Formula One car model from shoeboxes
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
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!
Double-whammy lighting/heating energy saving tank hack
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.
Crafting with Kids Wind Chime — Free PDF!
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 […]
Professor destroys laptop with liquid nitrogen
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.
Superconductor levitates around circular supermagnet track
High-temperature superconductor (Yttrium barium copper oxide) floating in the magnetic field of Neodymium magnets. This phenomenon is called the Meißner-Ochsenfeld-Effect and was discovered in 1933. The superconductor has to be cooled with liquid nitrogen which has a temperature of 77 K or −196 °C. If it is placed in a strong magnetic field it remains in its position. It also works if you turn the track upside down
Bionic feet becoming reality
Natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti and man-made tragedies like soldiers or civilians losing limbs to explosives drive the need for better prosthetic limbs. Improved treatments are on the horizon in the form of novel foot and ankle prosthesis which behave energetically more like the human body than existing technologies. These powered devices can […]
What Was I Thinking? Part 4: Hamsterlamp
As an organic chemist, my thoughts went immediately to the idea of somehow sticking them together to make giant molecular models. It occurred to me that if you removed the access cover from one sphere you could fit the resulting opening over the surface of another sphere, glue them together, and have something that looked a lot like a space-filling model of, say, methane. So I bought five of the things–four small “hydrogens” and one large “carbon”–and got in the car to go home.