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!

Amy Smith and the low-tech solution

Have you seen the great work of Amy Smith? She operates D-lab nestled beneath the infinite corridor at MIT. Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world. MIT engineer Amy Smith details an exciting but simple solution: a tool for turning farm waste into clean-burning charcoal. […]

Spanish students beat NASA

Spanish students beat NASA

A group of student makers took kite arial photography to a new level: weather balloon photography. They certainly are undercutting NASA’s budget, spending very little on their project, and fabricating most of the structure and electronics themselves. Check out Gareth’s previous entry on the project. Mail Online has a decent writeup. Nice of them to […]

AIDG: water solutions

AIDG: water solutions

AIDG is a NonGovernmental Organization (NGO) that helps provide low technology solutions to help address environmental and health needs to people living in communities without great access to the systems that many of us consider requirements. Here are a few of their water-based initiatives: Solar Hot Water: XelaTeco, with support from AIDG’s wonderful interns, recently […]

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 […]