Seven-segment displays are needed in many instrument designs. In conventional microcontroller-based designs, four output port lines are allocated for one seven-segment display. Figure 1 shows the ...

The 555 timer IC is an integral part of electronics projects. Be it a simple project involving a single 8-bit microcontroller and some peripherals or a complex one involving system on chips (SoCs), a ...

The proposed bistable gripper can maintain its grasp even without continuous energy input, while also being able to modulate its activation force, representing a new paradigm in robotic gripper design ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 360 BC, Plato envisioned the cosmos as an arrangement of five geometric shapes: flat-sided solids called polyhedra. These immediately ...

A long-theorized geometric object has finally taken shape. Named Bille, this monostable tetrahedron could transform the design of spacecraft and robotics. We need to rethink the shape of lunar landers ...

“Bille” is the first-ever monostable tetrahedron, or a pyramid-like shape with four triangular faces that has one stable resting position. What this means is that Bille, no matter how you throw it and ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Meet Bille, the name given to the world's first monostable tetrahedron—a four-faced object that will always land on the same side, no matter its starting position. This feat of geometry and ...

A four-sided shape that will always come to rest on the same side no matter what side it starts on has been built by mathematicians, decades after it was first proposed to exist. Mathematicians have ...

A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture. In 360 BCE, Plato envisioned the cosmos as an ...