Gyroid Magnetic Assembly Blocks
A work-in-progress from Thingiverse user searchresults. Each block has twelve 3mm supermagnets installed around its six edges, their polarities alternating so they will click together.
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!
A CD, A Nickel, A Paper Clip, and Some Hot Glue
Plus a little treasure from nature. From Mrballeng, Instructables user and craftsman. I have rarely, if ever, seen anyone use pick-up materials so creatively or so skillfully. Hats off to you.
2011 NASA Make: Challenge
Image of the Noisebridge weather balloon space probe, part of our DIY Space coverage in MAKE Volume 24 I’m excited to announce the launch of the NASA Make Challenge: Experimental Science Kits for Space. Last year, I met with Lynn Harper and Daniel Rasky of the Space Portal at NASA Ames to talk about ideas […]
How-To: Fluorescent Flowers, The Easy Way
The hard way, of course, is to splice in the gene that codes for green fluorescent protein, as in the case of, say that GFP bunny that made the rounds a few years back. That’s a bit of a project, really.
This quickie version, from everybody’s favorite anonymous, Jigsaw-voiced YouTube chemhacker NurdRage, amounts to extracting the fluorescent dye from highlighters into water and, you know, sticking the cut stems down in there for while. To use scientific terms.
Cool enough. And though I’m a big NurdRage fan, I have to protest the use of “glow in the dark” to describe what’s happening here. In truth, these flowers are fluorescent, because they appear to glow in the dark under UV light. But what’s really happening is near-instantaneous re-radiation, of absorbed UV photons, in the visible band. True GITD materials—like those stick-on stars on your bedroom ceiling—work by the entirely different process of phosphorescence. And although it may never be possible to make a living flower truly phosphorescent, there was recently a very interesting advance in the field of phosphorescent materials. [via Neatorama]
Why Its Really, Really Hard to Make Light Bulb Filaments
Continuing his wonderful series of videos on the unappreciated wonders of engineering that surround us here’s Engineer Guy on the truly amazing process required to produce a common incandescent light-bulb filament. As always, Bill displays a fantastic ability to produce short, engaging, entertaining video segments that will appeal to and educate both the totally uninitiated and those who, like myself, are foolish enough to think we know a thing or two. [Thanks, Bill!]
Math Monday: Quilted Geometric Spheres
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Anabeth Dollind made this assortment of quilted balls, based on tilings of the sphere. These first two are spherical versions of Platonic solids: the dodecahedron and icosahedron, with twelve pentagons and twenty triangles, respectively. Next are a spherical version of the icosidodecahedron, which has twelve pentagons and […]
Gallium spoon makes for fun teatime prank
The metal gallium has a low melting point (29.78 °C, according to the material safety data sheet), so a spoon made of it will melt when used to stir a hot beverage. [via Gizmodo]