How-To: Make a Multiband EFHWA for Amateur Ham Radio
Diana Eng shows how to make your own End-Fed Half-Wavelength Antenna (EFHWA) for portable radio operations.
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!
STS-131 mission brings robotics outreach to teachers, students
The upcoming mission of the space shuttle will focus heavily on robotics and NASA is using that opportunity to bring additional educational outreach to teachers and students. In an education briefing today, NASA detailed some of the resources and events related to STS-131. The robotics section of the NASA web site includes lesson plans, multimedia, […]
Biomechanical steampunk taxidermy
We have blogged about American assemblage artist Ron Pippin’s work before, with a focus on his wunderkammer pieces. But he’s been busy since then. Fair warning: Much of Pippin’s work uses real animal parts, and although I personally find it very beautiful, some viewers may be disturbed and/or offended. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]
Altered thrift store art: Some personal faves
It’s a simple idea: Find some bad art, whether original or a print, for a song at a thrift store, then modify it to make, if not “better art,” then at least something that’s more entertaining to look at. (Is it the same thing? Yeah, that sounds like a productive argument.)
Darwinian plant pruner
Natural Deselection is an instrument that competes plants against each other. The device empowers plants to control the fate of others using sensors and mechanised shears in a Darwinian race for survival. The sensors set above the plants detect the first to grow to a specified height, at which point it is saved, and the […]
Flat-pack observatory roof protoytype
Craig Smith, of Firefly Workshop, has been planning a home observatory and is working out the details of easily building a domed roof for it. He writes: Anybody with a decent telescope knows that a telescope should be cool as the night air to prevent heat radiant distortion. Aside from keeping it out in an […]
Element 112 officially “Copernicium”
Admittedly, if you’re not a chemist or physicist, you may find this post as boring as dirt. (Please forgive the simile, microbiologists. I know dirt is actually fascinating.) Then again, it’s not everyday a new element is added to the periodic table.
The latest addition, number 112, was discovered on February, 9th, 1996 at 10:37 PM by a team under Professor Sigurd Hofmann at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum fรยผr Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany, who confirmed its existence by observing a characteristic “decay chain” of radioisotopes (illustrated above) that could only have originated with element 112.
Just a couple weeks ago, on February 19, that discovery was officially confirmed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), who accepted the GSI team’s recommendation of the name “Copernicium” in honor, naturally, of Nicolaus Copernicus, whom most will recall as the first scientist to stand up and declare that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way ’round. The new two-letter symbol is “Cn.”
