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!
Here’s a great design for a solar tracker, using bicycle wheels and a linear actuator (salvageable from an old satellite dish): Even simpler, this tracker uses an old clock to drive a gear for the tracker: What other useful designs have you found?
Photo from Green Home Building During the winter iciness, lots of people warm up by reading seed catalogs and planning their gardens. If you are among those sitting by the woodstove contemplating books full of DNA, you might want to think of where you will store all your grown goodies. In a recent post about […]
David Silberberg’s documentary, Oh My God, It’s Harrod Blank!, about art car artist Harrod Blank (whose amazing work we’ve shown at Maker Faire) is premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 16th. Sayeth the press copy: An obsessively made documentary filmed over 16 years, exploring the creative life and adventures of director Silberberg’s friend, […]
The community house at Westwood, with lots of solar thermal collectors on top Here’s a case study about a community in North Carolina building their own power. In part: When most people think about solar strategies they generally consider using them in their own homes. But cooperative or community systems offer a lot of potential […]
Marcy Gunther is the producer of Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, a reality game show featuring a Host Dog and six real life kids as contestants. Ruff always seems to have something going wrong in the doghouse, and he has the kids help him learn about how to solve the problem with science and engineering. Have […]
Youtube user petesteg has a great cabin fever project. It is an interesting/stupid/noble experiment for the winter months: put a hard drive in a plastic bag, put some rocks on it to hold it down at the bottom of your ice rink, and make a video of it throughout the winter. When the thaw comes […]
Here’s an interesting alternative design for a skateboard by Loren Kulesus. With this much space between wheels, it should make for some interesting shock absorption when doing tricks. via Neatorama
