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!
There’s a (r)evolution in the world of running it seems, many runners are tossing their expensive cushiony running shoes and opting for barefoot’ing it, running in sandals, flats and some are just making their own shoes (our favorite!). We’ve covered many DIY shoe making projects and it’s interesting to see this new trend shoe-less trend […]
That’s me, just more than 22 years ago, strapped in to the Commander’s seat in the shuttle simulator at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. The joy on my face reflects about a fraction of the happiness I felt as we proceeded through our mission, using phrases like “Copy that” and “Roger roll.” It was thrilling […]
Jessamyn West is guestblogging over on boingboing, and she put up a nice piece on how to create a thriving indoor environment for moss. It really is as easy as she makes it look. I’m obsessed with the soft fuzzy green stuff in all its forms, and I’m happy to see this humble plant getting […]
This dude is Hans Christian Ørsted, 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:
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.
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.
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 […]
