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!

Homemade blow-molding gun

Homemade blow-molding gun

Blow-molding (Wikipedia) is an thermoplastic forming process in which a hot polymer pre-form is injected with gas to press it against the inside of a hollow mold. It’s how most plastic bottles are made. Designer George Fereday got annoyed that the primarily-industrial process was so inaccessible and decided to build his own DIY version, which extrudes pre-melted polymorph plastic through a custom die attached to a normal caulking gun to create the hollow pre-form. There’s more detail over at Core77.

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Arduino-based scooter computer

Arduino-based scooter computer

Kurt Schulz of Cincinnati, OH, wrote in with with his Scooterputer project, which uses a Duemilanove Arduino, a custom “sensor shield” and a Liquidware touchscreen OLED display to add functionality to his whip: * Battery voltage indicator * Time and date * Temperature * Lean gauge with resettable max L-R indicators * Current speed * […]

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How-To: Trap lightning in a block

Science bad boy Theo Gray shows you how to create lightning bolts in a piece of acrylic. OK, so you need the juice of a five-million-volt particle accelerator to get the effect seen here (via the Kent State Neo Beam’s Dynamitron): With the Dynamitron – rented for the day – adjusted to around three million […]

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Massive printable “Tree of Life” graphic for free download

Massive printable “Tree of Life” graphic for free download

This tree is from an analysis of small subunit rRNA sequences sampled
from about 3,000 species from throughout the Tree of Life. The species were chosen based on their availability, but we attempted to include most of the major groups, sampled
very roughly in proportion to the number of known species in each group (although many
groups remain over- or under-represented). The number of species represented is approximately the square-root of the number of species thought to exist on Earth
(i.e., three thousand out of an estimated nine million species), or about 0.18% of the 1.7 million species that have been formally described and named.

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Audio myths dispelled

From ultra-low noise AC power cables to a frequency-calibrated jar of stones, it’s pretty amazing what can be sold in the pursuit of better sound. As it turns out, most of these subtle yet pricey upgrades/enhancements are nothing more than placebo – and hearing is a very subjective thing. Originally presented as part of a […]

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