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!
The California State Fair has an amusement ride powered by cow manure. It’s called the “Barnyard Animal Train”, and uses biogas from Pacific Gas and Electric. The fair runs through September 1st, so there’s still time to go! Via Ecogeek More: The power of poo On Human Manure
Blimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Crossing the English Channel in a Pedal-Powered Airship*… Thanks Sam! You know it’s hard up here for a blimp. Or so says Stephane Rousson, a 39-year-old Frenchman who’s hoping to cross the English Channel in a homemade, pedal-powered airship. As a child, he was captivated by the Gossamer Albatross, the first entirely […]
Mark Applebaum is a musician (and professor at Stanford) who makes incredibly complex sound sculptures from found objects. (Via DeepFun) The instruments consist of threaded rods, nails, wire strings stretched through a series of pulleys and turnbuckles, plastic combs, bronze braising rod blow-torched and twisted, doorstops, shoehorns, ratchets, steel wheels, springs, lead and PVC pipe, […]
We’ve written about Lockwasher’s rayguns before – he has some great junk robots, too!
Bill Beaty documents his recipe for levitating neodymium magnets using two rotating coppers tubes. Note: The aptly named “Fantastically Dangerous Mechanical MagLev” could indeed seriously injure a person (you’ll notice Bill uses a clear plastic covering over the tubes to prevent the aforementioned nastiness) – While working on science museum exhibits in 1990 I came […]
MAKE Editor and Publisher Dale Dougherty writes from the California State Fair: Here is one of my favorite sights, a “green” truck in the Farm area. It’s an old truck covered in grass with vegetables and flowers growing in the flat bed. Talk about a raised bed! Think how the yards of rural America could […]
Great chart showing the dreaded vampire energy from GOOD magazine…
