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!

Visual structure of a zen rock garden

Visual structure of a zen rock garden

Just ran across this fascinating little paper published in Nature back in 2002 by Gert J. Van Tonder, Michael J. Lyons, and Yoshimichi Ejima. In it, the authors apply a simple shape analysis to the layout of the 15 boulders in Japan’s most famous karesansui (or “Zen garden,” as they are often called in the West) at the Ryร…ยan-ji temple in Kyoto. The technique they use is called “medial axis transformation,” which, by my understanding, basically means that they took the Voronoi diagram of the boulders in the garden as viewed from above. The paper’s authors explain their method with an elegant analogy:

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan4
‘Liquid armor’ based on shear-thickening non-Newtonian fluids

‘Liquid armor’ based on shear-thickening non-Newtonian fluids

Speaking broadly, non-Newtonian fluids are of two types: Either they get thinner under shear, or they get thicker. Shear-thickening fluids, like the common corn flour-water mixture sometimes called “oobleck,” obviously, get thicker when a force is applied. This new and highly secretive non-Newtonian fluid formulation by British defense giant BAE is like oobleck to the power of ten, and can, reportedly, be very effectively combined with Kevlar to improve human body armor performance against bullets. [via Fast Company]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan6
Portable automated greenhouse

Portable automated greenhouse

My project is a portable greenhouse / seed starter that has high tech features and collapses for easy storage. Since a standard greenhouse can overheat if it is closed up or get too cold if it is opened up, mine includes an automatic vent that controls to a user selectable temperature. The user first selects a temperature between 60 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, by 5 degree increments. Then the greenhouse’s built in sensors and microcontroller automatically adjust how much the vent is opened or closed to help maintain that temperature. And because of its ultra low power design the whole thing can run 24/7 for about a month on just four penlight (AA) batteries!

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan