soda bottle and bicycle pump, to become a mini Goddard in your own back forty.

The Aquapod is the most exciting and safest bottle launcher available. This intriguing hobby toy requires no
assembly and is ready to launch with the addition of a regular 2-liter plastic soda bottle and an ordinary
bicycle pump. The Aquapod has a florescent orange futuristic one piece design that captures the eye instantly.
Not only does the Aquapod launch a bottle up to 100 feet in the air, but no other launcher out there has a built
in safety valve that releases pressure at 60psi in order to keep everyone safe from over-pressurizing the entire
system.

Just fill a 2-liter plastic bottle half with water and secure it over the white launch tube upside down. Using
any ordinary pump, pressurize the Aquapod through the valve stem until the check valve inside the front leg
releases pressure and water. Then, stand back with the strap in your hand that is attached to a 15 foot string
and give a short, quick tug on the string to launch the bottle high into the air.

The Aquapod is built with high quality thick durable plastic and is designed to last.

The Aquapod is also available in bulk in case you want to start your own hamster space program.

This seems a bit odd, but here’s another take on alternative power; Dutch designer Joris Laarman came up with a concept for a desktop lamp that glows from bio-luminescent hamster ovaries. Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up.

Apparently, if you take the hamster cells and infuse them with an enzyme called luciferase, it will cause living organic cells to glow. Now, it’s not going to be enough to light your entire home, but that’s not the point. The lamp was created for an art show, but sadly, didn’t make it to the display. It seems that the cells weren’t able to survive the trip to the gallery and died during the flight over the Atlantic ocean.

[via MedGadget]