Hubble turns twenty today. The orbiting space telescopes — they grow up so fast. One day, it can barely focus its little lens, and seemingly, the next, it’s exploring dark energy (let’s call it its Goth phase). Happy birthday, Hubble. Spaceship Earth is so proud of you. NASA writes on its Hubble page: Space shuttle […]
We’ll call it Math Wednesday. Marc de Vinck turned me on to these amazing fluid-based polygons and polyhedra: When a vertical water jet strikes a circular horizontal impactor, the water is deflected into a horizontal sheet. At sufficiently high speeds, the flow results in a circular water sheet, whose radius is set by a balance […]
By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Whittling is a traditional technique for making one-of-a-kind objects that doesn’t get enough attention nowadays. A time-old method of demonstrating one’s whittling technique is to carve linked objects from a single piece of wood. The above step-by-step guide shows four stages in making a pair of linked […]
Todd Harrison (Mesa, AZ) has a nice post on his blog about a recent ANSR (Arizona Near Space Research) balloon launch, the group’s 55th! Rich Osgood from Heatsynclabs.org and I were invited observers. Our objective was to help track the balloon and locate the landing zone while testing our own radio balloon tracking equipment. I’m […]
I love Caleb Charland‘s geeked-out photography. His work, in essence, consists of scientific experiments explored on film — magnets, electricity, fluid dynamics — all beautiful. My process and choice of subject matter stems from growing up in a do-it-yourself household where I learned to appreciate the power that tools and materials hold. As I explore […]
MAKE Contributing Editor (and author of Make: Electronics) Charles Platt just filed this little report from the commercial space conference he’s covering for us. — Gareth The Lynx suborbital spaceplane from XCOR I’m attending the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, with the intention of writing about some particularly exciting ventures for a future […]
Math Monday: Hexagonal stick arrangements By George Hart for the Museum of Mathematics Interpenetrating hexagonal arrangements of sticks are a challenging mathematical exercise to assemble from pencils. Four different directions are used, as color-coded here. The above sculpture, 72 Pencils, has tiny dots of glue to hold itself together, but you can easily use eight […]
