Balancing boat isn’t actually sinking
I’m digging Julien Berther’s faux sinking boat/sculpture, titled ‘Love love’.
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!
Math Monday: Gyrangle
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics As announced a few weeks ago in this column, I made a large mathematical artwork at a public “sculpture barn-raising” on the National Mall in Washington DC last weekend. Hundreds of people helped me screw together these 490 laser-cut triangles into this structure which illustrates a discretization […]
Mod your camera and your microscope on Make: Projects
Two fun and simple project contributions to Make: Projects this week both involve mods. The first is the above-pictured retrofitted microscope by Christoph Ziimmermann (nuess0r) from Switzerland. Christoph had access to a solid, classic microscope, but wanted to amp up its usability by adding lights. The mod ended up costing him a paltry $8. The […]
Jaw-dropping “unmixing” demo appears to reverse entropy
I identify as a scientist, but I gotta admit: When I saw this video from Steve Spangler Science, my first impulse was to jump back from the computer, cross myself, and douse the screen with holy water. It reminded me of a line from John Carpenter’s underappreciated 1987 horror movie, Prince of Darkness:
And we assume time is an arrow because it is as a clock…Cause precedes effect – fruit rots, water flows downstream. We’re born, we age, we die. The reverse NEVER happens…
Unless, apparently, you’re dealing with a system operating under conditions of laminar flow. Obviously, there is no real “violation” of the second law of thermodynamics, here, but because almost all of our intuitions about how liquids are going to behave are formed under conditions of turbulent flow, it sure does seem like it.
Huge Lego Europe relief map with monuments
The Euromap project is the brainchild of Bruno Kurth and Tobias Reichling. Vanessa Graf, Tanja Kusserow-Kurth, and Torsten Scheer helped them actually build the thing. The map itself, without the monuments, uses 53,500 Lego elements, and is 12.5 ft (480 studs) on a side. [via Microbricks]
Orange Peel Kindling
As we begin to approach citrus season, here’s a good idea from Natural Suburbia for making use of orange peels (or probably any citrus): dry them out completely, and then use them as aromatic kindling for starting cozy winter fires.
