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!
Jeff Potter is the author of one of our favorite new books around here, O’Reilly’s best-selling Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food. We asked Jeff to put together a collection of some of his favorite cooking gear that he thought other geek cooks might appreciate. Bon appegeek! —Gareth I jokingly […]
In truth, I regard the “robot uprising” meme with about the same level of seriousness as the “zombie apocalypse” meme. I suppose robots becoming sentient, independent, organized, and uncontrollably violent is at least plausible, but if I let all the plausible apocalypses keep me awake nights, I’d never sleep again. So, in the spirit of fun, here’s a collection of videos showing the mad, mad foolishness that roboticists have been up to equipping our future overlords with their tools of power. Or, in a more serious vein: Look at all the amazing stuff robots can do these days!
Here is the second installment of our series of Make: Shorts covering “Maker Pioneers,” inventors, entrepreneurs, makers who are dreaming up clever solutions to today’s energy and environmental problems. In this video, we meet Beth Ferguson, Sachi DeCou and Sol Design Lab. Among other things, they turn lovely vintage gas pumps into solar-powered electronic device […]
I love projects, like this ugly duckling lamp series from Hong Kong-based designer kamric, that give the lie to so-called “modern” design: Here’s something that looks just as good, and works just as well, as your snooty “designer” products, but is made from a couple bucks’ worth of hardware store materials.
OK, so I spruced up the sublimely boring image accompanying this interesting question over at Popular Science with a picture of the thermite reaction. I couldn’t find a picture of burning plutonium. C’mon wikimedians! What’s taking so long?
The real answer, it turns out, is something like “at first it would be very exciting, and then it would be very boring.” Here’s a characteristically droll quote from my old quantum mechanics instructor, John Stanton:
Folks really liked Russian microwave factory, so here’s another – A look inside an aircraft repair plant…. Take a stroll around the shops of Vnukovo aircraft repair plant รขโฌโ the center of technical service and repair of civil aircrafts of domestic and foreign manufacture.
Bill Hammack’s video confection is especially sweet this week. Bill scored a vintage Delta “black box” on eBay and, in this week’s installment, tears it apart on camera to show you how they built ’em in the old days to stand up to “three-thousand gees and one-thousand degrees.” I just watched it, and I’m having a hard time resisting my ebullient urge to spoil the ending for you, so I’ll just shut up and let Engineer Guy take it away. [Thanks, Bill!]
