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: Glowing balloons change color to show air quality

How-To: Glowing balloons change color to show air quality

Honestly, they had me at “glowing balloons.” I’ve got a box on a shelf in my closet that houses my past, failed, experiments to make floating, glowing party balloons. The group at Carnegie Mellon that produced this Instructable makes it work by using weather balloons which are bigger and can provide more buoyancy. That the LEDs they use are tri-color versions that change to reflect the ambient air quality is just icing on the cake. [via Boing Boing]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
Outlet mount device charging pocket from plastic bottle

Outlet mount device charging pocket from plastic bottle

Last summer, a commenter on my tutorial about how to make one of these from a shampoo bottle said, “instead of drilling a hole in the bottom of the bottle, you could cut off the bottom, flip the bottle upside-down and voila – hole.” Don’t know if there’s any causal link between that tutorial and/or that comment and/or this anonymous photo recently submitted to ThereIFixedIt, but in any case it does look like a better way to skin the cat. [Thanks, JP!]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan6

Mending in the Wild: Try Agave

Jonathan Johns, a coworker of ours over at O’Reilly Media and a frequent volunteer at Maker Faires, sent us a great little mending-in-the-wild story that we think everyone will enjoy. My son, Christian, and his two roommates were on spring break in Arizona. As they were climbing up and around the hills, Christian’s cargo shorts […]

Continue Reading Shawnconna