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!
DumpsterWorld is a website devoted to the time-honored geek tradition of dumpster diving. There are tips, a forum, classifieds and, of course, a FAQ. There’s many reasons that perfectly good things go in the garbage. One of the biggest reasons is business practice. Remember that businesses are there to make profit. Goods that are overproduced, […]
Derek “Deek” Diedricksen (Stoughton, MA) is back, with another episode of his Tiny Yellow House. This guy is such a natural, “endlessly entertaining,” as Letterman likes to say. In this episode, Deek gives us a tour of his mini-cabin/house built out of recycled junk (from dumpster diving/repurposing), and curbside materials. With a guitar tease/ guest […]
This weekend the MakeMobile was on the tarmac at the NASA Ames Research Center for Yuri’s Night. a massive global celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight into space. 211 parties were held across the globe, and even the astronauts on the International Space Station had one!
Todd Harrison (Mesa, AZ) has a nice post on his blog about a recent ANSR (Arizona Near Space Research) balloon launch, the group’s 55th! Rich Osgood from Heatsynclabs.org and I were invited observers. Our objective was to help track the balloon and locate the landing zone while testing our own radio balloon tracking equipment. I’m […]
Artist Koshi Kawachi created these comic-book-based planters for an installation at a Japanese department store. [via Pink Tentacle] More: Planter will find the sun for its plants How-to: Cast concrete planters using packing inserts How-To: Tackle Box Planter Urban planter Kickball planter How-To: Bike Handlebar Planter HOW TO – Make an inverted planter HOW TO […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics What cool things have you made with magnets lately? Anything like the above dodecahedral construction? These geometric sculptures are the creations that resulted from Robert Hodgin playing with thousands of small magnetic spheres and cylinders. I especially like his geometric forms which remind me of Ernst Haeckel’s […]
Russell Ohl (Wikipedia) is generally credited with inventing the first “modern” solar cell. His 1946 patent for a “Light sensitive electrical device” inspired an unnamed British science teacher from Surrey to create a working version of the device, which was recently discovered by his family and found to still work perfectly. In full sunlight, it generates 1.5 volts. According to this article in The Daily Mail:
