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!
Two years ago I wrote about what a delight it was to discover the UT-Austin School of Architecture’s Materials Lab when I was on campus there, and it seems appropriate to resurrect the topic in honor of our theme this month. Kevin Kelly just posted a roundup of major materials libraries around the USA over […]
DIY methods for electroactive polymer actuators are hard to come by, and none of them are kitchen-counter simple. But compared to the wet chemical methods circulating in the academic research community, the purely mechanical process documented in this video from the Swiss ShapeShift project is relatively accessible. Click here to skip the how-to and go […]
Thingiverse user and retired protein crystallographer(!!!) pmoews created these .STLs of polyhedra (AKA Johnson solids), based off of George Hart’s VRML files of the solids, converting them to .STLs with Fortran(!!!!) (My favorite is the gyrate bidiminished rhombicosidodecahedron, just cuz of the name.)
Two young makers from Toronto, Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both age 17, successfully sent a Lego minifig and four cameras to roughly 78,000 feet elevation on a homemade weather balloon. After a 97-minute flight, the balloon returned to Earth with great footage of the journey. Inspired by a similar project done by MIT students, […]
HydroSpan 100, from Houston-based Industrial Polymers Corporation, is billed as “a 3 dimensional copy machine enlarging any shape or design in near perfect proportion and detail.” Shown uppermost, a Morgan silver dollar from 1896, enlarged via three generations of HydroSpan 100 casting to about the size of a salad plate. To use it, two components […]
I love it when people use humble PVC as a project enclosure. In this case, Alex Avtanski of San Jose, CA, built this DIY Magnetometer to detect and measure magnetic storms. The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by […]
If you’ve got a shop, you’ve probably got some source of vacuum around, even if it’s only a residential vacuum cleaner for tidying up the floors. And in a pinch, a home or shop vacuum cleaner will do for light duty vacuum applications like running a small vacuum former. If you’re doing chemistry, however, and […]
