MAKE » Tag: Earth Science

LED Atmospheric Analyzer Kit Now Available In The Maker Shed

Eric Weinhoffer — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:41 +0000

The Maker Shed LED Atmospheric Analyzer Kit is now available in the Maker Shed. Use it to create a photometer, a device that measures how much blue, green, and red light are penetrating the atmosphere.

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Earthquake-Actuated Artbot

John Baichtal — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:30:17 +0000

This bot visualizes earthquakes as splotches of paint, squirting paint color coded to the strength of each quake. Quakescape is a 3D fabricator that works by taking earthquake data from the site GeoNet (www.geonet.org.nz) and transferring it into the medium of art by using paint and Arduino technology. Quakescape creates […]

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December is Glass Month

Sean Michael Ragan — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:30:33 +0000

With November behind us, we're wrapping up our 2012 Year of Materials theme, this month, with a focus on glass. Glass, in the broadest sense of the term, does not imply any particular type of atomic or molecular composition, but rather a particular kind of ordering of atoms or molecules in space. Or rather, a lack thereof. In understanding this it is helpful to contrast glasses with crystals, in which atoms/molecules are arranged in repeating rows, columns, or other identifiable patterns, like cannonballs stacked on a courthouse lawn. Glasses, on the other hand, are more like dice poured haphazardly into a jar.

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Hacker Scouts at Ace Monster Toys

John Baichtal — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:30:35 +0000

Oakland’s AMT hackerspace spent last Sunday teaching kids about biospheres! Yesterday marked the inaugural Open Lab for our new adventure: Hacker Scouts. We had an amazing turnout with about 40 enthusiastic kids and their supportive parents! Our featured project was Biospheres, which half the kids decided to work on, while […]

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DIY Lava Flows

David Lang — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:30:33 +0000

Want to get kids interested in science? Well, DIY Lava Flows are one extreme way to go about it. Earth Magazine reports on the Syracuse University Lava Project.

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Metallurgical Eye Candy

Sean Michael Ragan — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:00:46 +0000

Metallography is a method of materials analysis used to characterize the microscopic structure of a metal sample. Generally, the process involves cutting a sample from some object of interest, polishing its surface to high smoothness, and etching it with a chemical agent to highlight grain boundaries, inclusions, and other microstructural features. The sample is then imaged using one of a number of types of microscopy. The resulting pictures are often strikingly (if incidentally) beautiful. That's OK by me, personally—incidental beauty is usually my favorite kind.

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Top 10: Marvelous Metals

Sean Michael Ragan — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 03:21:55 +0000

As promised, here's a tasting menu featuring some of my favorite metallurgical content from our archives arranged, as usual, in mysteriously-appealing (and entirely arbitrary) top-ten format. Narrowing it down to just ten involved some hard choices; this subject is rich, and we've covered it a lot. A second round-up, perhaps at the close of the month, may be in order. In the meantime, I've got a lot of cool stuff on my to-blog list, and it's growing fast as your suggestions roll in.

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August is Metals Month

Sean Michael Ragan — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:00:33 +0000

Well, what's left of August is Metals Month, I should say. A broad subject, to be sure, and with only a couple of weeks to explore it, I want to be fairly ruthless about focusing on interesting and unusual metals themselves, and processes for working with them, rather than more general "cool stuff made from metal."

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Hydro Priming Seeds with Cheetos

John Baichtal — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:00:24 +0000

Brian Rawlings wrote in to share an experiment he’s working on with his 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son: using Cheetos as a hydroponic medium. Hydro-priming is the process of soaking seeds in water before planting. Hydro-priming decreases the time it takes seeds to germinate. For this experiment, we wanted to […]

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This Sundial Spells Solstice

Matt Richardson — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 13:00:31 +0000

Four times a year, when our planet is in the appropriate alignment with the sun, the shadow this sundial casts onto the ground spells out either "solstice" or "equinoxe."

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