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!
Through his company Images Scientific Instruments, John Iovine has been designing, making, and selling Geiger counters for nearly 15 years. MAKE’s Paul Spinrad talked with him about the recent run on Geiger counters, how (in)accurate and misleadingly described many of them are, and two new counters he’s designing for MAKE Volume 29: a standalone data-logging […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics We have seen various ways to make the Sierpinski tetrahedron in a past Math Monday column, but here is a new one. A direct laser writing process was used to produce this polymer tetrahedron, which is just 100 microns tall—the thickness of a hair. This remarkable object […]
In point of fact, I have some empathy for the makers of this Chemistry 60 educational laboratory kit. They are, after all, just responding to the demands of the market, and we at MAKE actually have some first-hand experience of how hard it is, these days, to manufacture, market, and/or distribute chemistry sets that don’t, for lack of a better word, suck. So I post this not so much in the spirit of “shame on such-and-so” for creating this astounding oxymoron of a product, but rather to lament the general state of affairs we have come to thanks to litigiousness, chemophobia, and flagging scientific literacy. There has got to be a way back. [via C&E News]
Make subscriber Scott House wrote in to let us know about BikeCAD and associated cycle design software from BikeForrest. BikeCAD is a parametric CAD tool used to design hardtail mountain bike and road bike frames. Other variants of the software are available to help produce full suspensions, recumbents, tandems, and custom wheels.
This is a really cute and kid-friendly craft to do this Spring to bring the outdoors in.
If you want an extension cord, power cord, or other plastic-insulated cable in an unusual color, and you can find one in white, there’s a good chance you can dye it to suit your preference using this technique.
Turns out many cables are sheathed with PVC, and will take the same oil-based stains as PVC pipe. If you want a purple cord, for instance, you can just treat a white PVC cord with purple primer. If you want some other color, it is easy to prepare your own custom stains from clear PVC cleaner and concentrated solvent dyes.
If you’re not following along with the great work RDTN is doing to create networks of radiation sensors, check out just one of their projects: iGeigie, a geiger counter that plugs into your iPhone. iGeigie – world premiere of a portable Geiger Counter with iPhone dock. – Glass Geiger Tube can detect beta and gamma […]
