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!
In this, the fourth installment of Engineer Guy Series #4, Bill, Patrick, and Nick show off the engineering that accounts for three key characteristics of laser light: single wavelengths, narrow beams, and high intensities. Highlights include laser retinal surgery, the difference between phosphorescence and fluorescence, and a rather more sophisticated treatment of laser physics than is common in popular science.
Last week, I had the pleasure of testing out Oru Kayak, the world’s first origami kayak. It was wonderful! Anton Willis, the designer, and I met at the Berkeley Marina to put his latest iteration to the test. I had been watching Anton construct the kayak for months at TechShop and had always bugged him […]
Playing around with mathematics using the ubiquitous hula hoop.
In this off-the-cuff video, MIT prof and MAKE pal Gregory Charvat shoots Nerf darts into the beam of an old X-band Doppler radar gun with its output hacked into a linear power supply, a preamp, and finally into Greg’s living room stereo system. The signal sounds like a cartoon sound effect!
At issue is free public access to scientific information gathered using tax dollars. Which, in the US, is about a third of it. If you’ve ever been hot on the trail of a technical lead and run up against a robot demanding $40 to download one four-page, thirty-year-old journal article, you know what I’m talking about.
Did you know you can generate electricity from the “metal-breathing” anaerobic bacteria found in ordinary mud? Having no oxygen to breathe, these bacteria produce energy for their growth by transferring electrons to clumps of rust and other metal oxides, in a process called dissimilatory metal reduction. Dr. Ashley Franks, director of K–12 outreach at the […]
NASA JPL researchers present a 250-mm diameter omni-directional anchor that uses an array of claws with suspension flexures, called microspines, designed to grip rocks on the surfaces of asteroids and comets and to grip the cliff faces and lava tubes of Mars. [via Techland; thanks Bigpaws!]
