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!

Make: Projects – Water Bath Thermostat

Make: Projects – Water Bath Thermostat

This project was inspired by “Cooking for Geeks” author Jeff Potter’s quick DIY sous-vide hack. My plan, initially, was to just hack the controller into an enclosure with an A/C outlet, the idea being that you could just plug any heater you wanted into the outlet. Looking around for cheap temperature controllers, however, I happened across the STC-1000 on eBay for $25. It’s not PID, but it has proven to be plenty accurate enough for almost any practical purpose. And since the STC-1000 has both heating and cooling functions built-in, the logical next step seemed to be to split a single A/C outlet so that you could plug a heater or a cooler (or both) into it and use it for all kinds of stuff.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan40
Math Monday: Mathematical Beadwork

Math Monday: Mathematical Beadwork

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Here is a wide variety of mathematical beadwork structures by Horibe Kazunori. Looking closely at one example, you can see how the surface curvature depends on the structure. Generally, six-sided cycles correspond to an infinite tessellation of hexagons, which makes a flat plane or can be rolled […]

Continue Reading Gareth Branwyn2
Detect Anything With a Personal Glucose Meter

Detect Anything With a Personal Glucose Meter

Here’s an extremely innovative idea from Yi Lu and Yu Xiang at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, just published in Nature Chemistry. Medical demand for home blood glucose monitoring equipment has led to the development of inexpensive, accurate, and widely available electronic instruments that can measure glucose levels in blood. Some modern personal glucose meters, or PGMs, cost as little as $10.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan10