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!

Robotic gardeners at MIT

MIT’s CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) is using iRobot Create systems to experiment with robotic vegetable gardeners who can tend plants teleoperatively and can deliver just the right amount of what a plant needs based on sensors attached to the plant. When the fruit is ripe, the robots can even harvest it. [Is […]

Principles of electricity

Principles of electricity

Feast eyes upon General Electric’s retro-beautifully animated film explaining the fundamentals of electricity. From the quite excellent Prellinger Collection of the Internet Archive. I had a hunch that electrons were cute and fun-loving, but I never imagined opposing charges being so darn burly! Come to think of it, I knew this little guy looked familiar […]

The N-Prize, the not-quite-right stuff

The N-Prize, the not-quite-right stuff

Introducing: The N-Prize. The what? “The N-Prize is a challenge to launch an impossibly small satellite into orbit on a ludicrously small budget, for a pitifully small cash prize.” First proposed on Halfbakery, the site for cooking up crazy ideas, the N-Prize has now become a serious endeavor. The prize, of ร‚ยฃ9,999.99 sterling cash, will […]

Fractal cupcakes

Fractal cupcakes

For this week’s EMS Labs project, Windell and Lenore continue their geek kitchen cookery by showing you how to make fractal Koch cupcakes in fondant and marzipan. Fractal iteration never tasted so yummy! As one commenter so astutely points out: Enjoy your infinite edge of icing! Fractal Snowflake Cupcakes More: Sierpinski Cookies

Easy plastic buckyball

Easy plastic buckyball

Sean Ragan writes: A few times in my experiments with creative reuse I’ve had some very satisfying Aha! moments. One was my finding, back in 2004, that this flexible blue plastic conduit (or “ENT” = Electrical Nonmetallic Tubing), which I find very beautiful, fits perfectly into 3/4″ PVC pipe fittings. Using only conduit, 3/4″ PVC […]