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!
Inspired by Chris Gammell’s post about “trickle down techonomy,” Ben Krasnow posted this how-to video on making your own Astronaut Ice Cream. He used a vacuum pump, dry ice, and various hoses and fittings to freeze dry ice cream that can be easily enjoyed any time you’re out in space or even on terra firma. […]
While developing the second phase of their Cretaceous Sea Exhibition, The Hastings Museum in Hastings, NE commissioned a life-size model of a Xiphactinus from Gary Staab, a paleo artist based in Kearney, MO. The Xiphactinus was a large predator fish that lived in the Western Interior Sea during the late Cretaceous Period and skeletal remains […]
Well, more accurately, they transform into “whegs,” which look like legs, but are driven like wheels and don’t, as a rule, have powered joints. Apart from sheer novelty value, the advantage seems to be that Quattroped is capable of high “road speeds” when it’s on a smooth surface and in wheeled mode, but can transform […]
The late unpleasantness in Japan has recently focused our attention on homemade radiation detectors. These are often lumped together under the term “Geiger counter,” but in fact there is more than one way to skin that particular cat. A “Geiger counter,” formally, is a radation-sensitive instrument that uses a Geiger-Müller tube to detect the tiny […]
The first time I used ShapeLock was my hotel room at Maker Faire: Bay Area. Ever since then I have been hooked to this wonderful material. But “what is it” you ask?
The folks at Aerogel.org are serious about it: The “Make” section of their exhaustive “open source aerogel” site will teach you how to make high-quality monolithic aerogel the way the pros do it, from building your our own supercritical drying apparatus (“manuclave” is their neologism), to mixing up the wet ingredients, to actually performing the […]
Our friends at Imagine Science Films have launched an Open Call for the 5th annual Science Film Festival that occurs every October in NYC.
