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Hexagon on Saturn
This view of Saturn looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from roughly
43° above the ringplane. It was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle
camera in November using a
spectral filter that preferentially
admits wavelengths of near-
infrared light centered at
752 nm. The picture was
captured from approximately
1.6 million miles away and the
scale is 93 miles per pixel. The
Cassini-Huygens mission is a
cooperative project of NASA,
the European Space Agency,
and the Italian Space Agency.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), a division of the
California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena,
manages the mission for
NASA’s Science Mission
Directorate, Washington.
The Cassini orbiter and its
two onboard cameras were
designed, developed, and
assembled at JPL. The
imaging operations center is
based at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colo.
,
ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES • APRIL 2014 47
3D printing pen
The 3Doodler is a 3D printing pen
developed by Peter Dilworth and Maxwell
Bogue of WobbleWorks LLC, Boston.
3Doodler began fundraising in February
2013 on the crowdfunding platform
Kickstarter. Plastic thread made of either
acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) or
polylactic acid (PLA) is melted and then
cooled while moving through the pen,
which can be used to make 3D objects by
hand. The pen has been described as a
glue gun for 3D printing because of how
the plastic is extruded from the tip, with
1 ft. of the plastic thread equaling “about
11 ft. of moldable material,” according to
company sources. .
Just as Saturn’s famous hexagonal-
shaped jet stream encircles the
planet’s North Pole, the rings
encircle the planet, as seen from
Cassini’s position above. Courtesy
of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space
Science Institute.
Young scientists explore
nanotechnology
Ingenuity Lab, Edmonton, Alberta, is using an
innovative method to teach elementary school children
about the wonder of nanotechnology: Scopey’s Nano
Adventures. The app was designed to teach future
scientists about myriad opportunities at the nanoscale.
Designed for kids ages 5-10, the interactive application
features animated tutorials that make learning creative
and fun, according to developers. The application is
now available on both iOS and Android devices and is
free for Canadian users. Narrated by a cartoon
microscope named Scopey, the app was tested in
classrooms and science centers earlier this year and
was well received by educators, children, and industry
professionals.
Scopey’s Nano Adventures is an
app created to teach future
scientists about opportunities at
the nanoscale. It features animated
tutorials that strive to make learning
creative and fun.
3Doodler is a handheld 3D printing pen that can draw
in the air.