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!
There’s an interesting piece in the New York Times titled Home Labs on the Rise for the Fun of Science about people equipping their homes with equipment like USB microscopes and computerized telescopes. Make: Online’s citizen scientist guest authors Tito Jankowski and Eri Gentry are quoted talking about the OpenPCR project, and I briefly mention […]
Dollar Store Crafts has lots of really great, reader-submitted holiday decorating ideas, including these two that really piqued my interest. Mitten Garland I’m heading over to the local thrift store to look for old wool sweaters and scarves to make this! We’re working on a Dr. Seuss-inspired tree this year, and I think maybe a […]
Hoffman clamps are extraordinarily handy bits of lab kit. The screw is turned to compress a piece of flexible tubing between two bars, and may be thus be used to completely stop or simply to regulate flow of gas or liquid through such tubing. The screwing action of the Hoffman clamp allows adjustment of the rate of flow infinitesimally from full open to full stop. In amateur apparatus, a Hoffman clamp can often take the place of a glass or teflon stopcock, which is a much more sophisticated and expensive bit of apparatus. And they’re cheap!
In Jeri Ellsworth latest nerd lab vid notes, she explains how to make an IR detection device by “quenching” copper-doped zinc sulfide (ZnS:CU) glow powder and how to measure temperature with thermally-quenched phosphors. Practical uses of Quenching in Phosphors
UPDATE: Deadline extended to 11:59 PDT on January 24, 2011. Wanna get published in MAKE magazine? Here’s your chance! We’ve been having a lot of fun over on our DIY library, Make: Projects, seeing the clever projects shared by our community. So we came up with a simple little contest to showcase your skills (and […]
Here is the latest in our Make: Shorts video series, covering “Maker Pioneers,” inventors, entrepreneurs, makers, who are dreaming up clever solutions to today’s energy and environmental problems. In this episode, we climb aboard the BioBus, with its creator, Ben Dubin-Thaler. The “Cell Motion BioBus” is a self-powered mobile microscopy lab that brings hands-on science […]
That phrase could be Bill Hammack’s tagline. This week, it’s the piezoelectric crystal oscillator in a $9.99 digital watch from Target, a device so ubiquitous that it has become “ephemeralized,” as Bucky Fuller put it: Almost any device that runs on electricity is expected to include one. I knew how they worked, in a general way, before watching this video. But here’s one of the many things I did not know: The quartz crystal in the oscillator is only 3mm long and less than 1mm across, yet each one is individually tuned at the factory. Wanna know how they do it? Click away. [Thanks, Bill!]
