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!

STEM resources for teachers

STEM resources for teachers

This weekend I had an opportunity to attend a renewable energy workshop organized by the Southeastern Massachusetts Achievement and Retention in Technology group at Bristol Community College. The morning was packed with teachers sharing their lesson and unit ideas on ideas based around the STEM subjects of green technologies and energy.

The college offers a Lending Lab for tools and lab equipment that most schools are unlikely to stock. Through using these equipment resources, teachers can get their students’ hands onto enough materials to for a series of lessons on windmill design, hydrogen cars, air purity testing, and more. Teachers shared their experiences in bringing this equipment into their classes and how it affected student learning.

Get Cozy with Vaska Contest

Berkeley-based Vaska, makers of botanical-based laundry soap, is holding a Get Cozy With Vaska Contest, which sounds like it’s right up our alley. Twelve winners will get $300 in cash and a page in the 2010 Vaska Cozy Calendar, sure to be a collector’s item (or so they claim). The contest ends at midnight Jan. […]

Temperature regulating coffee mug

Temperature regulating coffee mug

Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler, of Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP), think coffee is perfect at 58 degrees C. So they built a coffee mug that automatically maintains that temperature, tending to cool its contents above 58 degrees, and releasing heat below 58 degrees to warm them back up. It works by use of an interstitial phase change material (PCM, Wikipedia) between the aluminum fins, which has a solid-liquid phase change temperature of 58 degrees. Above 58 degrees, the PCM melts and absorbs heat, and below 58 degrees it freezes and releases heat. Supposedly it can keep a cup of coffee at ideal temperature for 20 to 30 minutes.

Be a counselor at Space Camp

Be a counselor at Space Camp

In high school and college, I was a camp counselor almost every summer, and I highly recommend it! It’s such a rewarding experience and you make so many lifelong friends. So when I found out (from CRAFT’s Rachel Hobson) that they’re looking for counselors for Space Camp, I had to share. So many makers would […]