Author: Venumadhav Bhat

Prevailing common sense tells us bullets fly straight. Physics disallows any change in the direction of bullets. Except that of a downward curve due to gravity (over extremely long distances) of course. In 2008, Wanted, a movie starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy, and Morgan Freeman hit theatres. A popular sequence repeatedly deployed in Wanted had people ‘curving’ their bullets – turning the path of the bullet mid flight. The movie was fiction. But almost a decade later, the movie may suddenly find itself confining to the laws of physics. The concept has flown out of the book and hit reality thanks to science.…

When I was a kid, I believed in magic with all my heart. Pouring into the concept of illusions my every inch of mind and soul I once bought a book 101 Magic Tricks through Science. I experimented religiously, learnt a few tricks, and put on a show in front of my friends. It gave me hope that anything could be possible. Slowly it excited me more and more, and I entered the world of wizardry through the famous books of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling. The one thing that really interested me was the Wesley family’s flying car in…

The bike is usually the first machine we got on to using for personal transport in our lives. Two wheeled, with a handle to manoeuvres, and perhaps a bell too – it’s how plenty of us get around during our teens. Grown up, our vehicles graduate into two wheelers with engines instead of peddles to get them moving. However, there is a market of people who would still prefer the peddle powered ‘bikes’ to the motorised ones. Bikers are a common sight today, especially in China and the West. Peddling on the road, cutting through traffic, dressed in their gloves and head gear. They…

Trains can be fascinating. They’re some really fast ones in multiple cities across the world, they’re used as both short and long distance land transport, and they’re unparalleled if you’re talking about passenger capacity. In countries like China and Japan, they can also be blazingly fast. There are different types of trains of course – diesel, electric, steam, and now magnetic trains. The Maglev is a magnetic train – short for Magnetic Levitation. Japan, China and South Korea are some of the countries with operational Maglev train technology. Understanding Maglev Maglev trains are connected through the tracks through electromagnets. These…

As kids we have all been infatuated with tattoos. I know I have. Growing up in India, many of the one rupee chocolates used to get us tattoos for free, which I happily used to put on my skin. Elders weren’t too pleased, often citing the harmful effects of these ‘chemical drawings’. Nevertheless, I and my friends used to show off every day to each other till these tattoos remained on our body. It was fun. Grown up now, but the myth of tattoos has changed. From ‘chemical drawings’ to ‘art’, there are various tattoo artists around the world. The human body is more…

Ever felt the sun following you? The moon going wherever you are going? Weird as it may sound, it actually happens. We actually think that the sun is following us. If you have watched Tom Cruise starring Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, you would remember a scene in Kremlin where Tom Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt and his partner are trying to move a screen towards the soldier’s counter. Whenever the soldier looks towards Ethan Hunt he would see the image of a statue kept opposite the soldier’s counter on the screen. And the image on the screen would change according to the…

If anyone remembers watching Bond movies, the series was not only about espionage, women, and megalomanic villains. There’s of course, cutting edge tech too. The Bond franchise has been a small window into a world where an immense amount of technological possibilities become plausible. In Die Another Day we were witness to an Aston Martin Vanquish or rather ‘Vanish’ which could disappear on command, and which had guns which could start shooting on sensing danger. This was a 2002 movie. Much before this movie, at least 20 years in fact, an American television show called Knight Rider was broadcast. In Knight Rider, An…