IR laser wood-burning pen
Instructables user ramanff mounted a fiber-optic coupled 1W IR laser diode in a pen body to create this cool wood-burning tool.
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!
Rolling in a Zorb
Upon hearing about my most recent knee injury, MAKE (and CRAFT) contributor Andrew Lewis asked if I might consider “zorbing” (video) as an alternative mode of transportation. I had to look it up, and found out it’s a New Zealand-born “sport” of rolling down hills in a spherical plastic balloon, inflated with leaf blowers. It […]
Lamp brightens as heated oil melts, clarifies
The Slow Glow lamp, by NEXT architects for trendy Dutch design collective Droog, is a really simple, cool idea: The bulb is surrounded by a blob of a low-melting point oil (soya oil) that clarifies as the bulb melts it and thus causes the light to gradually brighten over the course of a couple hours as it is turned on. As you can see, it’s just a cork ring, a lamp kit with a tubular bulb, and a few bits of lab glass. But they want $790 US for it from their online store. Which, by the way, is one of those annoying pages that disables right-clicking. Gonna add this one to my personal re-make pile.
Jeri experiments with electroluminescent phosphor
Those who follow Jeri’s mad-scientist-like curiosity and sci-tech explorations in her many YouTube vids know that she’s recently been hot to create electroluminescence. In this vid, she tries to make her own phoshor. It didn’t quite work out, but she explains the process and then shows something cool that she did discover, triboluminescence, the optical […]
Lost Knowledge: Wood Gas Vehicles
Vehicles powered by wood gasification were popular during WWII. Could they make a comeback? Enthusiasts think so.
Things heat up for OpenPCR project
Just last week we mentioned the OpenPCR project and included a link to their Kickstarter page. Throughout the week support for the project poured in from all over the Internet and eventually the project surpassed their initial target. Then on Friday the project hit a snag. The heated lid that warms the top of the tubes kept burning out. That’s when Tito Jankowski decided to post a question soliciting feedback on O’Reilly Answers.
Lovely 3D-printed skull
From Pat and Tim of BotHacker, printed on their RepStrap. STL files available on Thingiverse.