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!

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!]

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 […]

Math Monday: The twisted torus

Math Monday: The twisted torus

By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics A twisted torus is a donut which twists as it closes on itself. It is a visually engaging mathematical design used by many artists through the ages. The origins of the idea are unknown, but below is a woodcut, published by the German graphic artist Johannes Lencker […]

Maker Birthdays:  Stephanie Kwolek

Maker Birthdays: Stephanie Kwolek

Born on this date in 1923 in the Pittsburgh suburb of New Kensington, Stephanie Louise Kwolek (Wikipedia) graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 1946. She would go on, starting in 1964, to discover the remarkable properties of paraphenylene terephtalamide polymers, research which would culminate in 1971 with the advent of Kevlar (Wikipedia), an entirely new field of polymer chemistry, and the countless remarkable applications thereof we now enjoy. Today Dr. Kwolek is 87. Happy Birthday!