True Mirror
See yourself as others see you with a true mirror.
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Epoxy glue
The Bobbinator
Linear actuators are motors that work in a straight line. They’re very useful for controlling valves and levers, building robots, and retrofitting old mechanisms for digital control. The simplest form of linear actuator has only 2 positions, while more complicated actuators can be positioned just like stepper motors and servos. I needed 32 linear actuators […]
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The Fire Piston
Carl von Linde was dead tired. The eminent engineer, considered the father of the modern refrigerator, had just returned to his home in Germany from a lecture tour that took him to, among other places, Malaysia. This being the late 19th century, the voyage had taken months. Von Linde had seen and learned much during […]
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Bundle Bow and Arrow
By Kathreen Ricketson, Rob Shugg, and Orlando Shugg As a boy, my partner Rob Shugg always had a bow and arrow. He was quite a little ragamuffin and had a wonderfully free and adventurous childhood, very different from all the cautionary parenting of today. With the resurgence of books about adventures for kids and 19th-century […]
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Chladni Plate
Use a broken speaker, bits of wire, and tape to prepare a coneless voice coil driver, then use it to generate standing waves on a sheet of metal, making sound visible. Magic! My knowledgeable friend Robin once said that you don’t need to worry about having too big an audio amplifier, because speakers are usually […]
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