Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
This looks to be a handy tool. You enter the body diameter, the rocket weight, drag coefficient, and the motor type and you get an estimation of how high it will go and even how long it will take to land if you add the parachute size. You can use it for other things too, like seeing if you could launch a full roll of paper towels into the air. You can, it takes about 3 D-12 motors. 🙂
In my recent issue of Wired, I was saddened to read an article on how the amateur exploration of science and chemistry is being criminalized. It’s all in the interests of anti-terrorism or anti fireworks laws. Mostly the ‘dumbing down’ of science has been because of the lawsuit happy nature of our society. (Gee, could the greedy lawyers and the lawyer law makers be the root cause of this? I wonder…) When the United States no longer has people winning Nobel prizes, or creating new technology, or science classes in schools become electives, all will be lost. All of the people who cry "but letting kids play with chemistry sets is dangerous and irresponsible! Think of the children!" Bah! If you give a bright kid the right tools to learn with they won’t kill themselves. Some of the less bright ones might get some injuries from adding water to an acid or something like that, but it’s a lesson learned. If enough do that then you will weed out the idiots. Harsh I know but that’s life. You never get anywhere by hiding at home and living life through what you see on TV. Having hands on experience is what makes you learn how and why things work. Look at how popular magazines like MAKE or Ready Made are. That’s because over the recent years the whole ‘hands on lets see what’s inside the black box’ creativity that made this country what is it has been bashed about it’s head and neck by litigation. Heck, even buying parts of a healthily chemistry set can get you fined or even jailed. What is this world coming to?
Anyway, here are a few links that can help open the doors to scientific exploration:
Household Chemistry from the International Order of Nitrogen
DIY – Alcohol Backpacking Stove
Scientific American’s "The Amateur Scientist"
Henley’s Formulas for Home & Workshop
Don’t break any laws with this knowledge and try not to hurt yourself. Remember that part of science is having ethics and a broader look of the world around you. Think of the impact your experiments will have on others. Be smart and responsible. And if you hurt yourself it’s your own fault.
It all started on a long plane flight in the beginning of 2006. I was doodling in my Moleskine notebook and musing about pinhole cameras when and idea struck me. What if I made a camera that was panoramic and high capacity at the same time. I had been shooting with my 6×9 medium format pinhole (120 film) for a few weeks and was happy with the images but wished I could get more than eight shots a roll and have a wider field of view.
What I thought was if I moved the pinhole closer to the film plane and rotated to aspect 90 degrees I could get dozens of images on a single roll of film and still get a pretty good sized negative. Turns out I can get about 30 images on a roll and even a quickly made pinhole will produce a satisfactory sharpness.
Check out my build notes of this fun and rewarding project.
People need computers with blinking lights. I slave away at a Macintosh all day and all I have to look at is a calm glowing white light. It glows the same way when the thing is doing nothing as is does when the CPUs are maxed out and locked up. I can’t even tell if there is any hard drive activity! Now, I can’t put this project on the Mac. For starters it’s not mine, work owns it. Second, there is that lack of a parallel port that causes some problems. However, this would work just fine on my PC. The front LED that shows hard drive activity is blown out (what is this problem I have with lack of hard drive feedback?!?) so this would be a cool indicator of when my drives are off in a world of their own. Unlike the author of the how to I don’t have a fancy table saw to make a mount for it, I’ll have to make do with hot glue. ;P
[via MAKE]
Put a scrolling LED display in your computer for less than $20
But the big question is: If something is found, will they tell anyone?
When astronauts return to the Moon, they should keep their eyes peeled for extraterrestrial artefacts – pieces of technology from alien civilisations that have wound up on the lunar surface either by chance or design.
[via Futurismic]
Simple and not so simple mechanical toys from the engineers at Hitachi. The designs are quite clear and should tickle your brain to come up with ones of your own. The ‘south’ pointing car is a classic design that could have some use as a maze solving robot, or at least one that keep track of what was was south when it started.
[via MAKE fourm]