Category: Mad Science

Classic Video Pong Kit

DIY Pong Game

Super! Just the way to spend a project evening.

Blocky table tennis with a ball and two paddles was one of the first real video games to make it into mainstream culture. It took an awful lot of high-tech electronics in 1972 to create this classic game. Now however you can cobble together your very own Classic Video Table Tennis Game with a little determination and some basic soldering skillz. This kit contains a pre-printed circuit board and 39 various resistors, diodes, and capacitors. Solder everything together (following the instructions we hope) and plug the audio and video into any standard TV for instant Table Tennis action. You can play against another lowly human or challenge the computer at four different skill levels.

I wonder if the kit can be hacked to make variations on the game… Hockey or even handball???

ThinkGeek :: Classic Video Table Tennis Kit

The Museum of Unworkable Devices

gyro thingFreaky science dosen’t get any better than this:

This museum is a celebration of fascinating devices that don’t work. It houses diverse examples of the perverse genius of inventors who refused to let their thinking be intimidated by the laws of nature, remaining optimistic in the face of repeated failures. Watch and be amazed as we bring to life eccentric and even intricate perpetual motion machines that have remained steadfastly unmoving since their inception. Marvel at the ingenuity of the human mind, as it reinvents the square wheel in all of its possible variations. Exercise your mind to puzzle out exactly why they don’t work as the inventors intended.

[via Core77]

museum of unworkable Devices

Labs compete to make new nuclear bomb

Nuke

 

 

Now this sounds like fun:

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are competing to design the nation’s first new nuclear bomb in two decades. Scientists at both facilities are working around the clock on plans that will be presented to the Nuclear Weapons Council, a federal panel that oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons. The council will choose a winner later this year.

Labs compete to make new nuclear bomb – Yahoo! News

ESG Personal Flying Wings

ESG Gryphon wings

Perfect for those long cross country stealth military insertions that some governments love so much. With this modern ‘bat suit’, once you exit the plane the wearer can glide up to 40 km before landing on the dime. This and a pair of jet boots and your about halfway to a new Olympic sport. Stunt planes are for wimps.

ESG Personal Flying Wings

PongSats

PongSats

Now you can send you own scientific experiment into near space. As long as it fits into the space of a ping-pong ball:

A PongSat is an experiment that fits inside of a ping pong ball.
These ping pong ball ‘satellites’ are flown to the edge of space by balloon or launched in sounding rockets. The PongSats are then returned to the student. It’s an easy and inexpensive way to get students excited about science and engineering. There are endless possibilities for experiments that can fit inside a ping pong ball. PongSat’s can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. Experiments can be as simple as comparing how high a ball bounces before and after being exposed to vacuum. The PongSat can carry seeds to see if exposure to cosmic rays effect their growth. Several small inexpensive computers and other electronic can fit inside a PongSat. These can be used to create a wide range of experiments. Whether carrying a marshmallow to see if it puffs up in the vacuum of near space or an entire sophisticated satellite in miniature, PongSat can create motivation, drive and passion in the classroom.
PongSats are flown at no cost to the student or school.

How cool is that? Some flights have reached over 100,000 feet, that’s definitely high enough to measure the UV index or even gamma rays if your detector is small enough.

[via neatorama] 

PongSats

Glass Blowing for Vacuum Devices

Thermonic Diode 

What a perfect companion to my light bulb DIY! This has some amazingly valuable information on how to cut, bend, and blow glass for scientific devices. It also has information on how you can use this new found knowledge to make your own photo cells, vacuum diodes,and even a cathode ray tube. For the amateur scientist this is a gold mine of information.

[via MAKE] 

Teralab – Glass Blowing for Vacuum Devices