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!
Shown above is a video of the Dragonfly DF1, an experimental aircraft under development by Swisscopter US. Instead of a traditional gasoline engine, the Dragonfly has peroxide-powered rocket engines on the tips of its main blades, with a mechanical take-off to drive the tail-rotor. Large tanks of high-test peroxide supposedly provide 50 minutes of flight at 40 mph.
Alexander Kobulnicky has been painting molecules since 2007. Pictured above are heme and chlorophyll, but over at his site you’ll find many many more, such as capsaicin, serotonin, prozac, pentobarbital, and LSD.
Nice to see our friends who are involved in the Handcar Regatta, namely those behind the Screaming Vortex (above) and the Hennepin Crawler, get a little high-brow attention. They, along with some other awesome Regatta rigs, are on display at the University Art Gallery at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, CA until March 4th. […]
Rob Carlson, author of Biology is Technology: The promise, perils, and new business of engineering life, was recently in the Bay Area to deliver a talk to the California Assembly Select Committee on Biotechnology. His presentation focused on the role of small businesses and garage hackers in innovating the new bioeconomy. You can see his […]
If you’re interested in materials science, design, architecture, and/or chemistry, and you live in Austin or the central Texas area, you should not miss the UT Austin School of Architecture Materials Lab, located in room 3.102 of the West Mall Office Building on The University of Texas Campus. They’re closed this week for Spring Break, but are normally open from 9-5 every weekday. It’s open to the public, and is chock-a-block with physical samples of all kinds of exotic materials that would otherwise be difficult to get your hands on in small quantities. Anyone can poke around, and registered students can check out samples just like a book-library.
If you’re not in the area, the UTSOA Materials Lab is building an online database of its collection organized by composition, form, properties, process, and application. And although they don’t have photos of all the samples uploaded yet, it’s still fascinating browsing.
The folks over at the Milwaukee Makerspace built these fine Pot O’ Gold floats to drive in a St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Forget the laboratory supply store, you can score a centrifuge on late-night TV! I recently visited a lab that had a salad spinner on their lab bench and at first I wondered if they were putting together a salad lunch there but when I took a peek I got a nice surprise. It turns out […]
