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!
Back in 2007, Mark hit on Don Wilkes’ 1960s invention (U.S. patent #3,452,175) of the so-called “rolamite”over at boing-boing, quoting a description of it as “the only ‘basic mechanism’ invented in the 20th century.” Basically, a rolamite is a very-low-friction bearing. Rex Research has posted the entirety of a 1966 Popular Science article covering their […]
False-color shadowgram of gunshot from a .357 magnum by Gary Settles at Penn State university. The New York Times has an awesome slideshow of shadowgrams and Schlieren photographs, created by engineering professor Gary Settles, which accompany a 2008 article about his work at Penn State’s Gas Dynamics Lab. The method, which can produce fantastic visualizations […]
A buddy of mine from high school planted this “chia keyboard” as a workplace prank. Says Warren, This took me two tries to get it right. I had to build a moisture trap with toothpicks and Saran wrap to get the seeds to germinate. Here’s an older and more detailed how-to by Johannes Hjorth.
Start to finish photoset of how computer processors are made (from Intel)… and AMD has a video…
It turns out the same dyes that work on computer parts also work on Lego bricks, which are also, in my experience, seemingly never available in the color you need. Lego purists generally frown on paints and adhesives, but frankly being an active builder can get pretty expensive pretty fast, and a lot of that […]
If you even remotely care about the aesthetics of your computer, you’ve probably wished at some point that one or more of your components were a different color. For instance, I prefer my computers to be basic black all over, but more than once have been driven to install a beige part because it was […]
The other night I checked out the volunteer night at Bikes Not Bombs in Jamaica Plain Boston. At the end of the night, there were about a dozen volunteers working together to “flatten bikes” so they could be efficiently shipped to Ghana in West Africa. The crowd was mostly young adults with a balance of […]
