Science

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!

How-To: Remove a rear-view mirror button

How-To: Remove a rear-view mirror button

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:

200 countries, 200 years, 120,000 data points, 4 minutes…

…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.

Contest: The curiosity-driven life. Your foible could drive the next Citizen Science study!

Contest: The curiosity-driven life. Your foible could drive the next Citizen Science study!

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.

Best Space Pictures of 2010

Best Space Pictures of 2010

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.

Top 10: Robots doing stuff that scares the &$#! out of me

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!