happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

Lauren McCarthy created the Happiness Hat, which is a wearable conditioning device that can detect if you are smiling or frowning.

An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. The device runs on Arduino.

A smile is a simple action that has the power to make you and everyone around you feel better. Just using the muscles to smile can make you feel happier. Seeing someone else smiling triggers mirror neurons in your own brain, causing you to unconsciously smile yourself. What is the potential of feedback to improve the way we act and feel? On the other hand, how often does the appearance we project misrepresent what we are really thinking and feeling? How do we reconcile these ideas?

Link [via MeFi]

According to this article, you can make a device out of a few pieces of plumbing that will separate high energy and low energy molecules from a pressurized air stream.

Air enters the Hilsch Tube perpendicularly and is forced around a small sea shell shaped apparatus which causes a vortex in the main tube. One end of the tube is partially plugged, which increases the air pressure within the tube. The pressure, combined with the friction of air molecules at the outside of the vortex bumping into the walls of the tube, causes the outside of the vortex to heat up.

The other half of the tube is blocked by a washer with a small hole in the middle. This allows the cooler air at the center of the vortex to escape that end of the tube, but blocks the higher energy air at the outside of the vortex. When the cooler air hits the other side of the washer, it depressurizes, further cooling the stream from that side of the pipe.

What do you think, is this science or quackery? It's hot here in Minnesota right now -- all the more reason for me to try and build one of these things.

[darus also appears to be a Minnesotan]