The Magdeburg Hemispheres
Make an impressively effective low-tech vacuum pump.
Make an impressively effective low-tech vacuum pump.
Learn how to build inexpensive powered speakers that amplify the output of your headphone music player. It may be small, but this speaker can still rock!
Ever thought about trying to make something to last? It’s a hard problem: moths, rust, fire, thieves, and time versus the works of the mighty. Take a walk through an old cemetery. The Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., is one of my favorites. Acid rain is dissolving some of the marble and limestone headstones […]
Make a plush toy that talks to other objects — and you.
Before Chester Carlson invented photocopying, inventors engineered various mechanical devices to replicate images. With a few everyday items found in the home, you can make a pantograph, an image duplicator that allows you to use one pencil to trace an image while another pencil follows its path in parallel to produce a near-identical copy.
Use a broken speaker, bits of wire, and tape to prepare a coneless voice coil driver, then use it to generate standing waves on a sheet of metal, making sound visible. Magic! My knowledgeable friend Robin once said that you don’t need to worry about having too big an audio amplifier, because speakers are usually […]
Fiery devices have always fascinated me. From Jam Jar Jets (MAKE Volume 05) to Fire Pistons (Volume 19) to Faux Flames (Volume 25), I’ve built all sorts of fire-related projects. So when a friend told me about a device that lets you visualize sounds using fire, I knew I had to make one. I found […]