6:21:00 AM
The Hoverboard
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, a guy in
blue jeans and a T-shirt drifted back and forth across a gently sloping
half-pipe in an office park southwest of San Jose. Instead of skating,
though, he was hovering: a real-world Marty McFly, the time-traveling
teen who glided on air around Hill Valley in Back to the Future Part II.
The Hendo hoverboard, invented by Greg
Henderson and launched with the help of his wife, Jill, nearly broke the
Internet when it appeared in a Kickstarter video last year featuring
company engineer and resident stuntman Garrett Foshay.
With little technical experience but a
knack for Internet research, Greg built a prototype. The current model
features four “hover engines” with magnets coordinating to generate a
concentrated field, which then generates an opposing field in a
conductive material below, in the floor. When the two fields repel—lift.
(Of course, it’s not simple; tech whizzes at Google X reportedly
abandoned their hover research.)
“We made the hoverboard because it’s the perfect way to illustrate our ‘magnetic field architecture’ technology,” Jill said when I met her at the offices of Arx Pax, the company founded to advance their technology. In theory, a building alerted to a coming quake could automatically activate the system; support structures would fall away and the building would float above the trembling ground.
“Give us 30 years, and we’ll hover a skyscraper,” Greg promised. “Or imagine converting HOV lanes into hover lanes. The potential is limitless.”
Now you can win a hoveboard $1500 value, click the pict below
“We made the hoverboard because it’s the perfect way to illustrate our ‘magnetic field architecture’ technology,” Jill said when I met her at the offices of Arx Pax, the company founded to advance their technology. In theory, a building alerted to a coming quake could automatically activate the system; support structures would fall away and the building would float above the trembling ground.
“Give us 30 years, and we’ll hover a skyscraper,” Greg promised. “Or imagine converting HOV lanes into hover lanes. The potential is limitless.”
Now you can win a hoveboard $1500 value, click the pict below
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