MAKE contributor John Iovine has been designing and improving affordable Geiger counters for decades. After Japan’s nuclear crisis last spring, his company was swamped with orders. Now they’re working on even better designs and DIY kits. This analog counter detects beta radiation above 36 kilo-electron volts (keV) and gamma above 7keV, signaling each radioactive particle detected with an […]
Everybody’s favorite hackable retro analog ribbon synth just got two new cousins: the Monotron Delay and the Monotron Duo. The names are pretty straight-up: The Monotron Delay has an analog “tape echo” effect, while the Duo has two individually-tunable oscillators.
By Sonya Nimri Anyone who’s ever taken on an ambitious home-improvement project knows what it’s like to have spare wood lying around – and to want nothing more than to get rid of it. This DIY project is a great way to turn scrap 4″x4″ lumber into a kid-friendly puzzle featuring their favorite animal. A […]
Making holograms became faster and easier a few years ago when Litiholo introduced its Instant Hologram film. Like old Polaroids, these film plates require no developing after exposure, which means, in about an hour, you can make your own transmission hologram of anything that will sit still next to the plate. The kit also includes […]
This amazing demo shows how you can transmit sound over a laser beam. The transmitter modulates power to a laser pointer with audio from a headphone jack. The receiver is just an earphone and a solar cell; no power source. I assembled both in minutes, and it was strange (in a good way) to hear music […]
If you’ve been wanting to dive into basic electronics but haven’t figured out where to begin or are too intimidated by circuit schematics and Printed Circuit Boards, and want to start with something simple, then this is the project for you! The Solar USB Charger, our latest addition to Weekend Projects, combines the very familiar technologies of a solar cell and a USB cable to convert the sun into USB power.
When I told my 8-year-old daughter I had a kit to clone fluorescent jellyfish DNA, she was excited to try it. But this is a high-school level project. The reagents are sent in a styrofoam box with dry ice, and the projects require a polymerase chain reaction thermal cycler (which Genotyp will loan out to classrooms that […]
