🪀 Toy-inspired generator, Starship succeeds, US Tiktok ban

Inspired by a classic science toy, researchers in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China, have developed an electricity generator that uses water as fuel. The device converts energy from evaporated water into electricity that can power small electronic devices.

The dippy bird, or the drinking bird toy, consists of two glass bulbs connected by a glass tube. The top bulb resembles the bird’s beak, while the lower bulb resembles the body. For more on this setup, check out today's Must Read.

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MUST READ

🪀 Classic classroom toy inspires scientists to build electricity generator

Innovators find inspiration in the most common things we see every day. Over 2,000 years ago, a Greek mathematician and physicist found inspiration in a bathtub and shouted Eureka to declare his discovery, a fundamental part of fluid mechanics today.

The most recent among such common-day discoveries could be the dippy bird that has been used in science classrooms for years. However, only Hao Wu, now a professor at the South China University of Technology, considered making an electricity generator from the dippy bird toy.

Wu wondered if the evaporation energy could be converted into mechanical energy first and then into electricity. Now, efforts have led to the development of the triboelectric hydrovoltaic generator (THG).

🚀 Finally! Starship reaches orbital speed, soars around Earth

SpaceX’s Starship finally reached orbital speed. The massive rocket, designed to eventually take humans to Mars, launched from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 8:25 CT (1325 GMT) on Thursday, March 14.

‘Third time’s the charm’ as Starship’s upper stage successfully reached orbital speed after launch and soared around our planet. The successful launch could usher in a new era of spaceflight. Starship was designed to be fully reusable.

By reusing the launch system’s separate parts, SpaceX will drive down the cost of successive flights, making crewed missions to Mars possible. SpaceX will also be buoyed by the fact it is one crucial step closer to fulfilling its $2.9 billion lunar lander contract with NASA.

🕺 US passes bill to ban TikTok, Senate to decide if Bytedance gets a chance

A bill to ban TikTok has been passed by the legislators of the House of Representatives – the lower house of the U.S. Congress. Now, the Senate will decide the fate of the popular and infamous short-form video content platform.

The House bill sailed through with a vote of 352-65. Lawmakers from both major parties, the Republican Party and the Democrats, showed interest in favor of the bill. The bill required a two-thirds majority to pass.

Its fate in the Senate hangs in the balance, but if it manages to pass in the upper house, it will be sent to the White House for the President’s signature. And President Joe Biden has already declared that he would surely bring the bill into law.

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