It isn't the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of high risk sports, but wild ice skating looks quite unsafe.
This small lake outside Stockholm, Sweden, emits otherworldly sounds as Mårten Ajne skates over its precariously thin, black ice. “Wild ice skating,” or “Nordic skating,” is both an art and a science.
Drink cans
are made of aluminum. About 180,000,000 aluminum cans per year are produced worldwide or about 15,000 per second, according to Bill Hammack, who made the video below. They are made from about 70% recycled material. Can are the most recycled beverage container, but only 69% worldwide. Nowadays it
is so common that we don't even think about it, but it hasn't always existed and it's form has not always been as
we see it today.
Aluminum pull-tab
In 1959,
the recyclable aluminum can was introduced by the Adolph Coors Company. Also in 1959, Ermal Fraze devised a can-opening method that would come to
dominate the canned drink market. His invention was the "pull-tab".
This eliminated the need for a separate opener tool by attaching an aluminum
pull-ring lever.
In the
video below, an engineer details the engineering choices behind the design of a
beverage can. He explains why it is cylindrical, explains the manufacturing
steps needed to created the can, notes why the can narrows near it lid, shows
close ups of the double-seam that hold the lid on, and details the complex
operation of the tab that opens the can.
Rexam, a manufacturer of aluminum cans produced the following video that shows the process with animations from the beginning as mined Bauxite, to the final can and even how it is recycled.
Who is
Greta Thunberg? She is a 16 year-old climate activist from Sweden who in August
2018 decided to walk out of school and strike to raise awareness of climate
change.
She speaks openly about her autism and the role
it has played in her becoming politically active.
"The
climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and
solutions," Thunberg says. "All we have to do is to wake up and
change... So instead of looking for hope, look for action."
This is her
TED Talk from November 2018.
Since her TEDxStockholm she has kept busy. In December she addressed the United
Nations Climate Change Conference and in January 2019 she was invited to talk
to the World Economic Forum at Davos.
In the
World Economic Forum, she had strong words for a panel of people she spoke to,
"Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have
known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue
making unimaginable amounts of money. I think many of you here today belong to
that group of people."
Not bad for
a teenager from Sweden.
You can follow
her on Twitter and her hashtags #FridayForFuture and #SchoolStrike4Climate.
