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!
Biomechanical engineer Robert Armiger and surgical roboticist Carol Reiley, both of Johns Hopkins University, created Air Guitar Hero as a fun rehabilitation exercise for people with amputations. The original version they made was a bit costly, but they wrote up a less expensive DIY version, and shared their build instructions with us on the pages […]
The Cryoscope shows the user exactly what to expect outside by haptically exhibiting exactly how cold or warm it is to be outside. The user simply touches an aluminum cube that has been heated or cooled to the appropriate temperature. The unit fetches weather data from the internet, and translates it to the cube physically, […]
Refurbishing old scientific and industrial equipment from eBay is something I love to do. If you understand what you’re looking for and are a savvy eBay user, you can score some amazing bargains on stuff that just a few years back was high-end, cutting edge, extremely expensive research-, factory-, and/or military-grade equipment. Garage quantum physicist […]
Everyone loves a soft robot, and I’m fond of the marine variety. This bioinspired prototype tentacle, made of silicone rubber, not only curls and extends in eerily squidlike fashion, it’s also got pressure sensors embedded beneath its suckers so it can grasp objects, like a cephalopod should.
Last March, roboticist Eric Brown and co-workers at the University of Chicago made headlines with their new, unconventional robot gripper design: a balloon filled with coffee grounds or other grainy material and fitted with a vacuum line. At atmospheric pressure, the balloon is squishy and can be “mushed” around an object—even traditionally hard-to-grip stuff like […]
While New York City is known more for its “Silicon Alley” start-ups, showrooms for just about every major technology company, and of course the boogie-woogie lights of Broadway and Times Square, there’s another – older and often unseen – side to the city of five boroughs.
Our maker this week is Carol Reiley a surgical roboticist at Intuitive Surgical and the founder of Tinker Belle Labs. Carol’s on the cover of the current issue of MAKE, Volume 29, and is the co-author of two how-to projects in this issue.
