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!
Wondering what something you own would look like under a scanning electron microscope, but don’t happen to have one in your garage? Well, then you might be interested in this intriguing offer from ASPEX: a complimentary SEM scan of your favorite object!
Tim Saylor recently wrote in to me about the Gingery-style charcoal foundry he built for Chicago’s hackerspace Pumping Station: One. There’s a write-up here and a good Flickr set showing construction and use of the furnace to melt aluminum here, including some really pretty shots of the fire and sparks at night. [Thanks, Tim!]
Electron Beam Free-Form Fabrication (EBF3) is a rapid prototyping technology developed by Karen Taminger of NASA’s Langley Research Center. Dr. Taminger is prone to market EBF3 by analogy to Star Trek style “replicator” technology, which is nothing but shameless hype. Still, the basic idea is an interesting twist on extrusion-based 3D printing technologies (although there’s not really any “extrusion” going on), and is under development with an eye towards space-based fabrication. Working in outer space would eliminate the system’s major ground-based shortcoming, which is the requirement for maintaining a vacuum or inert atmosphere to prevent oxidation of the weld.
“Know It All No 2 Pencil Set” on Etsy, lovely.
John Boiles, who earlier this year showed us how to control an RC car using an iPod’s internal accelerometer (and also how to control the lights on a dance floor in more or less the same way), is a member of Austin, TX, based engineering collective Waterloo Labs, who have up-gunned his iPod technology to control steering, breaks, and acceleration on a full-size automobile. Definitely not the safest hack I’ve ever blogged, but probably the most impressive. Great work, lady and gents.
Reaching for your glasses won’t help you read this book. Teeny Ted from Turnip Town, written by Robert Chaplin, is written on tablets only 11×15 microns (1/1000 of a millimeter) wide.
This novel approach to cellphone microscopy from Dr. Aydogan Ozcan from the University of California, Los Angeles, foregoes bulky lenses and magnifies electronically.
