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!
With a very few notable exceptions, there was really nothing punk about The Fad Which Shall Not be Named. Steampop might really have been a better word. Fortunately, the steam in these posts is not, generally, even aspiring to punk status, although the word itself may, regrettably, appear a couple times in the copy on the linked pages. Please accept our apologies–we were excited–and enjoy this hot steamy content entirely on its own merits.
Over the weekend I participated in a group led by Jeff Warren of MIT’s Design Ecology group to build DIY spectrographs using recycled materials. It was a fun weekend citizen science project that’s perfect for families. The spectrographs we made weren’t as nice as what you can build for $20, but then again they were built using trash.
Awhile back, I wrote about co-opting the awesome glue used to mount rear-view mirrors for hobby projects. An interested reader e-mailed me a couple weeks later asking if I knew how to remove a rear-view mirror button from a windshield, which I didn’t. Several people have reported that trying to forcibly remove the metal button from the glass can actually break a divot of glass out of the windshield. I was therefore not optimistic, but we talked a little about the idea of using an organic solvent combined with sharp lateral pressure parallel to the glass. She experimented a bit, and, what do you know, eventually succeeded! Here’s her report:
…and a pretty sweet Minority Report-esque dynamic infographic (“infomotion?”), to boot. The point? The world today has more than its share of problems, but we can all be thankful it isn’t the world of 200 years ago.
The charming Swede is Hans Rosling–physician, statistician, and host of BBC 4’s The Joy of Stats. Pretty much everything about this video makes me happy, not least of all that the Brits have a TV program celebrating statistics itself. [Thanks, Dad!]
P.S. If you’re feeling cynical, check out the equally-cool-but-way-less-uplifting Animated Map of Nuclear Explosions, 1945-1998 by Isao Hashimoto.
More exploring math through the slicing of your morning bagel.
Have you ever wanted to take a closer look at an aspect of life – such as how diet effects exercise, how exercise effects cognition, how sleep effects your work… Any field of study is free game. And, if you are reading this, you are qualified to submit an entry! Submit questions and entries to eri@genomera.com. For more details, see here. You have until December 15th.
Nation Geographic’s Best Space Pictures of 2010 A colorful, craggy column of dust and gas dubbed the Mystic Mountain stars in a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope released April 23 as part of celebrations for Hubble’s 20th anniversary. The picture highlights the results of star birth in the Carina nebula.
