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!
My latest guilty SkyMall pleasure is this “Moloniki” transparent polycarbonate canoe by Clear Blue Hawaii. It’s 13′ long, 3′ wide amidships, and almost 1′ deep, and the polycarb is UV-stabilized to prevent sun-yellowing. Of course it looks cool, but what is really attractive, to me, is the prospect of being able to see what’s going […]
Saw a piece on the news last night about the increase in urban chicken coops. Here’s one quick n’ dirty way of creating a coop for your birds. Just make sure some wiseguy doesn’t plug it in to see if it still works. Clothes Dryer Chicken Coop
George Pendle wrote the highly-recommended Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons, the biography of rocket pioneer Jack Parsons (whom I profiled in MAKE, Volume 13). In Saturday’s Financial Times, George writes about the Materials Library at King’s College, London. Deep in the bowels of a brutalist concrete building on the […]
In this how-to Alberto Ricci Bitti shows you how to design a greenbox no-waste charging station for your mobile phone that will lower your utility costs and environmental impact. The simple and elegant design makes unplugging a power draining wall wart very easy and instinctive.
Lucky, of Pizza Crusade, writes: I saw your post on Tyvek sails, and immediately thought of the PDRacer (Puddle Duck Racer) – a little sailboat you can build for about $150 with tools most people already have. There’s a ton of info out there, as well as info so you can get involved with a […]
[Photo from Uncle Ray] Long before my time, my grandfather Raymond Albert Sheffield, was messing about with cars. When I was about 10 or 11, we sat on a beach on Martha’s Vineyard watching the ferries come and go exchanging cars and passengers while he told me of the car that he had built in […]
[Image from John’s Nautical & Boatbuilding Pages] Buying a manufactured sail can be very expensive. If you are making your own vehicle and want to experiment with wind-driven propulsion, you might want to check out the idea of using building wrap as a way of forming your sails: Now plan the sail. For this first […]
