DIY science is the perfect way to use your creative skills and learn something new. With the right supplies, some determination, and a curious mind, you can create amazing experiments that open up a whole world of possibilities. At home-made laboratories or tech workshops, makers from all backgrounds can explore new ideas by finding ways to study their environment in novel ways – allowing them to make breathtaking discoveries!
This two-part series from Eddie Starnater of Practical Primitive shows you how to extract the clay from raw soil and process it into a material that can be used for pottery. In the first part, Eddie teaches a simple water extraction process that uses a series of mixing and decanting steps to remove sand and silt, followed by pouch filtration to remove excess water. In part two…
The elements of the week are tungsten and thorium, which are alloyed to make the filament in the special type of vacuum tube—called a magnetron—that produces radiation in your microwave oven. Bill and the Engineer Guy team first explain the anatomy of a basic microwave oven, then…
Insanely modded power wheels! Nerf fights! Magic smoke! Just another regular day of racing Power Wheels. The first round of the Power Racing Series, a $500 electric racing competition, took place this past weekend at Maker Faire KC. Teams earn points through speed, creativity and crowd pleasing. The next round in the Championship will be […]
By Glen Whitney for the Museum of Mathematics Before we leave the topic of Sierpinski Tetrahedra, with which many Math Mondays have been concerned, I wanted to highlight the story of one particularly impressive Sierpinski Tetrahedron which has indirectly inspired a host of young makers. Namely, it’s this record-setting order-seven “Rainbow Tetrahedron,” built in Cleveland […]
One of the great treats of my chemistry education at UT-Austin was having the original gaseous diffusion process for enriching uranium explained to me by a man who worked on the Manhattan Project to implement it, the late great Dr. Norman Hackerman. Bill treats it just as well, and goes on to cover the details of the more modern gas centrifuge process.
Learn how easy it is to make your own solder flux at home.
Here is the fifth video in Engineer Guy Series #4. The element of the week is cesium, as in “cesium fountain atomic clock.” Watching it, my jaw was on the floor by 0:20, as Bill opens by showing off the Symmetricom CSAC, which is the world’s first fully functional chip-scale atomic clock. It’s about the size of a quarter.
