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!
When we have blogged before about folks laser-cutting old records to make stuff, readers have been quick to point out that laser-cutting vinyl is dangerous because it releases chlorine gas which, in turn, presents two hazards: A) you don’t want to breathe it (and probably shouldn’t just vent it into the atmosphere), and B) it will corrode the metal parts of your equipment.
My husband is on an epic 3 week snowboarding roadtrip. He’s been dropping 20 foot cliffs at 12,000 feet with his brother and friend, and living the life of a ski bum. So, what do three dudes do when they are out on the road, free from life’s responsibilities? Make hand dipped beeswax candles, of course!
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Speaking of office supplies, a box of mailing tubes showed up in our Museum of Mathematics office and I couldn’t resist making a geometric construction. All you need to make your own copy are thirty tubes and sixty rubber bands. All the tubes are surrounded similarly. Each […]
This prototype clock from UK designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau is powered by a microbial fuel cell. It features a conveyor belt of flypaper that attracts flies and drops their bodies into the fuel cell. Depending on the available fly supply, the process can generate enough power to sustain itself and power a digital clock, as well. [via Boing Boing]
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, this cool vid from Jessica Rosenkrantz featuring a simple Hele-Shaw cell, which, per Wikipedia, demonstrates “Stokes Flow between two parallel flat plates separated by an infinitesimally small gap.” Further, “[v]arious problems in fluid mechanics can be approximated to Hele-Shaw flows and thus the research of these flows is of importance.”
From a group of what seem to be mostly Italian scientists with the delightfully ominous name of The Octopus Project. Construction details were published as Design of a Biomimetic Robotic Octopus Arm in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics in 2009. A 2008 conference preprint is available here.
OK, so it’s not, actually. Bulletproof, that is. But with 3/32? aluminum sheet covers, nickel-plated steel piano hinges, and all-riveted construction, it’s a damn sight tougher than just about any other 3-ring binder you’re likely to encounter in the wild. Especially those crappy cardboard-shrinkwrapped-in-vinyl models most of us had to make do with as schoolkids.
