Biology

OpenPCR in the Wild!

It’s a delight to see OpenPCR already on so many desktops! Josh and I spent the past year staring at mostly-disassembled prototypes, with wires all over the place. It makes it all worthwhile to see everyone assembling their kits, posting pictures of them, and having a blast doing so.

Plastic from Fish Scales

Plastic from Fish Scales

Erik de Laurens recently graduated from the Royal College of Art. As part of his graduate exhibition, Erik presented his project The Fish Feast. He was experimenting with uses for fish scales (of which the commercial fishing industry discards tons annually) and discovered he could create a useful plasticby forming the cleaned scales under heat and pressure.

Build Your Own Jellyfish Habitat

Build Your Own Jellyfish Habitat

Though MAKE Volume 27, which hits newsstands on July 26, is the Robots issue, like all issues of MAKE, it features a wide variety of projects. One of the major projects in Volume 27 is Alex Andon’s Jellyfish Tank. Jellyfish are hypnotic, with their translucent bodies, sweeping tentacles, and fluid motion, but they require custom […]

New in the Maker Shed: MudWatt Microbial Fuel Cell Kit

New in the Maker Shed: MudWatt Microbial Fuel Cell Kit

Explore the power of microbes with the MudWatt™ Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) Kit from the Maker Shed. Simply fill this kit with soil from your backyard (or someone else’s backyard), along with any biological matter you find in your refrigerator. Within days the attached LED light will start to blink using only the power produced by the electricity-generating microbes in your soil!