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!
Every Third Thursday the employees of Signal Snowboards get together to get creative with board design and materials, and generally hack on gear at the factory. Recently they laboriously toiled over one of the more creative snowboard designs I’ve seen: the iShred.
Longtime MAKE pal Raphaรซl Assรฉnat wanted to recycle his stash of anti-static bags for component shipping, and built an improvised heat-sealer to do it. It’s just a step-down transformer, some current-limiting resistors, a momentary switch, and a resistance wire made by uncoiling a compression spring.
You may know how to make a ship in a bottle, but how would you make this octahedron in a balloon? The twelve edges of the octahedron are made of strips of blue balloon rubber, glued to the inside of the clear balloon at the six vertices. Think of how you might make this before reading my solution below.
At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from “hobby” machine tools are those used to build ships and power plants. I have no technical details about the lathe shown above, but the photograph was taken in 1957 or 1958 at the Doxford Engine Works in Pallion, England. If you like it, don’t miss the gallery over at Ships Nostalgia about English shipwrights William Doxford and Sons. It’s chockablock with absolutely gorgeous, amazing photographs of giant men building giant machines with giant tools.
Step 1: Crash a Ferrari. Step 2: Put it in a coffee table. Brilliant! Can’t wait to make one for myself, this weekend.
This commercial plugs the Veriti Thermal Cycler, and used over 6,000 PCR tube and 30 plates in the filming, which took an entire month. [Via @cenmag]
Back in 2009, my colleague John Park published his Florence Siphon coffee brewing apparatus in MAKE Volume 17. That’s him, above, goggling up before disengaging the safety interlocks on his infernal machine. I have had the pleasure of meeting John Park on several occassions, but even if I only knew him through his hyped-up internet rockstar persona, a few things would still be obvious. For instance, he is irritatingly good-looking. Also, he takes his beverages pretty damn seriously.
