Make a simple Savonius turbine
Here’s the simplest design I’ve found for my favorite type of turbine. Check out Otherpower for a discussion on sourcing suitable motors, and see Makezine’s plans for the Chispito for a traditional blade design.
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!
10 recycled Christmas trees
Why cut down a perfectly good pine when you probably have old hard drives, cardboard, or some other material just waiting to be a tree sitting around your house? My favorite is the Mountain Dew can tree: (via Ecofriend)
Construct a built-in bed
(Photo via myhomeideas.com) Mother Earth News has plans for building a built-in bed. I have yet to find a good set of plans for the famed Murphy bed; has anybody else? Build one of these, put it somewhere semi-private in your home, and rent it to a community-minded friend (or random Craigslister) to decrease your […]
What happens to your recycling?
About a year ago my town started moving seriously towards Single Stream Recycling and Pay as You Throw for trash. These were initiated as a way of giving people an incentive to recycle instead of tossing everything in the trash. The trash was a pretty big part of the budget for waste removal in the […]
Stop action Millenium Falcon build
Paul Romein and Greg Radzimowsky have created an incredible stop action animation of their building of the Millenium Falcon in Lego. I suppose that if you go through the effort of making your own Millenium Falcon, you have to take it for a test drive, right? Have you built your own starship? Have you flown […]
Dead CDs can liven up the holidays
Ken found one more good use for unwanted discs – Oh what to do with CD’s, some blinking lights and a hot glue gun. Why make a holiday tree (the politically correct term). After sending out an E-mail to all of my fellows instructors for their dead cd’s. I received over 100 in interoffice mail. […]
Home dome: garbage to housing
Max explaining one of the component blocks of his dome (via) PBS’ Design Squad has found a winner of their Trash To Treasure Challenge with Max Wallack and his Home Dome: Twelve-year-old Max Wallack of Massachusetts won the Design Squad’s Trash to Treasure Competition, a contest that inspired kids to repurpose trash into practical inventions. […]