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!
Combining issues around utopia, environmentalism, and contamination, Kim Holleman will be exhibiting some of her micro-environments at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, opening this Friday. Working with vintage scientific beakers and bottles, Kim’s “faux-scientific archive” presents us with miniaturized landscapes that comment on mankind’s chemical footprint, but show that truly defiant biology will grow almost […]
On Friday, I wrote about the development of amorphous or “glassy” metal alloys, in which the atoms are packed together with no regular crystal structure. At the microscopic level, almost all metals are made of crystal grains, which can be bigger or smaller depending on how the metal has been heat treated. Amorphous alloys, recall, […]
Use the camera in your Android smartphone to detect radiation with the Radioactivity Counter app from Rolf-Dieter Klein. Just place a small piece of black tape over the camera lens, calibrate for ambient noise, and you’ll be ready to take readings in no time. The app uses the device’s built-in CMOS sensor to detect primary […]
At the atomic scale, generally speaking, solids are either crystalline or amorphous. In crystals, the atoms or molecules fill space in a repeating, orderly arrangement, like stacked cannonballs or cells in a honeycomb. Table salt is a handy example. In amorphous materials, however, the atoms or molecules are packed together randomly, without repeating arrangements. Glass […]
Since CES is such a big show, some companies do outrageous things to get noticed. Whether it’s building a $30k iPod dock or hiring stuntmen to ride around town on top of cars, the idea is to stick out. The thing is, there’s a fine line between causing a little buzz and accidental product development. […]
This article from seasoned acoustical engineer Eric Wolfram of AcousticsFREQ.com may be short on flashy pictures, but it is long on technical info and great practical advice from someone who obviously knows his business.
This time around on “Tiny Yellow House”, Deek decided to mess around with passive solar heat so as to warm the always-cold front foyer of his home. The result: a smallish, closeable, passive solar collector that fits into a window opening. Its not rocket science (and it NEVER will be here on “Tiny Yellow House”) but it does work- even in January, in New England.
