Most every question you have about taking time lapse photos can be answered here. Even is your camera didn’t come with an intervolmeter (way to take a series of photos at set incriments) you can find links to buy some (or links to build if your handy that way).
Category: DIY
DIY Wet Cell Battery
Nice project, and best of all pretty safe.
One particularly photogenic type of battery was known as a “gravity cell,” because gravity is what held it together. Typically used to power telephone and telegraph circuits, it consisted of a solution of blue vitriol (known these days as copper sulfate and sold in garden centers for pond treatment) on the bottom and a layer of zinc sulfate on top, kept separate only by their slightly different densities.
At the top, the electrode gives off zinc ions, while at the bottom, copper sulfate is reduced into copper metal. Together these complementary reactions produce just over one volt; string five batteries in series, and you get enough power to run a flashlight or charge an iPod. Any movement disturbs the delicate layers, ruining the battery, but if you’re careful, you can drop in new crystals of blue vitriol as needed, and the battery will run for years.
Copper sulfate is fun to play with by the way. If it’s heated to drive out moisture and left to cool you get a nice exothermic reaction when you add a drop of water to the pile of powder. Your not going to heat a meal but it does produce a little steam.
[via MAKE]
Popular Science Gray Matter – Build your own battery
The Disney Experience Papercraft Store
Found another one for the papercraft files. Disney stuff, yeah that fabulous wonderland has been captured in paper. Some are for money but the free ones are very cool. I’m going to start on the movie camera as soon as I can.
[via Trader Sam]
The Disney Experience – Ludwig Von Drake Laboratories
TRON Lightcycle Papercraft Model
Paper + classic movie Tron = COOL! Thats right, another paper project. From the same guys that brought you the Aliens pulse rifle they give you a crisp Lightcycle to build.
ALIENS Papercraft Pulse Rifle
Ok ok, I know it’s only made out of paper but its a pulse rifle from the movie Aliens! The coolness factor can’t be measured on this on. With over 200parts that you have to cut out with love and care, this can be made to be a full 1:1 scale model. Hell it even comes with ammo! Wow… Must get inkjet printer working!
Otona No Kagaku Crystal Radio Kit
Otona No Kagaku, or ‘Science for Adults’ is a ‘mook’ series published by Gakken in Japan. Each issue has includes a kit that goes along with whatever the issues topic is. I could hardly wait for this one! It’s a crystal radio. Very classy design too, that diamond weave coil design is a real eye catcher. It includes a diode that you can use as a detector or if your feeling like playing with the cat’s whisker a bit you can use the tow mineral samples. The reception isn’t as good as with the diode but you get the true crystal experience with this method. In the base of the radio is a small battery operated amplifier so you can use the radio without a super long antenna. I don’t think it’s cheating, your still using a chunk of rock to rectify the signal. It took me about two hours to put everything together and that’s with a few false starts in winding the coil. As my Japanese is very bad, I did have to look up the characters for some basic colors so I could connect the wires in the right order. This page on about.com proved to be quite useful with this. Now, the selectivity isn’t the best but that can be fixed with a little tinkering under the hood. It does receive the local stations quite nicely and best of all it just looks dead on cool. I took loads of photos of the build to have a gander at them and enjoy.
Otona No Kagaku Crystal Radio Kit build – Flickr photoset