The Guardian is reporting on a recent change to the BBC’s editorial policy that calls for links to primary research from their online science articles. Without intending an I-told-you-so, this is something I’ve been doing since I started blogging, and I am thrilled that mainstream journalists are starting to do the same thing. There are tons of reasons why it’s a great idea, but these are my big three:
This could appear on one of those “What is this gadget?” posts. (It’s an RCS — Reentry Control System thruster from the Gemini era.)
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics If you take a long strip of paper, tie a simple overhand knot in it, tighten it up, and press it flat, the result is a regular pentagon. That construction is well known, and can be found, for example, in Martin Gardner’s Second Book of Mathematical Puzzles […]
We’re getting a nice response from makers who are excited about the upcoming DIY Space issue of MAKE and who want to share their space projects with us. David Prutchi (Voorhees, NJ) writes: We are looking forward to the upcoming issue of MAKE. My daughter Shanni (now 15) and I are avid science buffs, and […]
The forthcoming issue of MAKE, Volume 24, is the DIY Space issue. It should be making its way to subscribers this week and will be on newsstands by Oct 26. It has all sorts of cool projects and articles related to do-it-yourself and do-it-with-others space exploration, from launching space balloons to building amateur satellites to […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics What could be a better centerpiece for your dessert table than a polyhedral cantaloupe? Try making this “Leonardo style” dodecahedron in which the edges are solid and the faces are open. To warm up for it, you might first want to make all five Platonic solids from […]
You know how we’re always lamenting how lame science kits have become, as hyperactive safety concerns overwhelm common sense and individual responsibility? It may get worse. See the grade school bio sciences kit above, with little more than table salt, vinegar, potting soil, plastic tools, and binder clips? If a new safety ruling takes affect, […]
