Everyone dreams of having super powers. Flying, invisibility, and x-ray vision are popular, but my favorite is fire power! I've always wanted to be Wheeler from the Captain Planet kids show, and now I can with these handheld fireballs of awesomeness. The fireballs burn at a low temperature, so they are safe to hold in your hand and throw (shoot) at imaginary enemies.
Is your tiny city apartment or super modest house starting to feel a bit too cramped for comfort? While most of us don't have the luxury of hiring an architect to add on more kitchen space, or the money to live in a more spacious apartment, there are a number of simple things we can do with what we have to create the illusion of more indoor space within our walls.
The possibilities are endless for 3D printing. With your very own 3D printer, you can make spare parts, circuit boards, inflatable balloons, duplicate keys, Minecraft cities, and even tiny replicas of your face. From a more artsy standpoint, you can make complex sculptures, like this cool mathematical sculpture of thirty interwoven hexagons by Francesco De Comite:
No longer do you need to crowd around your tiny smartphone to watch a funny YouTube video with your friends. If you've got a display nearby with a web browser and internet access, you can take control of it with your mobile device for free with the new Clik app.
His name is Don Pettit, but I like to call him Space MacGyver. He's well known for his paper clip fixes and ingenious coffee invention in zero gravity, and we've all seen the NASA astronaut in his Saturday Morning Science videos during his first stay on the International Space Station. And now he's back on the ISS with a brand new physics-related show... Science Off the Sphere.
A little about myself and astronomy: I created this world because I love astronomy. I really, really, love astronomy. When I was ten, I went to a restaurant and saw a huge wall mural of the Andromeda Galaxy. At my house, we had a tiny refractor telescope. I knew this wasn't enough, so I bought (with help) an 8 inch Dobsonian reflector. I looked up one time to try to find something to look at and saw something fuzzy- the Orion Nebula. This is when I really got into using my telescope. I still ...
I finally got around to making the pentakis dodecahedron from the instructions in Math Craft admin Cory Poole's blog post. It's not tightened/straightened up yet because I just noticed that I have two black and white and two blue and green compound modules next to each other (but no purple and pink modules next to each other—to the math experts, this is a parity thing, as you can only have even numbers of modules paired up next to each other).
Last week Math Craft admin Cory Poole demonstrated how to make three of the platonic solids from Sonobe units: the cube, the octahedron, and the icosohedron; but where was the dodecahedron? I was pushed to find out how to make a sonobe dodecahedron from this beautiful picture (below) that Rachel Mansur posted on the corkboard.
Richard Sweeney is an incredible artist whose body of work consists mainly of sculptures made from paper. His art is often related to origami, and much of his work is related to geometrical forms. I personally really love his modular forms in paper. Many of them are based off of the platonic solids, which have been discussed in previous posts this week. Below are a small number of his sculptures, which are very geometric in nature.
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been widely used by the military for surveillance and reconnaissance missions—even armed combat. But there are other beneficial applications of an unmanned aircraft, such as search and rescue operations, scientific exploration, locating mineral deposits, transporting goods and even filming bikini models. But drone development can be pretty pricey, unless you just happen to have a 3D printer...
Make delicious raw mint chocolate cookies in a few minutes! Tips
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
If you liked the idea of cutting duplicate keys from a personal 3D printer, then you might be interested to know that researchers at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have successfully designed the smallest 3D printer to date. The prototype device is smaller than a shoebox and weighs only 3.3 pounds. It uses stereolithography compared to the RepRap's extruding molten plastic, and it's not a self-replicating machine and costs a bit more, at nearly $1,800 each. But compare that to ...
Over years of almost-daily orange eating, I have developed a 90% effective workflow for removing the peel from an orange in one piece. While this might not seem important, people who see me do it generally ask about it, so I thought it would be cool if you would illustrate the process for the world. Having a nice hand-drawn set of instructions to frame on my wall would save me time explaining it to people as well.
Why is it so satisfying to squash, snap, squeeze and splatter? You know, squashing a juicy grape, snapping a twig, squeezing ketchup out of a packet—perhaps with your fist—or splattering mud across a sidewalk. But all of these actions are child's play next to animators Laura Junger and Xaver Xylophon's Joy of Destruction. The real joy of destruction is illustrated below—we're talking sawing ladies in half, exploding corn into popcorn with dynamite, burning cities, and rolling over statues wit...
There's no reason to waste a perfectly good Cheeto just because it dropped on the kitchen floor, right? The "5-second-rule" makes it fair game if you can swipe it up fast enough (this doesn't apply for liquids or foods with floor fuzz stuck to them.) But, is that errant piece of chocolate really safe after it's mixed with the bacteria-laden mud from your shoe?
Tired of getting calluses from incessantly strumming along to 'No Woman No Cry'? Just hook up to the brain-music system and use your brain power to play a tune instead. I'm not talking—humming along in your head. The machine, created by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, is composed of electrodes taped directly onto your skull that pick up tiny electrical impulses from neurons in your brain and translates them into musical rhythms on a co...
Matt Reed, a web developer at Nashville interactive ad agency Redpepper, built a massive, real life Facebook Like "button" out of Legos, which lights up whenever someone clicks Like on his Facebook page. The programmer loves LEGOs, and draws an affinity between the legendary building blocks and engineering: "[Legos] are great for prototyping physical objects. I don’t manufacture things, but I do click blocks together. Plus, most things I deal with on a daily basis are pixelized. Legos are som...
Famed artist and photographer Laurie Simmons boasts an impressive career spanning over three decades. She's shown at some of the world's top art institutions and galleries, and appeared on art world popular PBS television series Art 21. She also happens to be the the proud mother of promising young filmmaker Lena Dunham, the 24-year-old director of last year's indie hit Tiny Furniture.
Eric Jacqmain is one smart cookie. Borrowing from the same principles of Archimedes’ mythological death ray, the Indiana teenager used an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish and about 5,800 3/8" mirror tiles to create a solar weapon with the intensity of 5000x normal daylight. The powerful weapon can "melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant."
How can a small curtain cover a window three to four times its own size? With a motor and a robot brain, that's how!
Remember Willy Wonka's magical gum? Wonka promised the flavors of tomato soup, roast beef, baked potato, blueberry pie and ice cream. As the avid gum lover Violet Beauregarde tested it out, she exclaimed: “It’s hot and creamy, I can actually feel? it running down my throat!” Um, yum... I think. Good news. Wonka's three course chewing gum is finally a reality-in-the-works. Scientists at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) have been developing recent advances in nanotechnology, which could pot...
Introducing the National Ignition Facility. Not only is the name curiously amazing (a facility designated for the act of … combustion?), but it also happens to house the largest, most high energy laser in the world. Why would they create such a thing? To create a miniature star on Earth, with the goal to achieve fusion (re: an unlimited supply of free energy).
Android-enabled mobile devices are taking the world by storm, giving Apple's iPhone a run for their money. And if you're holding an Android cell phone in your hand, getting accustomed to all the flashy features can be daunting, especially if you're new to multimedia smartphones.
Shot with a Nokia N8 cell phone equipped with a 50x CellScope microscope, Dot is the world’s smallest stop motion animated film. Created by the makers of the Wallace & Gromit series, the figures were made with a 3D printer, each hand-painted with the aid of a microscope. Watch as the heroine hops from scene to scene, Mario style: Via PopSci:
Inspired by Jules Verne sea demons, Bea Szenfeld's “Sur la Plage” collection includes 12 pieces handcrafted with cardboard. The idea of unconventional material constraints is a classic art school "test", as well as a typical (and somewhat tired) formula for competitive design reality shows. However, Szenfeld's garments do transcend the material and would surely win any Project Runway challenge.
The idea that you could buy a cellphone sized video camera that shoots 720p for a hundred bucks would literally seem like nonsense to me five or six years ago, as I sat trying to get a shot worth looking at out of my old Sony pd150. They're here, though, the Flips and iPhones and Kodaks and whatever else and while most of their impact can be measured in the increased frequency of Bieber-tribute videos hitting youtube, having a $100 hd camera also puts me in a mind to go - me a regular old idi...
In the mood for a treat but can’t decide between salty or sweet? Why choose when you can have the best of both worlds? Chocolate covered pretzels are a mouth-watering snack perfect for satisfying even the most wicked cravings. They are a huge hit at parties and get-togethers, and your guests will be impressed you made them yourself (not to mention that store-bought versions can cost a pretty penny!)
Apparently the Canon 7D can (with a little help from GigaPan, of course). Via WonderHowTo World, Canon EOS 7D:
Researchers Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama (of Harvard University and University of Tokyo) have constructed a tiny replica of the swallowtail butterfly. The crudely made model uses just balsa wood, rubber bands, and a steel wire crank. The goal is to better understand the biomechanics of butterfly flight. Via Wired,
Two research teams, in Turkey and Iran, both recently discovered an incredibly rare species of bees. Coined the Osmia (Ozbekosima) avoseta bee, the insects use colorful flower petals to create papier-mache cocoons for their offspring.
Another example of outstanding resourcefulness and ingenuity in the medical community (see earlier this week: Blood Sucking Plunger Could Heal Millions).
Space is tight (not to mention expensive) in Hong Kong. What's the solution? Architect Gary Chang has come up with an ingenious design: a small, 344 sq. ft. "accordion" apartment that can transform into 24 different rooms, simply by employing the use of sliding panels and walls. Via the New York Times,
Dalton Ghetti has been carving teeny, tiny pencil tip sculptures for 25 years. Mr. Ghetti, who owns about as many possessions as a monk, is aware how unusual his craft is. He started carving tree bark when he was a child and experimented with everything from soap to chalk before settling on graphite. It's second nature now, and for 90 percent of his work, all he needs is a sewing needle, a razor blade and a carpenter's or No. 2 pencil.
With an impressive series of viral music videos to their name, it is no surprise that the latest video from indie rockers OK Go is another hit. The video is directed by James Frost, in collaboration with Syyn Labs, a collective of engineers that work on elaborate art projects. A huge Rube Goldberg machine was built in a warehouse, for a one-take video for the song This Too Shall Pass.
Chemical engineers at Cornell have created a small device that may one day turn troops into real life spider-men. The device would cradle in the palm of the hand, allowing troops to scale walls. It uses an adhesive inspired by the Floridian leaf beetle, an insect that "can adhere to leaves with power 100 times stronger than its own body weight".
Martha Stewart and kids editorial director Jodi Levine shares ideas for decorating Easter eggs with crepe paper. Crepe paper is one of my favorite materials. It's actually tissue paper that has been reinforced with sizing and "creped," a crinkling method that yields a medium that is incredibly pliable yet sturdy enough to iron and sew. Beautiful and durable, it lends itself to countless applications. In fact, I walked down the aisle with a bouquet of crepe paper blooms! I recently realized ho...
Swiping between pages on your iPhone's home screen feels very natural, but surprisingly, Apple has another way to switch between screens, and it's been staring us in the face this whole time.
A few things on Android and iPhone have not been perfected. For instance, selecting and copying text is a task I often find myself fumbling over. But recently, we stumbled across a nifty way to select text that's a huge improvement over how we've been doing it.
