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!
Researchers Jan Torgersen and Peter Gruber at Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have successfully printed intricately detailed models of various objects at the nanometer scale using a process called “two-photon lithography”. In the process, they also managed to speed things up a bit and have gone from printing in millimeters per second to meters […]
If you’ve ever been to Maker Faire, you’re probably familiar with all the wonderful pedal-powered carnival rides that appear throughout the event. Here’s a video demonstration of a small Ferris wheel powered by just two riders.
Color 3D printing allows one to make beautiful objects that are pretty much impossible to fabricate by any other technique. Here is a 9-inch diameter sculpture I designed and built on a 3D Systems Zprinter 450.
DIY physics guru David Prutchi coveted one of the expensive professional-grade gyroscopic camera stabilizers made by Kenyon Laboratories. “These devices,” he observes, “don’t seem to have changed much since Kenyon’s founder filed the following two patents in the 50′s: US2811042, US2570130.” Referencing those patents, David reverse-engineered the basic geometry of the Kenyon stabilizer using a pair of inexpensive precision gyroscopes from Glenn Turner of gyroscopes.com.
That’s Museom of Design in Plastics, and their online collections are really outstanding. While there is some good online info on hornworking in the hobby community (especially the SCA), it’s mostly text with simple line art. I couldn’t find much photography of real artifacts and tools before stumbling on MoDiP’s online Nature’s plastic exhibit.
Our special contributor, Jon Kalish, drives into Missouri’s corn and soybean country in search of the Open Source Ecology project.
We’ve already had some great reader suggestions for Natural Materials month. The first that caught my eye this morning is from MAKE pal and Flickr-pool-roundup regular John Honniball, aka anachrocomputer, who directs our attention to the use of natural slate panels as insulators in vintage electrical equipment. Above, a beautiful example from the Canada Science and Technology Museum…
