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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!
Laser cutter gas containment chamber
Jeri Ellsworth made this quick and dirty gas containment chamber for her laser cutter — to be able to test the gases generated from the lasing of various materials — using a silicon wafer (which the beam passes through) and a cookie tin. This rig can also be used to contain materials that might otherwise […]
2001 monolith replica machined to 0.001″
SO. It turns out the 2001 monolith (in)action figure I wrote about last week is one of ThinkGeek’s prank products. You can’t actually buy one. Yet.
It’s a clever trick, really: Call it an “April Fool’s” product, then count the number of clicks on the buy link, and decide based on that info if you really want to manufacture and sell them, or not.
Me? Bitter? ‘Course not.
Anyway, reader Dan Simpson saw that post and commented that
[b]ack in the 70s, I was commissioned to make one of these. I used one inch thick black acrylic plastic, and machined it to a thousandth of an inch accuracy on a vertical mill, then gave it a satin finish. Now, around three decades later, it’s in stores. But I still have my prototype, which is a few thousandths off….
I asked, and Dan was kind enough to provide, this photograph of his prototype. If it looks a bit funny, here, it’s probably because I couldn’t resist the temptation to crop it to 400.0 x 900.0 pixels. Although I am insufficiently evolved to perceive it, Dan assures me that its hyperspatial dimension is equally precise. [Thanks, Dan!]
Compost sites in Western Queens
This past weekend I went on a group bike tour of five compost sites in Western Queens, NY, in the neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside. The sites were as diverse as the borough’s residents, ranging from barrels in community gardens to a one-acre rooftop farm. And the compost was as stinky and […]
Brooklyn man and son send camera into space
Luke and his son Max Geissbuhler from Brooklyn, NY, sent a camera attached to a weather balloon up into the stratosphere! They call themselves the Brooklyn Space Program. [via FREEwilliamsburg] From the pages of MAKE Weather Balloon Space Probes in MAKE Volume 24 by John Baichtal, illustration by James Provost, pgs. 54-55. Check it out […]
Math Monday: Wire torus challenge
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Here is a weaving challenge for serious makers: Can you take a single length of wire and weave it into a 3D donut surface as shown in this image? The two ends of the wire are joined with a small crimp, so it is all one continuous […]
Make: Projects – PVC utility sink stand
All the kitchen chemistry at my last place left the sink in no condition for human habitation, so I replaced it when I moved out, and took the old one with me. After some diligent scrubbing, it was ready to serve as a utility sink in my garage/workshop, hooked up to the washer/dryer connection there. All I lacked was a stand, and since I’d recently scored a bunch of these cool orange-colored Blazemaster PVC fittings at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for a song, I decided to make one out of PVC.