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!
TubeSat makes space your personal laboratory. You build a satellite the size of a large soup can, get it launched into a 310km Earth orbit moving 17,000 miles an hour, and talk to it via ham radio a few times a day for 1–3 months. Smile as you reflect on your new skills in surface-mount […]
This is a solder-together kit for studying the electrical impulses of cockroach neurons. The online instructions are excellent, with videos and plenty of clear photos of the assembly process. My 8-year-old daughter identified and inserted all the electrical components into the clearly marked printed circuit board through-holes, and I did the soldering. She asked me […]
No power rings are involved, here, just boric acid, methanol, and a homemade spirit lamp. It’s all nicely explained by Instructables user The Green Gentleman.
If you’ve contemplated a treadmill desk, but would like a more portable solution, then take a look at the FitDesk. It’s perfect for a couple of laps while checking your email or wiring up for a cycling simulation.
A string hyperboloid can be made by running strings between two circles and rotating one relative to the other. Here’s one large enough to stand inside of—it is fourteen feet high—between four-foot diameter circles.
At the Center for Biorobotics in Estonia, Eszter Ozsvald built a mechanical fish named A.riel that can model the movements of actual fish surprisingly well, and using only one servo inside a carefully made silicon-based mold. It took many iterations before the final product, but found that in the end she could develop the same vortex patterns as actual fish. Her site has extensive documentation on the build process and is definitely worth a look for the mold-making processes alone.
November 5, 2011 is the 66th anniversary of the first FM transmission in 1935 from Yonkers, NY, by Carmen “Randy” Runyon W2XAG. On Saturday, a network of Tesla special event ham radio stations will be on the air helping to raise awareness of the effort to purchase the Wardencyffe laboratory and restore it into a science museum.
