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!
Though “plastic” has now largely overcome its “The Graduate”-era connotation of โnecessarily cheap, fake, and ephemeral,โ it remains the case that plastic objectsโespecially those manufactured early in the history of plastics technologyโpresent unusual challenges for long-term conservation.
Here, automata guru Dug North rounds up four expedient methods for improvising a worm drive given an on-hand spur gear. Digging through our archives also reveals this interesting method for coming at the problem from the other direction, i.e. improvising a spur gear for an on-hand worm!
A commenter on my recent post about using cheap paint-stripper DCM to solvent-weld acrylic hipped me to this cool method of making thicker-bodied acrylic adhesives by dissolving acrylic chips in bulk acetone. I havenโt tried it myself, yet, but it seems like a fairly well-known method in the PC case-modder community, among others.
Neat off-the-wall idea from Instructables user blightdesign, whoโs been experimenting with preserving folded paper by rubberizing it with Plasti-Dip. More pics in B. Light Designโs Flickr set.
Here’s another super-simple mod from Weekend Projects, our beginner-friendly electronics series where we introduce you to projects you can make in a weekend. Actually, the Solar TV Remote should only take you a couple of hours once you’ve gathered all your parts.
Bruce Parker, former Chief Scientist and eleven-year veteran of NOAAโs National Ocean Service, wrote this fascinating article in the September issue of Physics Today. It covers the technical history
of the science of tide prediction leading up to the beautiful mechanical computers developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to quickly extrapolate recorded tide patterns into useful predictions, and goes on to explain how those computers were critical in planning the Normandy landings.
Reportedly a custom job by osteological specimen-house Skulls Unlimited, though I can find no mention of it on their site.
