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!
As you may already know, our community projects library, Make: Projects, has a Reuse section, with dozens of projects related to reuse, recycling, “upcycling,” and the like. Here are a few of my favorites. DIY Soldering Iron StandHey there, my geek friend. Has this ever happened to you? (It’s happened to me.) You’re in a […]
RePlayGround turn scrappy materials and other urban detritus into wonderful upcycled projects and products. This Sunday, from 3-6pm, they’ll be turning cardboard, bottle caps, subway passes and other trashy crafts into holiday decorations at a private residence in north Brooklyn. There’s so much trash in this city waiting to be upcycled, you don’t need to […]
ChArLeS from Cambridge, MA, wrote in with his self-balancing scooter. SEGFAULT is a balancing vehicle with a 100% hardware stability controller. Not a single line of code runs to keep the vehicle upright. An analog complementary filter implemented with operational amplifiers combines the outputs of an accelerometer and rate gyroscope and passes it to a […]
Last year I wrapped all my Christmas presents in proof sheets from MAKE and CRAFT magazines. The gifts looked surprisingly good with a white background, splashes of color from photos and illustrations, and bits of interesting notes written by editors for corrections. I got my inspiration from an article that ran in CRAFT, Volume 5 […]
Founded by Elon Musk of PayPal and Tesla Motors fame, Space X has become the first company to successfully build and launch a spacecraft into low Earth orbit and have it return safely. Launched from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 lifted its Dragon cargo capsule into orbit, performed extensive test maneuvers across two orbits, and splashed down just after 11 a.m. PST on December 8, 2010.
YouTuber srobbin identifies this as a “500kV switch opening up in the Nevada desert,” but provides very little detail otherwise. Still: Holy smoke. It arcs for a good six seconds, with a sight and a sound that, even on video, is pretty terrifying. In person…well, I’m not sure I can even begin to imagine what it would be like.
Rob Cruickshank built this sweet laser microscope based, at least partly, I flatter myself to presume, on my recent project. There are more pics in Rob’s Flickr set, including one of the custom screw-fitting he made to hold down the momentary switch on his laser pointer. Rob also reports that water squeezed from an aquarium filter is an excellent source of microfauna-rich samples. [Thanks, Rob!]
