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!

Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results

This dude is Hans Christian Ã˜rsted, whose 1820 discovery that electric current produced magnetic fields was, supposedly, entirely accidental: He was preparing a voltaic pile for a lecture demonstration and there happened to be a compass lying nearby. He has become a sort of mascot for the Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (JSUR), a new open-access journal initiative that hopes to provide a forum for life and computer scientists to publish results they lucked into and maybe can’t fully explain. From their website:

Continue Reading January 26th, 2010 Sean Michael Ragan

Experimenter iPhone app

The Experimenter iPhone app is chock full of timeless backyard science experiments. Sure, you could troll YouTube and find similar material, but the folks at Cramzy have done all the tedious work for you. And it’s nice to have everything in one simple interface.

Continue Reading January 26th, 2010 Adam Flaherty10

How-To: Elegantly simple squirrel-proof bird feeder

I love this bird-feeder tutorial from Instructables user me13lake. It’s not flashy (indeed, with a title like “Small simple horizontally mounted squirrel resistant/proof bird feeder that requires no specialist tools to make,” I’m guessing it was written by a scientist or engineer) but it’s well thought-out, easy and inexpensive to make, and it looks like it would work very well. The clear squirrel-guard rotates freely so they can’t get a grip, and can be made from a 2-liter plastic bottle. Or you could try cutting one from a glass bottle.

Continue Reading January 25th, 2010 Sean Michael Ragan16

Math Monday: Tetraxis Puzzle

Tetraxis puzzle By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics People have been making geometric puzzles for centuries, with each design adding new twists. At The Museum of Mathematics, we have a large puzzle called the tetraxis, shown above. The name comes from the fact that the pieces line up along four axes. Most people […]

Continue Reading January 25th, 2010June 6th, 2016 Gareth Branwyn2

Cocktail blueprints for engineers

These detailed technical drawings for various cocktails were first created, per the revision log, by one RJ DININO in 1978, and most recently updated by one J GOTTA in 2008. You can download a printable PDF at FlowingData. [Thanks, John!]

Continue Reading January 24th, 2010 Sean Michael Ragan

PopMech’s top 10 tech concepts for 2010

Are you hip to DNA origami, anthropomimetic machines, and ultracapacitors? If not, you may want to check out Popular Mechanics’ 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2010. What do you think, readers? What important technology for 2010 did the article miss? More: Color thermal inkless printing technology Protest technology – White noise projector […]

Continue Reading January 24th, 2010 John Baichtal

Stunning images of space taken from a shed

Here’s a great story in the Telegraph about an amateur stargazer who tricked out his garden shed in the U.K. and surprised professional astronomers around the world with his top-notch images.

Continue Reading January 23rd, 2010 Shawnconna4

POPULAR SEARCHES: