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!
Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author / futurist / design critic extraordinaire, has posted his final Viridian note. He has lots of advice relevant for Makers. Some of my favorite: Get excellent tools and appliances. Not a hundred bad, cheap, easy ones. Get the genuinely good ones. Work at it. Pay some attention here, do not neglect […]
If seeing a tandem bike riding by makes you momentarily pause and have a look, imagine your delay when a 15-person bicycle-truck slowly passes by. Called the Busycle, this bicycle behemoth moves under the power of 28 human legs, plus a driver. And while it can only go about 4 miles per hour, the infectious […]
Photograph by Thomas Hartkop Mike and Dave Hartkop had been eyeing their father’s abandoned satellite dish in the garage for years. But it took an especially productive night of brainstorming at the local pub to come up with an idea that tapped into their respective interests in coffee and solar energy to put that dish […]
Graffiti doesn’t have to be destructive or polluting, I’m seeing a new trend in eco-graffiti or “guerilla gardening” that’s gaining traction. Here’re a few examples: Edina Tokodi (aka Mosstika) interview on Wooster Collective Moss graffiti instructables by users splnlss and ladybird Manual for City Farming Plant Modules by N55 If you’ve got a favorite example […]
The modern gymnasium is very much a 19th- century creation, no matter how much the fitness freak is kitted out with bad hair, retro headbands, and spandex, or contemporary embedded LCD interfaces and computer-generated body plans. Gyms harken back to a world of classical mechanical physics, plugged into equations of work and energy. To the […]
Photograph by Yifeng Song If you happen to be living in rural Bolivia, building a water pump isn’t going to include a visit to the local hardware store. Nor can you assume being able to plug into a power grid to operate your machine. So how do you get water? Essentially, this was the challenge […]
Photograph courtesy of Liz Cohen Five ratchet-wielding years, one East German automobile, and several coats of bikini wax — for Liz Cohen, it’s been a long, sticky trip. The performance and documentary artist has built one of the most improbable custom cars in the country, and has the pictures to prove it. Most recently on […]
