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design
Porsche Design P’3135 soliD
Now, do you take cheque? Confusingly, Porsche Design’s P’3135 Solid comes with a protective aluminium case. Since the fountain pen is milled from a single piece of titanium – a material ten times the strength of steel – and finished with a scratchproof PVD coating, that’s a bit like sending RoboCop out on his beat wrapped in a protective woollen onesie. More likely, Porsche Design is protecting customers of its eye-catching writing utensils from the envious glances of other passengers in the first-class lounge. £650 / porsche-design.com
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design
taylormade sldr driver
For some reason, sci-fi has never explained how we will all come to have a perfect swing in our utopian future. Surely a genre that can foresee an end to poverty and illness and imagine life on Mars doesn’t think we’ll be happy with erratic golf shots? Luckily, TaylorMade has forged the titanium SLDR with 21-point moveable weighting to skew the trajectory of your drive up to 30 yards, ensuring your future swing has nothing to do with your ball ending up in a sandy crater on the red planet’s links course. £350 / taylormadegolf.co.uk
chemical curiosity the elements of surprise ● Osmium Earth’s rarest metal makes hens’ teeth look abundant. Shunning a life in the glamorous world of spacecraft, osmium (left) is best known for its role in fountain pen nibs. Whoop.
● Indium Like sodium, indium can be cut with a knife. Although it won’t react wildly with water like its malleable friend, bend it and it emits a high-pitched squeal. Because metals have feelings too.
● Iridium Only about three tonnes of iridium are produced per year here on earth. Space is full of it, though – most of ours probably came from the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs.
● Polonium So radioactive it glows blue, polonium is 250,000 times more toxic than cyanide. The lethal dose is less than a millionth of a gramme. Among other places, it turns up in tobacco smoke.
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