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!
It looks dangerous and is, reportedly, incredibly expensive, but there is no denying the near-maximal awesome factor of the Jetlev Flyer. Power comes from a four-stroke engine in a small “boat” which drags in the water behind/below the flying harness, and to which it is tethered by a big yellow hose that supplies high-pressure water and prevents the operator from exceeding a safe altitude. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]
Last week was the Greener Gadgets conference in NYC. MAKE went and scoped it out, lots of cool ideas being discussed! We saw presentations from product designers, architects, and entrepreneurs. Pictured above is Robert Fabricant talking about biofeedback. Check out video from the event at the Greener Gadgets site. Above photo is by Joe Saavedra.
Becky, Ladyada, and I attended “Our Solar Neighborhood with Jackie Faherty” at the American Museum of Natural History. The Hayden Planetarium, with ongoing support from NASA, has assembled the world’s largest cosmic atlas, extending from Earth to the greatest distances yet charted by astronomers. Join us on the first Tuesday of each month for a […]
Bourne Energy‘s “militarized” luggable hydroelectric plant measures 3 feet in length and weights around 25 pounds. It can be transported to a water source by one person, then set up either on the surface of the river or, ninjalike, completely submerged. [I]t is self-contained with its own integrated power, control, cooling and sensor systems. The […]
Thanks to the prodigious growth of computer storage media over the past couple of decades, most people have a pretty good command of the metric (SI) prefixes for big numbers: a kilobyte is a thousand bytes, a megabyte is a million, a gigabyte is a billion, and a terabyte is a trillion. Some folks are already making noises about “petabyte”–or one quadrillion byte–storage media. After that comes “exabyte,” which, of course, would be a quintillion bytes. And beyond that you get into “Marx brothers” country. More than one wag has suggested that the as-yet-unnamed metric prefix to denote one octillion somethings-or-other should be “groucho” or “harpo.”
Yesterday, February 28, 2010, Linus Carl Pauling would’ve been 109 years old. And we’d all be better off he were still with us since, by all accounts, even a doddering Pauling could’ve run rings around most folks intellectually. One of four human beings ever to have been awarded multiple Nobel Prizes, and the only one ever to have won both the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1954) and the Nobel Peace Prize (1962). His 1939 Nature of the Chemical Bond remains one of the most influential chemistry texts ever published, and his 1947 General Chemistry, available in its classic 3rd edition through Dover Publications for a song, remains one of the best-written and most readable introductions to the subject. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for his instrumental role in scientific activism to end above-ground nuclear weapons testing. A complete list of Pauling’s accolades could, and has, filled several books, but I can’t resist mentioning, in closing, that geek ubermensch Linus Torvalds is reportedly named after him.
If you’re in NYC, here’s a good thing to do Tuesday night! – Our Solar Neighborhood with Jackie Faherty @ American Museum of Natural History… The Hayden Planetarium, with ongoing support from NASA, has assembled the world’s largest cosmic atlas, extending from Earth to the greatest distances yet charted by astronomers. Join us on the […]
