Oscilloscope merit badge
Celebrate your mastery of oscilloscopes in style with an awesome oscilloscope merit badge, made by Becky Stern.
Education
Maker Education is such a valuable role. These stories will bring you the latest information and tales of maker educators who area spreading the maker mindset. Help others learn how to make things or how to think like a maker at makerspaces, schools, universities, and local communities. The importance of maker education can not be understated. We appreciate our educators.
Make your own Wii smartboard
Rather than spending thousands of dollars per classroom, students and faculty could make them in the building. With a project like this in your school, this could be a great way to do some electronics, system design and get a taste of mass production of the components. While this may not fit in to your current curriculum to have students build these systems, it could be a great way to collaborate across subject areas, or it could be a great after school club activity.
Laboratory centrifuge attachment for your Dremel tool
Just spotted this nifty concept by Thingiverse user cathalgarvey. He calls it a “DremelFuge.” It’s a centrifuge attachment for your drill or motor-tool that holds six Eppendorf tubes. Dunno how well it would actually work, as it looks heavy to mount in a Dremel tool, and most drills don’t spin nearly that fast. Still, clever thinking.
How-To: Glass-sphere microscope after van Leeuwenhoek
A commenter on my recent DIY panoramic film camera post pointed out that the same site, Fun Science Gallery, also hosts this awesome tutorial on building a simple single-lens microscope based on the very earliest microscope technology. [Thanks, George!]
How-To: Make your own graphite resistors from pencil lead
Some audiophiles apparently think graphite resistors “sound better” than metal oxide or wound wire resistors. Whether that’s science or just myth, I don’t claim to know, but making one’s own resistors is pretty cool either way. Troels Gravesen’s tutorial shows you how. [via Hack a Day]
Playing card polyhedral
In the spirit of Math Monday, here is Jason Peacock’s version of the 20-sided playing card construction George Hart featured in last weeks’ column. Playing Cards Polyhedral
Make: Electronics – Interview with Charles Platt & Gareth Branwyn
I feel very fortunate to work with such a great group of people here at Maker Media. Every day it seems like there’s some new and exciting project on the horizon. A few months ago, Gareth Branwyn, Senior Editor of MAKE, and an editor of at Make: Books, asked me to check out a new book he was developing with author Charles Platt.
