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.
You can never have enough projects, right? Well I think that’s true. Tonight I finished my tutorial on how to hollow out a light bulb and re-use it for other things like art projects and science stuff. So don’t throw out that dead light bulb, make it into a salt shaker or something…
Now this is the sort of project I can sink my teeth into. What do you get when you cross a disposable camera flash with a bit of wire, and steel BB’s? A coil gun! Yeah… That’s the good stuff. Jeff provides plans and links to build your own weapon of choice. Have fun and be safe, if you can do the two at the same time. If not you can go as a pirate for next Halloween.
This is crazy insane stuff. A guy who calls himself ‘Bird Man’ has a pair of jet powered boots that he wears when he goes parachuting. Apparently he likes flying without an airplane.
Jet Boots
For more information on this guy, you can go hit his web site.
You can never have enough fonts. OK, I guess you can if you have to keep them loaded in memory all the time. that would be a drag. Anyway, if you ever wanted to spell something in a font from a movie, game, product, or just about anything else you can find them here. Best of all, it’s free! Cool, eh? (BTW, this goes in the ‘to be used for evil’ category just because of all the fun you could have by doctoring things like DVD covers, not that I’d suggest that of course…)