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!
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics After last week’s column on mathematical quilts, I thought I should continue in the fiber arts category with mathematical objects that can be made by crochet. Matthew Wright at the University of Chicago has crocheted some beautiful Seifert surfaces, shown below. These are (approximately) the form that […]
Sacha De’Angeli wrote in to share his plans to help organize an open science group in Chicago. I’m really interested in promoting the open science movement here in Chicago, so I’d like us all to start an Open Science Group: ChiOpenSci. First meeting will be on Sunday September 12 at 4pm at Pumping Station: One […]
Oh, what the heck… [Thanks, Fra!] Ah, another world. :”>
Being a year-round cyclist in Minnesota, Frank Yost had a problem. “Car drivers can lock things up while running errands,” he noticed, “so why should cyclists have to carry everything around with them?” And when Frank has a problem, he reaches for his pop-rivet gun. So he designed and built this all-weather, lockable College Bike […]
MAKE pal and contributor Jรยฉrรยดme Demers sent us a link to this self-balancing one wheel electric scooter by Ryno Motors. I would much rather be seen riding around on one of these than a Segway. [Thanks, Jรยฉrรยดme!] Ryno Motors
I don’t know how else to put it. These lamps, by a Japanese craftsman known as The Great Mushrooming, feature handblown glass mushrooms, with internal LEDs, mounted in found driftwood bases with conspicuous on/off switches. I don’t think they could get any better. [via Inhabitat]
Yup. Somebody–specifically Japanese artist Yasuhiro Suzuki–went to the trouble of building a motorboat shaped like a zipper pull just for the sake of the aerial sight gag of its wake suggesting a parting zipper. And just for the record, this is clearly a jacket-zipper-pull motorboat, not a pants-zipper-pull motorboat, so let’s not have any off-color jokes about what strange creatures might be surfacing in its wake. [via Dude Craft]
