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!
Among the more delightful members of the set of all possible World’s X-est Ys, IMHO, is this 3 x 2.4 x 1.4 cm freshwater fishtank from Russian miniaturist Anatoly Konenko. It’s stocked with three tiny zebrafish and outfitted with matching tiny net and bubbler. There’s an English-language piece at The Daily Mail. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]
This attractive partition, called ECOoler, designed by Mey Kahn and Boaz Kahn combines two traditional Middle-Eastern elements to create an environmentally friendly cooling system. One part Mashrabiya, an ornate architectural partition made of clay or cement bricks, the other part Jara, a clay jug that acts as an evaporative cooler. It’s comprised of slip cast ceramic tubular tiles that are joined together using common garden hose fittings and connected to a water supply.
We got some really great, creative entries for our MAKE Karts and Wheels Contest. Folks were tasked with making something original and documenting the build in our DIY library, Make: Projects, with the only criteria being that their creation have wheels and can carry a person. The editors of MAKE then judged entries based on […]
Prestigious general science journal Nature has just published a video segment on MAKE pals GenSpace NYC. GenSpace, an open dues-based DIYbio workspace in downtown Brooklyn, bills itself as “the first-ever community laboratory.” This line from their front page is highly quotable:
Make: Live ep03 video is online! Thanks to our guest Sean Ragan, we enjoyed an evening of science. Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download Make: Live episode 03 in its entirety (m4v), or watch clips on YouTube. Also check out the chat room transcript! Sean Ragan – Laser Projection Microscope MAKE contributing writer […]
If you take two empty cans, one closed on the bottom and the other open (i.e. a tube), and turn them upside down, which will be harder to push into a bucket of sand? If, reasoning by analogy to liquids, you (like most people), said the closed one…well, you can sort of guess where this is heading: A closed can is, in fact, easier to push into a bed of sand than an open tube. Given the usual fine print. Adrian Cho explains over at ScienceNOW:
Fast Company featured this cool Treehugger post about a U.S. soldier who occupies his time by making recycled super heroes.
