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!
Bill Hammack’s video this week explains the constraints that govern the engineering of cell phones, and how and why the development of key technologies has changed the way cell phones look and function. He also shows off the 8pen gestural keyboard app installed on his Android, which I immediately had to download and try for myself. Thanks, Bill, as always!
If you are a cabinet maker, geometry is essential to all the lengths and angles that you calculate. The cabinet shown here goes further and presents the solution to a rather difficult dissection problem. This is the simplest perfect squared square. The entire area is a square and it is divided into squares of distinct integer sizes.
Nathan Bergey’s ISS Lamp notifies him when the International Space Station is in transit over his location. It acts as a reminder of the wonder of what’s being accomplished by humans in orbit around Earth: The International Space Station (ISS) is a marvel of current technology and humanity. Sadly, we often forget it’s there. This […]
Thingiverse user lalbritton created this Ideal Harmonic Transformer: Was “Analog Sine/Cosine Calculating Machine”, but then I found the actual name for this device, which I really like. It is a thing to hold, enjoy turning the crank, and look at. If you can’t find your calculator, and need to know the sine or cosine of […]
If you’re interested in building real-world robot swarms, the unit cost is everything. Reportedly, most commercial swarm bots cost $100 or more, sothis innovative design from Michael Rubenstein, Nicholas Hoff, and Radhika Nagpal of the Harvard’s Self Organizing Systems Research Group represents an order-of-magnitude savings over existing platforms. They call it “Kilobot,” and besides low cost, it is designed for rapid assembly (<5 min/unit) and group charging using plates that engage the top and bottom of the entire swarm at once.
MAKE blog regular Guy Himber built this orrery for an online Lego competitionโฆ so sweet. I always wanted to build something like this ever since I saw a giant fantasy orrery in the movie Dark Crystal. As it has been on my builder’s ‘wish list’ for a while I figured the Iron Builder Competition was […]
Dennis and Danielle McClung bought a foreclosed home in Mesa, Ariz. Rather than filling the empty pool in the backyard with water or concrete, they turned it into a greenhouse which they call Garden Pool. Read all about this and many other inspiring human creations in the handsome and highly collectible MAKE magazine! This particular […]
