Vi Hart and More Fun with Fibonacci, Plants, and “Spiraly Things”
Here are parts two and three of Vi Harts’ brilliant and dizzying exploration of the Fibonacci number, plant growth patterns, and the mathematics behind other cool, spiraly things.
Science
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!
Fused Filament Printing with Water-Soluble Support
Veteran Thingiverse user Tony Buser has printed a model (intended to be an approximation of the fractal Hilbert curve) using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a support material. Once everything is printed and cooled, the PVA is dissolved away in a glass of water, leaving only the polylactic acid (PLA) model. This technique, when perfected, should […]
Got Weekend Plans? How About a Visit to the Materials Library?
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 […]
ShapeShift Electroactive Polymer Sheets
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 […]
Printable Johnson Polyhedra
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.)
Toronto Teens Send Lego Minifig to Space
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, […]
Enlarging Casting Resin
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 […]