[Image above] Credit: Mark Rober; YouTube
It’s summer in the northern hemisphere of our planet. And here in America, that means that much of the country is experiencing some rather intense heat—which this summer in particular, may be even more intense than usual.
“We’ve got a new normal,” Howard Frumkin, professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, says in a recent Wired article. “I think all of the studies of trends to date show that we’re having more extreme heat, and we’ve having higher average temperatures. Superimposed on that, we’re seeing more short-term periods of extreme heat. Those are two different trends, and they’re both moving in the wrong direction.”
It’s getting hotter, and climate change is to blame.
The problem with rising temperatures isn’t limited to the problems that the heat causes for the environment—extreme heat challenges human health and welfare, too.
In intense heat, the human body can dehydrate and essentially cook like a piece of meat. And even if that doesn’t happen, extreme heat can stress the body’s physiological processes, exacerbating other medical conditions in the process.
So it’s essential to stay cool and hydrated when extreme heat rises—and what better way to do so than to go back to your childhood ways?
In a recent video, engineer Mark Rober demonstrated the amazing super-soaking power of the world’s largest water gun, a monster 7-foot-long creation that he engineered in the likeness of a Super Soaker (Larami Ltd.) to blast water out at a whopping 272 mph.
In the video, Rober—a former engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, where he worked on the Curiosity rover—covers the science behind the super-soaking power of one of the world’s most revolutionary water guns. Plus, he even provides you the engineering tools you need to build your own.
Check it out below—and let the water gun fight begin.
Credit: Mark Rober; YouTube