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The Breakdown: Chugging Water at Record Speed
Talk about thirsty. The water-gulping feat in the trick shown here doesn't quite demonstrate Kobayashi-level skill, but it's still a shock to watch. In a tremendously un-scientific test, we determined that it would normally take about 12 seconds for the water to empty out of a similarly-sized bottle held upside down. This drinking champion does it in under five.
The plastic bottle is critical. If he were just holding it upside down, gravity would be doing most of the work, and that's just not fast enough. Instead, he squeezes the plastic bottle, forcing half the water out. Next, he wisely pauses for a moment there in the middle of his chug, allowing air to creep up through the water and into the space between the new, lower water level and the interior bottom of the bottle. Without that, the pressure exerted would be too great - he wouldn't have been able to overcome it and suck down that last bit of water. So he lets the air flow up, lets the bottle expand and regain its normal, uncompressed state, and then crushes it again, forcing that final enormous gulp down his throat. A champion indeed.—Gregory Mone
Please, please, please don't try this at home. In this clip, a Lithuanian brother-sister team, both illusionists, goes for a few breath-holding records—the significant one appears to be thirteen minutes and 42 seconds at the start. To hold your breath for a long time, you need to slow your heartbeat significantly. If your heart's not working as hard, then it's not going to burn up the limited supply of oxygen in your blood as quickly. In the same way, the less you do while holding your breath, the better. Eventually, when things start getting ugly, the heart stops sending as much oxygen to the extremities, and focuses on keeping the vital organs stocked with blood. Obviously this pair is keeping these points in mind: You can see that the twins are completely relaxed, their faces not even moving, throughout most of the video.
And the chains? Sorry, can't make sense of those. In the end, the brother appears to hold his breath for more than 15 minutes, and the sister stays under for just a few minutes less. Apparently the pair inhaled pure oxygen before the start, which disqualifies them from the official free-diving record, but surely someone's got to recognize the feat. Then again, who knows what really went on. They are, after all, illusionists.—Gregory Mone
Classic Newsreel: 20,000 Pounds of Sodium Exploding in a Lake
This video combines two fantastic things: the old reliable chem-lab trick of throwing sodium into water to watch it explode, and American newsreels from the 1940s and '50s. Here, though, we're not just talking about your standard vial-sized nugget, but 20,000 pounds of war-surplus sodium in massive 3,500-pound barrels.
Although the "let's just throw it into the lake" disposal method is usually cause for environmental alarm (as the end of the video illustrates), here, the resulting NaOH (lye) from the reaction probably wouldn't phase the pH of the already-fishless alkali lake to any significant degree. So sit back, free of disgust, and enjoy the action as, and I quote the old-timey newsreel announcer, "a once-lethal war chemical becomes a peacetime pyrotechnic display." —John Mahoney
Look, I'll be honest. Sitting down with a hyper-intelligent scientist and discussing his or her work for a few hours isn't always the most socially comfortable situation. Fascinating? Absolutely. But there can be quite a few awkward silences as well.
Astrophysicist Gaspar Bakos, one of this year's Brilliant Ten, eased my pre-interview jitters right away when he suggested we leave his tiny office in Harvard's Center for Astrophysics and head up to the roof. Up there, standing around the corner from what was one of the world's great observatories a century ago, he proceeded to clearly and comfortably explain the intricacies of his technique for hunting down extrasolar planets. So I went back with a camcorder, to capture him using his water bottle as a stand-in for a planet, a star and even a telephoto lens. Enjoy. —Gregory Mone
The physicist Richard Feynman turned out some fantastic and inspiring popular writing. (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is a personal favorite.) But there's nothing like watching and listening to the great scientist as he thinks out loud.
YouTube has a great collection of Feynman clips, including this one on uncertainty. An excerpt: "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here . . . I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."
That's one of the most original minds of the 20th century talking.—Gregory Mone
Robots are very good at doing the same thing over and over again, with ridiculous precision. They don't get bored and, as long as you keep the power on, they don't get tired, either. Still, it's pretty startling to watch the industrial arm in this clip toss in mid-range jump shots with such ease.
The arm, manufactured by a company called ABB and normally used on auto assembly lines, has been touring the country's science museums for more than ten years. Modified and programmed by a group at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA, the robotic arm scoops up each basketball with two long metal rods, or tines. Then it executes one of a few pre-programmed motions—a scoop shot, a hook and a standard jumper—rolling the ball off those artificial fingers and tossing it skillfully through the rim.
But Tom Flaherty, the Director of Exhibits, Facilities and Operations at the Carnegie Center, spearheaded the development, says the robot isn't 100 percent accurate. Not because of a mechanical or software glitch. The robot runs through the same steps with each shot, but the ball itself can change. The robot is programmed to sink shots using a ball with certain specifications. If one of the balls is deflated slightly, its flight pattern might be different, and it might not slip through the net. Which really doesn't seem all that different than those NBA players complaining about the league's new basketballs at the start of last season.
Apparently all good shooters, men or machines, are picky.—Gregory Mone
Who hasn't looked for the silver lining of this whole climate change fiasco? (Spring-like Januarys! Lucrative shipping passages! More cod in Greenland!) And now that always-optimistic bunch, surfers, are turning Alaska's crumbling glaciers from a frightening harbinger into the setting for perhaps the greatest extreme sport ever invented. Last week champion surfers Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala made history by being the first people to ride a glacial wave. After camping for weeks (and spending hours at a time bobbing in the frigid water), they caught the wave made by a 400-feet chunk of Child's Glacier crashing down and rode it for about a minute.
Garrett's conclusion? "I wouldn't recommend it for anyone. I won't be going back. This is not a new sport." Fun!—Abby Seiff
Back in July of 2003 we published "The Flight of the Bird Men," a story with the tag line "For Jari Kuosma and Robert Pecnik, skydiving wasn't enough—they wanted to strap on wings and fly. So what if 96 percent of their predecessors had died in the attempt?" After seeing this video, I can't believe it's only 96 percent:
On Friday, we dispatched our crack team of videographers to witness the iPhone madness at the Manhattan Apple flagship store on 5th Avenue, the Soho Apple store, and several AT&T stores. They made a little documentary so we could relive the launch of the decade's most overhyped gadget again and again, forever. And it's funny stuff: Don't miss the slow-mo jog to glory as the first iPhone recipient enters the hallowed glass cube... and the receiving line of congratulatory Apple employees on his way out is also a sight to behold.
We've got three iPhones circulating around the office today, and, well, frankly everyone's a little bored with them. Has anyone started working on a hack to make these things run third party software? Tell us in the comments: PPX traders are dying to know. —Megan Miller
This month, a new kind of "zoo" debuts in Alverca, Portugal: the world's first robot habitat. The Robotarium X, designed by robotics artist Leonel Moura, is a steel-and-glass structure that houses 45 robots representing 14 different "species" with unique behaviors and body types. Some, like the Araneax and Zoid 'bots, are insect-like and creepy. Some resemble snails or land-dwelling coral and others are fanciful moving pods that, well, don't look like anything on earth. The experience of visiting the zoo is meant to be a commentary on the human act of capturing and watching other life forms, and on the way living creatures interact with one another. For instance, if you put 14 different species in one enclosure at the Bronx Zoo, you'd probably have an interesting show, indeed (King of the Cage, anyone?). But as Moura charmingly says on his Web site, at the Robotarium, "there are no fights or aggression... the only competition is to assure a place under the sunlight." Not going to be in Portugal anytime soon? Watch the video below. —Megan Miller
The PopSci staff and our contributing troubadour, Jonathan Coulton, have spent today combing through the remarkable array of "I Feel Fantastic" videos sent in by loyal readers and podcast fans. After much deliberation and humming of that annoyingly catchy refrain that just won't get out of our heads, we arrived at a winner. This stick-figure animation, by YouTube member AnnieKate76 made us laugh our collective butts off. Says JoCo himself, "I like AnnieKate's video because it's got this very simple visual
look, but it's deep, man. I keep noticing new stuff every time I watch it, all these quick cuts to funny things. It's like an episode of Lost, but funny, and with stick figures." Right, what he said. So without further ado:
For her hard work and hilarity, AnnieKate76 will receive the grand prize of one 80 GB iPod, custom-engraved with Jonathan Coulton's autograph. Congrats!
But there were so many excellent entries that we decided to name five honorable mentions who put tons of work into creating really excellent animations, machinima and live-action music videos. Each of the five co-winners listed below will receive a free subscription to Popular Science. Great job, everyone!
First runner-up goes to YouTube member Demetrius3d, using Lightwave 3D animation:
Second runner-up goes to YouTube member ThrowingBricks, using The Sims 2 machinima:
Third runner-up goes to YouTube member theshirtevent, using Flash:
Fourth runner-up goes to YouTube member Zeedoos, using World of Warcraft machinima:
And fifth runner-up goes to YouTube member team blackcatbonafide, for their live-action music video:
Many thanks to everyone who submitted a video! If you're one of the winners mentioned here, please contact us again via YouTube with your name and address, so we can send you prizes. Look for more PopSci contests in coming months (hint: if you like making stuff, you'll want to check out our "green tech" challenge beginning July 10. —The PopSci Editors
When Lions, Buffaloes and Crocodiles Attack—At the Same Time
Every now and then, a viral video comes along that is truly remarkable—not because Uncle Cletus was that drunk, not because the little kitty was that cute—but because the events depicted are among the likes of which humans rarely have the privilege to see.
Enter the video above. Entitled "Battle at Kruger," it was filmed by a an incredibly lucky safari group parked outside of a South African watering hole. It all starts when a few cape buffaloes—calves in tow—unwittingly stumble upon a group of lionesses on the hunt. I really don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that soon afterwards a crocodile gets involved, a 300-pound lioness gets tossed into the air like a bean bag, and the ending would make Rocky himself shed a tear of admiration. Lesson learned? Nothing knows the true meaning of revenge as well as a herd of angry cape buffalo. —John Mahoney
Good thing the cars in this video are all moving slowly. Add a little more speed, and the scene would be a driver’s worst nightmare. Imagine a car pileup in front of you on a snowy day, your own skidding wheels and, seconds later, the inevitable crash…
Consider—the reason people can control their cars is that it’s very hard to slide a tire across pavement. Technically speaking, this is because tires are built to have a high coefficient of friction when pressed on a paved road. The coefficient of friction is essentially a ratio of the force it takes to slide two surfaces across each other to the force they’re being pressed together with. A high coefficient of friction means the two surfaces don’t like to slide; a low coefficient of friction means it’s easy. For example, let’s say you’re speeding down the highway and you see a police officer, so you step on your brakes. The amount of force it would take for your car to skid is the weight of your car (the force pressing the car to the road) multiplied by the coefficient of friction. When the pavement is dry, the coefficient of friction is high, so you can apply a lot of braking force without skidding.
On the fateful snowy day in our video, things worked a little differently. When these people pressed the brakes, the heat generated by the tire-on-ice friction created a thin film of water over the frozen surface. The coefficient of friction for tires on ice with a thin film of water between them is pretty much zip, resulting in—you guessed it—auto Ice Capades. It took almost no braking force for the cars to skid and, once skidding, they continued in a uniform motion, on a decline, until they found something that could apply enough force to stop them. The most convenient thing, as it all too often is, was another car.
There’s not a whole lot you can do in a situation like this besides try to steer out of the line of other cars and gently brake in the hopes that your antilock system helps the wheels grip again. What didn’t seem to work was when one guy jumped out of his car, grabbed the door, and tried to stop it himself. Maybe he can bench-press a few, but it’s doubtful he could have competed against the villainous combination of ice, rubber and a low coefficient of friction. —Katherine Ryder
What makes a racecar spontaneously rip a 360 backflip? A perfect storm of hills and tailgating, that’s what. In this case, driver Yannick Dalmas, racing for Team Porsche in the 1998 Petit LeMans at Road Atlanta, was drafting the car in front of him while zooming over a rise. As he crested the hill, the car’s suspension pulled up, allowing more air to flow under the car and creating lift. Simultaneously, the draft from the car in front of him interrupted the airflow over the nose of Yannick’s car, sapping the much-needed downforce that kept the car in contact with the pavement. Without that downforce, there was nothing to stop the car’s nose from continuing upward once it started. After that, it’s pure physics opera: The nose of the car leaves the draft zone and enters the airstream, which accelerates the lift and pushes the nose backward while the weight of the rear-mounted engine continues its forward momentum. Voilà! A fantastic, white-knuckled twirl that—luckily—sustained enough momentum to end upright. Must have been an awesome ride. (Dalmas walked away uninjured.) —Martha Harbison
Though A-Team reruns would have you believe otherwise, vehicles that crash in real life aren’t immediately and inexorably consumed by giant explosions. Any movie geek knows this. Gasoline doesn’t explode—it burns, just like wood—except in the uncommon environment of an internal combustion engine. Yet our unlucky racer’s motorcycle blows up with such vigor, you’d think Michael Bay placed the explosive charges there himself. So what gives?
The answer lies in the way the bike tumbles across the racetrack. Take a close look at how it flips before conflagration. The first time the bike bounces off the ground, the force seems to knock the cap off the gas tank. As the bike flips again, you can see racing fuel spray out of the top of the tank in great arcs, billowing through the air along with the dirt and gravel kicked up by the skid. This, as they say, is a bad sign.
Gasoline, like every other fuel, needs oxygen to burn. Ordinarily, if you were to set a match to a pool of gasoline, only its surface would burn, because only its surface would be in contact with the oxygen in air. But as it’s injected into your engine, the gasoline is atomized (imagine a tiny gasoline spritzer set on “mist”) in order to thoroughly mix the fuel with air before your spark plug ignites the combination. Since every bit of nearby fuel is now surrounded by oxygen, this flame spreads almost instantaneously through the combustion chamber until everything is alight.
But in the case of the motorcycle explosion, the bike’s acrobatics did the work of atomizing the gasoline. Once a spark ignited the little droplets, the whole thing went up in a bang. So a word to the wise: If you’re going to have a catastrophic accident in a motorcycle race, try to keep your gas cap on. —Michael Moyer
Physics has given us a great many simple principles that make it easier to understand what’s going on in the world, some better-known than others. To wit: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; what goes up must come down—both classics, for good reason. And the blingiest of the axioms, E=mc², is particularly useful for understanding why a fistful of plutonium can cause such a big bang. Less famous but far more important on a day-to-day basis if you’re an SUV designer, a high jumper or—as in the present case—a crane operator, is the principle that any object will behave as if all its weight is concentrated at its center of mass.
Finding an object’s center of mass is fairly simple. It’s the point at which half the mass is above the center and half below, half is on the right and half on the left, and half is in front and half in back. If you stand straight up with your arms at your sides, your center of mass is a little below your bellybutton (unless you’re J. Lo). But here’s the important part: If your center of mass is not above your feet, you’re going to fall over. The same principle works for a crane. If the center of mass of the total system—crane plus whatever it’s carrying—moves to one side of the crane’s base, the crane will tip.
As our crane lifts the bus out of the water, trouble is a-brewin’. The water itself is holding up the partially submerged bus. (Remember Archimedes? No? Here: Water pushes up on an object with a force equal to the weight of the water being displaced—this is the reason things feel lighter in water.) As the bus leaves the river, the crane takes on more of its weight until the center of mass shifts so far away from the crane’s arm that suddenly there’s a tip, a splash and the call for a bigger crane. —Michael Moyer
Everything has a beat. A rhythm. A frequency at which it likes to shake. You can rock most objects off-beat for as long and hard as you like, and not much will happen (see: the career of John Mayer). But start to push and pull in time with the natural frequency—the “resonant” frequency—of the object in question, and it will quite literally start to fall apart, much like the helicopter in the video below.
I always understood resonant frequencies best by thinking of the old-timey toy the paddleball. This uniquely solitary time-waster—Minesweeper for the Greatest Generation—consists of a bouncy red ball attached by elastic string to a small wooden paddle. Success comes when you hit the ball, the elastic pulls it back to the paddle, and you hit it again. And again and again and again. You quickly notice that there’s only one frequency that works, only one rhythm that prevents you from flailing wildly at the stupid little red ball. This is the paddle’s resonant frequency, and in this case, it’s a good thing.
Not so when dealing with bridges, skyscrapers or helicopters, however. Shake these at their resonant frequency, and the back-and-forth motion spells trouble. Each push adds more and more energy to the object—energy that, if not dissipated, starts to wreak havoc. That’s what happens with our Chinook. The rotating blades begin to shake the airframe at its resonant frequency, and physics takes care of the rest: Because the blades are unable to dissipate the excess energy, the convulsions rend them from the fuselage.
According to PopSci’s aviation expert, Bill Sweetman, helicopters are prone to resonant effects, which is why resonance ground testing (as seen in this video) is a standard part of chopper R&D. If both blades in a twin-rotor helicopter share the same heavy vibration and the engine mounts aren’t rock-solid, the energy generated can actually make the motors start moving around the engine mounts, and the next thing you know, that bird’s goose is cooked.
Sweetman also offered up this anecdotal tidbit: “Little-known fact: Charles Kaman, a U.S. heli designer who was also a bluegrass guitar player, combined his knowledge of acoustics and fiberglass (used in rotor blades) to create the Ovation guitar series.” Cue Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces”. . . —Michael Moyer
If you still haven't seen the Mentos-and-Diet-Coke-fountain video that came out earlier this year, congratulations. You are among the few, the proud—the ultimate YouTube luddites. Chances are, though, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Which makes what happened this week all the more interesting.
On Monday, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the two backyard scientists behind the Diet Coke/Mentos experiment, released a sequel to their original phenomenon as the first Google “Sponsored Video”—a new program from our Internet overlords aimed at sharing ad revenue with marquee videographers. The new video (see below), in which the lab-coated duo initiate a domino-effect chain reaction with their famous two-liter Diet Coke fountains, features prominent linkage to coke.com and mentos.com, followed by a short message urging viewers to enter a coke.com-sponsored contest by submitting their own Mentos/Diet Coke–related footage.
The new Google program presents another potential solution to the challenge underlying the explosive popularity of online video: finding the best way to make money from the immense mishmash of user-generated clips. Grobe and Voltz made $35,000 on their first video’s massive viral success via Revver, a YouTube–like site that serves an ad at the end of each video and splits the revenue generated with you 50/50 based on how many times your clip is viewed. The financial details of their current deal with Google, Coke and Mentos are, so far, unavailable.
Unlike Google’s revolutionary AdSense service, which capitalizes on small amounts of targeted-ad revenue collected by millions of smaller sites across the Net, Google video sponsorship will be available only to large-scale content providers with more than 1,000 hours of content or broadcast exposure.
The question remains, though: Is this landmark arrangement a glimpse at the future of online video? Will the second video, with its unabashed commerciality, be as fun as the first one (which even without the obvious branding probably encouraged the sale of lots of Diet Coke and Mentos)? What do you think? Watch it below and let us know in the comments. —John Mahoney
In the pantheon of ubiquitous games (checkers, tic-tac-toe, etc.), Tetris is one-of-a-kind. For starters, there aren't too many members of that pantheon that are videogames, considering they've only been around for a few decades, compared with a few millennia for board games. Even more interesting, though, is the story of Tetris's viral rise from a puzzle-loving Soviet hacker's pet project in the1980s to your Grandma's favorite videogame, all during some fairly heavy Cold War years.
If you're thinking that the intriguing backstory behind one of the Soviet Union's most unlikely cultural exports is right in a BBC documentary filmmaker's wheelhouse, then you would be correct [see it on Google Video here (also embedded below), with props to the fine Kottke.org for the find]. At the core of the game's complicated story is the still-hot issue of intellectual-property rights, in particular the policies of the Soviet era, in which private ownership of an intellectual commodity was a completely alien concept. Seeing Alexey Pajitnov, the game's original creator, recounting in the doc's opening scenes how baffled he was to even think about how a piece of computer software could be sold or protected with a copyright gives an indication of just how crazy the ensuing licensing battle would become, as several international parties rushed to be the first to sell the impossibly addictive puzzle game to the West.
The documentary’s excellent Philip Glass–esque soundtrack and dramatically-lit Russian-official-in-his-office-type scenes make it well worth the 60-minute investment. You could even export it for viewing on your video iPod—that is, if you can stop playing iPodLinux Tetris long enough to watch. —John Mahoney
Having trouble reconciling your love of IKEA furniture with your nostalgia for futuristic, self-reassembling T-1000-like robots? Well, don't fret. Your problem has been solved by a team of engineers and artists at Cornell University who have created the Robotic Chair, a deceptively simple-looking wooden chair that collapses into several pieces and then proceeds to put itself back together.
Described as "the culmination of a 20-year-long investigation into the engagement between the individual and the object," the Robotic Chair is a fine example of computer-assisted robot autonomy. After the chair collapses, the images from a camera mounted above the chair's platform are digitized by a computer with software that converts the location of the chair's pieces from the video into points on a grid. This information is then transmitted wirelessly to the processing unit in the chair's seat, which uses 14 motors and an array of sensors to find its pieces in the correct order and reassemble itself.
This isn't the first time the Cornell folks have dabbled in robotic furniture. Their previous piece, the Table: Childhood, was a table with a brain. The Table, fully mobile thanks to a mechanical set of wheels, could express emotions and even display preferences toward an individual in the room by either following or avoiding a person. Perhaps one day the Table or the Robotic Chair will be honored to join the ranks of the Ig Nobels along with a previous winner, an alarm clock that runs away from you when you try to turn it off.
Whether you appreciate the chair for its artistic value or the engineering skill that went into its creation, or file it away with the rest of the YouTube videos you've been forwarded, just be thankful it was created by people calling themselves the D'Andrea Group and not an organization as ominous or clearly evil as Cyberdyne. —Dan Smith
Welcome to PopSci's newest blog feature, "The Breakdown." Each week, we'll pick a Web video that involves a minor crash, explosion or other nonfatal mishap and invite one of our experts to explain, in scientific terms, what went wrong. In this week's edition, physics whiz Michael Moyer analyzes the case of the tumbling pole dancer...
Newton’s First Law of Motion states that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. The same holds true for rotating bodies and, as we see in this video, doubly true for rotating, gyrating bodies.
Consider the body of the body in question. After a quick shake of the head right and left, she leans backward to begin her rotation around the pole. Her pivot points include her right hand, held fast to the pole, and her left foot (disastrously clad, we will soon learn, in three-inch heels). She now has a sizeable amount of angular momentum moving counterclockwise around the pole, and this can be halted only by an external force.
Unfortunately for our young dancer, the outcropping of wall her rear end soon encounters does not provide that force. Instead it simply serves as a new fulcrum, shifting the center of rotation from her hand to her hip. This does two things: Like a figure skater pulling her arms in, shifting the center of rotation closer to her center of mass acts to speed the rotation up. More important, it also means that her right hand must begin to rotate around the wall as well.
The outcome is predictable. A hand rotating away from the pole cannot continue to hold onto the pole, and without that grip, our dancer loses her balance in a most sudden and undignified fashion. Lesson learned: Newton can still represent. Can you think of a YouTube video you'd like explained? Send us a link in the comments section. —Michael Moyer
This week we're unveiling PopSci's House of the Future in California—a real, live wonder-mansion built in partnership with Sunset magazine that contains all sorts of amazing gadgets and new technologies designed to make everyday life easier, more fun and better for the planet. As I write this, our publisher and ed-in-chief are in the Bay Area, preparing to fête the house’s big opening day. (Stay tuned for lots of coverage of the house in the coming months.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, PopSci.com is celebrating the futuristic-house concept with the launch of a brand-new video blog called "Future Girl" (yup, that’s me). The first episode is all about—you guessed it—"Houses of the Future." I talked to Barry Bergdoll, newly appointed curator of architecture and design at MoMA, about emerging trends in home design. I don't want to give too much away, but Bergdoll's vision includes "interactive membranes." (It's probably best if you just watch the video.)
So what's the plan for "Future Girl"? Each month I will interview a notable innovator or expert from the world of science and technology, and probably dance around to the awesome theme song written by contributing troubador Jonathan Coulton. You will watch and laugh and learn. Doesn’t that sound nice? Check out the video here and let me know what you think. —Megan Miller
If you still haven't seen 
In the pantheon of ubiquitous games (checkers, tic-tac-toe, etc.), Tetris is one-of-a-kind. For starters, there aren't too many members of that pantheon that are videogames, considering they've only been around for a few decades, compared with a few millennia for board games. Even more interesting, though, is the story of Tetris's viral rise from a puzzle-loving Soviet hacker's pet project in the1980s to your Grandma's favorite videogame, all during some fairly heavy Cold War years.
Having trouble reconciling your love of IKEA furniture with your nostalgia for futuristic, self-reassembling T-1000-like robots? Well, don't fret. Your problem has been solved by a team of engineers and artists at Cornell University who have created the 
