Using the small, powerful Hurriquake Nail to build homes only adds about $15 to the total building cost, versus traditional nails. Built with angled barbs circling the bottom section, it resists pulling out in wind gusts up to 170 mph, and has better holding power to protect a home’s structure during fierce storms.
In addition to the “Innovation of the Year,” topping each “Best of What’s New” category is one Grand Award winner, a product or technology that represents a significant leap over existing technologies in its industry. These winners are based on the significance of the innovation, the quality of the design and the finished product, the originality of thought, and the ambition and scope of the overall project.
"The ‘Best of What's New’ awards honor those innovations that are truly going to make a difference, whether it’s to advance the dream of an all-in-one handheld multimedia device or to build hurricane-proof homes, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars along the way," said Mark Jannot, editor of Popular Science. “The added element of the ‘Innovation of the Year’ award showcases that even with 100 top products, there is one standout that deserves special recognition for its impact on human life.”
The 2006 Grand Award winners of the Popular Science “Best of What's New” awards are:
AUTO TECH: Bugatti Veyron 16.4
The Fastest Production Car Ever
The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 cannot fairly be compared with other cars, because none, including Formula One racers, can match its specs: 1,001 horsepower, 253 mph, zero to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. Engineers spent years refining the eight-liter, four-turbo, 16-cylinder engine to squeeze 1,001 horsepower from it. This supremely stable supercar can be driven by anyone, is mind-bendingly fast, and will probably never be matched in our lifetime.
COMPUTING: One Laptop Per Child XO
Better Screen, Better World
The goal of this product is simple and noble: to give a laptop to every child in need, especially in developing countries, where the machines will be sold in bulk for about $130 a piece. The One Laptop Per Child non-profit organization, formed at MIT, didn’t just create a cheap computer. In addition to cutting costs, it also improved on the standard laptop by slashing the machine’s energy use by 90 percent, ideal for a device that could be charged by hand-cranked power in rural villages.
GADGETS: Sony Reader PRS-500
Goodbye Paper
Sony’s long-awaited Reader is the first E-ink-equipped e-book reader in the US and can hold hundreds of books that get downloaded like music. It has a nearly inexhaustible battery and inflicts no more eyestrain than a typical paperback because it doesn’t glow like the backlit LCD screen on a computer monitor.
HOME ENTERTAINMENT: Nintendo Wii
The Console That Gets You In The Game
Nintendo took a step back with this new console, the Wii (pronounced “we”) by looking at its superpowered competitors and taking a totally different path. The controller introduces a three-axis accelerometer that transforms the player’s hand motions into in-game action, so you really play the games. In Wii Tennis, for example, the player swings their hand just as you would a racket.
HEALTH: Custom-Grown Bladders
Creating Human Organs In The Lab
This breakthrough is the first complex organ that’s been successfully grown and transplanted. Tissue engineer Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University and his colleagues grew these custom-made bladders from patients' own cells which have been transplanted successfully. This year, Atala made the announcement that none of the seven patients who received the organs four years ago suffered the rejection problems that commonly plague transplant patients.
AVIATION & SPACE: Surrey Satellite and QinetiQ TopSat
Small Sat With a Big Future
At about the size of a dorm fridge, the TopSat is the world’s smallest spy satellite. It is an inexpensive satellite that will put many more nations into the space reconnaissance business. Because these mini satellites are affordable, they permit the use of many satellites over larger areas. Created for the British Ministry of Defense and the National Space Centre by QinetiQ and Surrey Satellite Technology, the prototype 265-pound TopSat began sending usable spy images last December.
ENGINEERING: Water Cube National Swimming Center in Beijing
A Building Made Of Bubbles
The stunning design of the new swimming center that is under construction for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games plays on the rectangular structure of soap bubbles. The building also features a ceiling made of transparent Teflon and light-sensitive walls, and it is earthquake-proof. It will span 7.8 acres, house five pools, and seat 17,000 spectators, yet it doesn’t contain a single steel cable, concrete column or structural beam.
HOME TECH: Bostitch Hurriquake Nail
The Alpha Nail That Makes Your Home Twice As Tough
Hurricane winds rip apart nailed-together walls, and earthquakes shake houses so violently that a nailhead can pull straight through a piece of plywood. Since natural disasters can not be stopped, Bostitch engineer Ed Sutt has dedicated his career to designing a better nail. The result is the HurriQuake, with the perfect combination of features to withstand nature’s darker moods. It costs only about $15 more to build a house using HurriQuakes.
RECREATION: Celestron SkyScout
Your Tour Guide To Outer Space
This handheld planetarium is a revolutionary handheld device that uses advanced GPS technology with point and click convenience to identify thousands of stars, planets, constellations and more. A GPS receiver gives the handheld SkyScout its position, an electronic compass tells it what direction it’s pointing, and an accelerometer determines the angle of the device.
GENERAL INNOVATION: HP Memory Spot
Stick Digital Data On Anything
This small chip is a self-contained storage device with a radio and processor that sticks to photos, documents or cards. The two-millimeter-square chip packs in half a megabyte of flash memory and can swap all its data in less than a second, so you can load it up and read files off it almost instantaneously.
The full list, descriptions and images of all 100 “Best of What's New” Winners is in the December issue of Popular Science, on newsstands November 14, and can be viewed at http://www.popsci.com/.
