Plus: Space Beer, Homemade Spacecraft, the Smallest Violin and a Robotic Acrobat.

Father and Son Spacecraft Project
A father and son team recently set up a homemade experiment to take images of the blackness of space. With only a weather balloon, a GPS coordinator, a high-definition camera and a parachute to help with the descent, the do-it-yourselfers managed to send their apparatus nearly 20 miles above the surface.

Here’s a video detailing the project and its results:

From Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

What Your Smartphone Says About You
Whether you’re addicted to it or not, the type of smartphone you use can reveal a lot about your personality, background and lifestyle. Marketers are starting to pick up on the data, finding surprising results for what a smartphone says about its owner.

“As smartphones make inroads into the cell-phone market, a growing number of companies are collecting data that profiles who uses which type of phone or phone operating system,” MarketWatch explains. “Just as your car, dog or job can offer clues to your personality type, now your phone, in some ways, may help to define you.”

According to data from Nielsen Co., more 18- to 24-year-olds use phones with the Android operating system than the iPhone. Meanwhile, BlackBerry users, who tend to be between 37 and 55 years old, are likelier to use their devices for business rather than entertainment. Across the board, smartphones users are mostly male.

There are also more unusual findings. Based on differences between the coupons selected by various smartphone users, Coupons.com recently found that iPhone users’ favorite meat is chicken, while Android users prefer pork. In terms of cleanliness, iPhone customers are eight times likelier to purchase women’s body wash than Android users, who tend to buy men’s body wash. For pets, iPhone users prefer fish, as fish food was among the most popular items they purchased, while Android users are inclined toward birds.

“Also, it turns out iPhone owners may be a bit more promiscuous than other smartphone users, according to OkCupid.com, an online dating service,” MarketWatch adds. “Of course, none of this data has any grounding in social science or human behavior. It could all be pure coincidence, not causality…In other words, don’t try to pick your next mate based on what kind of phone he or she uses.”

The World’s Smallest Violin
Although anyone can play the world’s smallest violin, the real thing requires a lot more effort. A team of Dutch developers recently unveiled a painstakingly crafted nano-scale violin, the tiniest instrument ever to produce audible notes.

Engineering students from the University of Twente in the Netherlands constructed the micronium — a musical instrument that can be measured in micrometers, or thousandths of a millimeter — by assembling tiny structures using exact etching techniques in a clean room. The result: a musical instrument that features strings a millionth of an inch thick and still produces audible notes.

“Previous attempts at building a micronium resulted in instruments that could only create tones inaudible to humans, which detracts a bit from the idea of a musical nano-instrument,” science and sci-fi blog io9 explains. “This new device…is able to produce six different tones, all of which are audible when properly amplified. They accomplish this through an ingenious system of tiny weights.”

The strings are “plucked” using a system of interlocking miniature combs that lift together precisely and shift in relation to one another, producing a vibration that shifts the mass a few micrometers and generates a tone, according to a press release from the university.

In fact, the tones produced by the microscopic instrument are so clear that a concert was staged for the world’s smallest violin in late September. The world’s smallest album shouldn’t be far behind.

Making music on a microscopic scale from University of Twente on Vimeo.

Space Beer on Its Way to Astronauts’ Coolers
For all its extraordinary sophistication and advanced engineering requirements, space travel has always lacked one thing: beer. But now, the combined efforts of aerospace engineers and professional brewers are making a specialized “space beer” available in orbit.

A joint venture between space engineering firm Saber Astronautics and the Australian 4 Pines Brewing Company, the new beer is being specifically brewed and tested for ease of drinking in microgravity environments. Its creation is intended to tap into the growing space tourism market, which may build demand for alcoholic beverages in orbital settings.

“Testing for the new space beer is set to begin in November on board Zero Gravity Corporation’s modified Boeing aircraft, which flies a series of parabolic arcs that simulate environments of weightlessness,” Space.com reports. “An Astronauts4Hire flight member will act as the primary flight operator. The researcher will perform various experiments — such as sample the beer during weightless parabolas — and record biometric data on body temperature, heart rate and blood alcohol content.”

Although space-related beers have been developed before, such as Space Barley, which was brewed from seeds grown in orbit, the new and as-yet-unnamed beverage will be the first beer to be crafted for actual consumption in space.

Past studies have shown that yeast can be fermented more efficiently in microgravity environments, yielding a higher alcoholic content. Research has also been done on containers that can keep a drink carbonated through the extreme pressure and temperature fluctuations associated with a launch. Despite the enthusiasm for space beer, however, alcohol consumption during missions is banned by NASA and aboard the International Space Station.

The Acrobatic Flying Drone
Given the U.S. military’s widespread use of drones, maneuverability and situational awareness may be the new frontiers in advanced robotics. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) lab recently showed off their contribution: an autonomous flying drone that reacts to changing conditions so efficiently it can even dart through moving targets.

Aptly named the Aggressive Quadrotor, the robot features a multi-rotor design that allows it to quickly change directions without turning, making it an intelligent and remarkably maneuverable little machine.

Here’s a video of the drone performing some amazing (and kind of frightening) acrobatic tricks:

Have a great weekend, folks.