The Science of it All…Roundup

Have you ever threw a party while your parents were away, then bragged about it on Twitter? Have you ever used a selfie stick while on a roller coaster? Have you cracked three separate cell phones? Have you ever locked yourself out of the house while not wearing pants…twice in one day? Does jumping on a trampoline with a bowling ball seem like a good idea? Then you, my dim-witted friend, are not the brightest bulb in the whole chandelier and you may be better served going to another blog about boobies, explosions, or monster trucks or something, cuz we're about to lay down some smarty pants book learnin' stuff that might confuse you. Go on, now! Git! Are they gone? Alrighty then! For the rest of you, for the above average, for the Mensa Set, we have a little build challenge we called The Science of it All…all about cars, trucks and bikes with scientific names or purpose. You know, like the Dodge Neon or the Honda Element. So grab yourself 355ml of your favorite libation, this round up is sure to have all kinds of fun scientific facts when I'm not otherwise distracted by explosions, monster trucks and boobies.


Did you know human saliva has a painkilling ingredient more powerful than morphine? Did you also know some eggheads at MIT put a Chevy Volt engine into a rusted old Nova? John Marshmallow knows it and now we're all just a little smarter for his efforts.



Dumb guys put bigger engines in their cars to go faster. Smart guys, they put in electric engines because they know that more torque, rather than more power is where the action is. John's Model S aka "Electric Dream" was possibly one of the greatest electric cars to have ever been built, so says he.



I'm just too goddamned lazy to research that myself. But I can easily wrap my significant IQ around a 1981 Nissan Pulsar Drag Rod called "Lil' Red Wagon", and a 1998 Mitsubishi Eclipse Drag Rod called "White Rocket". Vroom, Vrooooom, VROOOOM!!

The Porshe 962 can go 264 MPH on the Bonneville salt flats. It takes plenty of scientific science-y science to make a car go that fast without bursting into flames. Also, this car is named after Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, a scientist and inventor who worked on, among many things, the first hybrid-power troop transport train.



JohnniD shows us a world where solar powered hover cars are all the rage. That can happen. Ah science! it can answer all the most difficult questions like why is the sky blue? Is time travel possible? And what's with you people and fat white chicks anyway?



OK, maybe it can't answer that one, but still a burning question nonetheless. Let's move on. Predictably in a roundup full of cars pertaining to science-y science science, someone would build a Tesla. Not predictable, however is this entry by rkc62 that has a tesla coil on the roof and is zapped by lightning. I literally can't see how that can go wrong.



With a cool name like Emmanuel Spencer Iskandar he should do something cool like invent a battery or something. Unfortunately, that honor already goes to Alessandro Volta. He also gets a car named after him, which is a collaboration between Toyota and Italdesign Giugiaro. This supercar has a hybrid V6 engine and scissor doors.



One question science can't answer is why the hell does a robot need to drive a car? Even though he built it, Lino Martins does not know the answer, nor does he know why every last girl had big hair in the 80's. He does know, however, that Simon Liu digs this car for some reason.



Next on the Lino slab is the least science-y car ever that happens to have the most science-y names. Behold the 1965 Mercury(science) Comet (science!) Cyclone (SCIENCE!!) called Red Menace (not so much science, but political science, maybe). Don't let the pretty colors fool you, its all muscle!



Loek M snubs his germ infested thumb in the eye of whoever runs the Tesla company cuz this 533 PS electric Mercedes from 2011 was the first fully electric performance car. In your stupid face, Tesla! And by Tesla, I mean the sucky hair metal band from the 80's.



Known for their power and styling in the 60's and 70's, the mercury Cougar was a force to be reckoned with. But by the late 80's, however this 1987 Mercury Cougar XR-7 V8 Coupe built by Peter Blackert was a mere shadow of what it used to be.



Sounding more like a hair removal remedy than a car, the second entry by Peter is the 1994 Ford Laser Lynx 3-door Hatch. Laser is obviously science-y, but not so obvious is Lynx, which is a constillation in the northern sky.



Our entire sky consists of the whole galaxy so it becomes a fitting name for the biggest of the Ford line, the 1964 Ford Galaxie 427 Sport Roof Coupe. Incidentally, the Galaxie was cited as having the largest back seat, making the car popular amongst teenagers who enjoy…yanno…sitting and stuff.



There's barely room to do much sitting, or anything else for that matter, in this 2014 Ariel Atom. Its the car thats sort of like a motorcycle, you need a helmet to ride in it and you'll get bugs in your teeth as the wind flaps your face like a sheet left on the close line on a windy day.



This 1983 Nissan Pulsar EXA Turbo is totally weird science. Like as in Kelly LeBrock. Remember her? Whatever happened to her anyway? Man, she was hot in her day! making a sex-crazed woman out of a few computer parts seemed totally feasible in my young teenage mind.

I'm sure the muscle bound owner of this 1972 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Coupe 440 sees no shortage of sex-crazed women. That's how it goes, girls like big muscles and big cars with back seats suitable for…yanno, sitting and stuff.



Be prepared to sit yourself stupid with this totally far out 1977 AMC Concept Electron shown here illustrating many innovative ideas, including real, accessible electric propulsion - though perhaps even more amazing, is that the car was shown in this basic form 10 years earlier, in 1967, as the Amitron.



Foregoing most of the things that made the Saturn brand innovative at launch in the early 1990s, the Saturn Ion Quad Coupe was really just an ordinary, small car.Perhaps the only feature which really made it stand out was the coupe model's rear suicide doors.



15 steps into my day and I'm already looking for a place take a load off, kick my feet up and leave things like hiking to people who actually like that sort of thing. I'm sure there's plenty of room to loaf around and do nothing in this Espace as built by PauloD.

As a physicist, Ralph Savelsberg is a man deeply rooted in science. With that said, Zak Bagans and the Ghost Adventurers (aka Scooby Douche and the Gang) can rejoice as their locking themselves in scary places and acting like a bunch of fratboys is now considered a real science cuz Ralph built the Ghostbusters car for the new movie. OK, thats a stretch, but I wanted an excuse to use my Scooby Douche joke.

Is that all of them? I think it is! What did we learn this time around? Not a god damned thing! But that's OK. These roundups are not always about learning…although you'd think I'd do a better job with a science based challenge. Science was actually my favorite subject in school. That and English and Creative Writing. And look where that got me! Distracted by explosions, monster trucks and boobies every couple of minutes. And I don't mean while surfing the net. No, there was like an explosion of boobies and monster trucks like seven feet away! But we have a chance to redeem ourselves with a little challenge we call The Great Outdoors, all about cars, bikes, and trucks made to enjoy (or pillage) the great outdoors. So remember, next time you're out enjoying the beach or the park, take only photos and leave only footprints. Its good for the environment and it makes you less of an a-hole. Thats my advice for now. Tune in next month, same bat time, same bat channel. In the meantime leave some comments or something.