Have you ever seen a flag being raised, or wondered how a mechanical clock works? Let’s take a look at some of the simple mechanisms that they use. Pulleys and gears. When a flag is raised, it will ...

Courant researchers found a way to create gear mechanisms using water through fluid mechanics — how liquids and gases interact with themselves and other objects.  Published in Physical Review Letters, ...

There was a time, not so very long ago, when simply getting a 3D printer to squirt out an object that was roughly the intended shape and size of what the user saw on their computer screen was an ...

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...