www.popularmechanics.co.za | This is my job

Armourer

Popular Mechanics — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:01:00 +0200

When Ryder Washburn graduated from university, he had a decision to make: pursue a career in finance or go into the family business – a company called The Specialists Ltd, which provides weapons for films and television shows.

Nuclear physicist

Popular Mechanics — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:14:00 +0200

James Dunlop re-creates the big bang. At Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA, he uses the electric fields of a particle accelerator to speed up gold nuclei racing around a 3,9-kilometre track.

Fossil collections manager

Popular Mechanics — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:36:00 +0200

Behind a secure, unlabelled door in a back hallway of the American Museum of Natural History, Carl Mehling catalogues fossils in the Big Bone Room.

Engine builder

Popular Mechanics — Sun, 01 May 2011 10:37:00 +0200

‘The key to building a reliable engine is patience. The details matter and everything has to be just right – especially to produce a lot of horsepower.’

Suspended animation scientist

Popular Mechanics — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:29:00 +0200

‘The biggest challenge is recognising whether you are on the path to a great discovery or have just spent six months gassing a bunch of worms for nothing.’

Submarine commander

Popular Mechanics — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:16:00 +0200

How do you drive a 7 800-ton nuclear-powered submarine that’s longer than a football field and capable of launching 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles? Very carefully, says commanding officer Timothy Rexrode, who served his first sea tour 20 years ago on a sub designed in the 1950s.

Mountain guide

Popular Mechanics — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:33:00 +0200

After he graduated from university, John Race considered law school – but an expedition to the Himalayas’ Shishapangma Mountain changed the course of his career. Since then, the alpine guide has led trips up Denali and Everest and retraced explorer Ernest Shackleton’s route across South Georgia Island on skis. Race plans all the trips he guides and provides medical care en route. He advises novice climbers to take it one day at a time. “The biggest goals are too big to digest at once,” he says. “Those who stand on top aren’t always the most talented, but they’re the most dogged.”
By Emily Haile

Aerospace physiologist

Popular Mechanics — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:49:00 +0200

Navy Lieutenant-Commander Ellis Gayles is charged with keeping US military flight crews in optimal health while they’re in the air – or, in the worst-case scenario, the water. To train aviators to survive a crash into the ocean, he and his staff employ the helo-dunker, a mock helicopter pod. Students climb into the dunker in full flight gear. The pod is lifted above a pool. Then it drops, hits the water, sinks and rolls – and the air-crew members practice escaping a chaotic and deadly environment. “You may swim well, but put on a flight suit, a survival vest, a helmet and steel-toed boots, and it’s a whole different ballgame,” Gayles says. “You wouldn’t want the first time you realised it’s hard to move in that to be during a crash.”
By Kalee Thompson

Grizzly DNA tracker

Popular Mechanics — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:50:00 +0200

‘We aren’t studying the DNA of bears; we’re using the DNA to study the population of bears – an important difference that sometimes gets overshadowed.’

Flight demonstration pilot

Popular Mechanics — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:25:00 +0200

Meet Navy Lt CJ Simonsen who is a No 7 pilot for the US Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron