Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,455 posts.

Science & Space
Any year
171

Why I Keep a Research Blog

Before I started taking writing seriously, I had a loose grasp of many mathematical and technical concepts; and I was not sure how to tackle open-ended problems. Maintaining this research blog has clarified my thoughts and improved how I approach research problems. The goal of this post is to explain why I have found…

176

Why does a spray bottle work?

Exploring a simple machine I took apart a simple spray bottle to see how it kept fluid flowing only in one direction from the reservoir to the nozzle. It does so with simple check valves made of two pieces of plastic, a spring, and a small sphere. It’s a simple way to solve a tricky problem. A simple spray bottle One…

177

Phased Array Microphone (2023)

A 192-channel phased array microphone, with FPGA data acquisition and beamforming/visualization on the GPU. Phased arrays allow for applications not possible with traditional directional microphones, as the directionality can be changed instantly, after the recording is made, or even be focused at hundreds of…