RSSMaker Faire team held an open audition Sunday at the Tech Museum in San Jose. As usual, we saw lots of interesting things and met some great makers. The auditions are really a small preview of the upcoming Maker Faire.
Photos by Kent K. Barnes / kentkb.
Here are a few of the highlights:
- Marc, a teacher of high school physics in SF, demonstrated live shooting a ping-pong ball out a PVC pipe with such speed that it went all the way through a soda can.
- Kate, a procedural artist at a game company, built a custom 3D viewfinder for augmented reality that used her iPhone to project images.
- Frank, a furniture maker in Oakland, makes his own metal-making tools and he's building a three-wheel electric car.
- Gayle, a weaver and spinner, showed us a variety of fabrics and yarns that she dyed using a variety of mushrooms. She also showed us a beautiful compact device called a Charkha, an Indian invention for spinning wool (shown above.)
- Dick, an advisor for a venture capitalist, talked about a large Frenel lens that can melt a stack of pennies. At Maker Faire, he wants to create souvenirs from pocket change.
Thanks Dale! We're looking forward to a fantastic Faire, and maybe even a surprise exhibit! See more of the Fresnel (affectionately named Trogdor) at http://www.brotherswhitney.com/2008/11/light-and-heat/
Reply to this comment
I go to Bethel University, and we do some neat work on ping-pong cannons. One interesting thing that can be seen if you take high speed photos of the front end of the cannon, provided you seal the ends using glorified packing tape, is that the tape leaves the end of the tube before the ball hits it. There's some neat computer modeling that shows why this happens, it's due to a shock wave that builds up. Pretty neat stuff.
Reply to this comment
Interesting observation. Do you have a photo or anything to share that show the shock wave?
Reply to this comment