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!
Balloon polyhedra By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics For making mathematical models of polyhedra, a convenient and inexpensive material is the long clown balloon. This dodecahedron (made of ten balloons) and icosahedron (made of six balloons) are two examples from a study of Mathematical Balloon Twisting by Erik Demaine, Marty Demaine, and Vi […]
Images from the McCall Studios website. Sadly, famed science fiction and space exploration artist, Robert McCall, has died. He passed away on Friday, of a heart attack, in his Scottsdale, Arizona home. Anybody who’s paid even passing attention to sci-fi, the space program, or postage stamp art has seen Bob McCall’s work. He painted the […]
Ben Wilson Design did this awesome F1 race car model entirely out of red Puma shoe boxes (for a Puma promotion). [via DudeCraft] PUMA F1 CAR-D
Flickr user fotogra4er replaced the fluorescent tubes lighting his aquarium with LEDs. Which, of course, make way more light and way less heat for the same amount of energy. Then he upped the ante by cooling the LED lighting bank by circulating tank-water through it, which exploits what waste heat the LEDs do generate to warm the tank-water, and in turn saves power that would otherwise go to the tank heater.
To me, the real signs of spring are blooming bulb flowers and wind (there’s a lot of wind in New Mexico in March, let me tell you!). So when I was sent a copy of the kid crafts book What Shall We Do Today? by Catherine Woram, I was particularly interested in the homemade wind […]
Physics professor Kieran Mullen of OU apparently has a hard-and-fast rule against laptops in class. To drive the point home, he staged a public execution of one by freezing it in liquid nitrogen and smashing it against the floor, where its broken remains were left as a warning to others. Of course the whole thing is staged and the laptop in question was old and worthless, but hey, any excuse to freeze stuff with LN2 is OK with me.
High-temperature superconductor (Yttrium barium copper oxide) floating in the magnetic field of Neodymium magnets. This phenomenon is called the Meiรลธner-Ochsenfeld-Effect and was discovered in 1933. The superconductor has to be cooled with liquid nitrogen which has a temperature of 77 K or รขหโ196 รยฐC. If it is placed in a strong magnetic field it remains in its position. It also works if you turn the track upside down
