The Koch Snowflake is a neat fractal shape… that you can make in your kitchen.
Category Archives: EMSL Projects
Pi Pie Trivet
Happy Pi Day! Pi day was just made official. In honor of National Pi Day, we present a pi trivet, perfect for cooling your Apple pie (or pi pie) on.
Besides just the letter pi, The number pi up to the first thousand digits after the decimal are laser engraved into half-inch thick cork. The overall size of the trivet is about seven inches, square.
This cork is actually gasket material from McMaster-Carr, which has a wonderfully smooth and even surface. Compared to many of the other cork materials that we have seen– like that used for many cheap trivets– this has very little pitting and the surface shows fine detail very well.
Giant seven segment displays
As part of the China trip last week, we had a little scavenger hunt, where the challenge was to build something with parts and tools acquired at the electronics markets.
Here’s what I found: a single-digit seven-segment LED display with twelve inch digit height. (Whoa!)
Continue reading Giant seven segment displays
Fabric Klein Bottle
Klein bottles are an entertaining mathematical idea–a shape with no volume. A Klein bottle is basically a tube where the inside is connected to the outside. Making a Klein bottle in our 3D world requires a bit of cheating to work, by adding a hole in one of the walls of the tube to provide a place for an intersection.
The most common physical realization is a glass Klein bottle, which you can ogle and buy at Acme Klein Bottles. They also sell wonderful knit Klein bottle hats which can be bought with a matching mobius strip scarf. I was lucky enough to be given a set as a gift, and it is cozy and bright and wonderful. My only complaint is that the narrow neck of the Klein bottle makes it hard to pull it inside out (or right side out, since it is the same thing) to play with it.
I have found that the concept of a mobius strip is more understandable when you can hold it in your hands and turn it around and around, and I thought the same would be true with a Klein bottle, if only it were a little more flexible than my hat. With that in mind, here’s how to make a simple fabric Klein bottle you can play with from two sleeves of a worn out shirt. Continue reading Fabric Klein Bottle
Cardboard Cat Chaise Roundup
photo by Caitlin Burke
Lots of folks have been making our cardboard cat chaise to mollify their feline companions, so we thought it was about time for a round up.
- abehman made one and painted it red to complement Alowishus’ lovely shade of grey.
- Blog of Fun padded theirs with The Kid’s favorite bath mat.
- scottb12t3 on flickr caught Toby using his.
- odyniec.net used this as an excuse to make a unit conversion script since he prefers metric (can’t blame him).
- Empty-handed‘s chaise clearly got immediate use.
- Caitlin not only put Mr Bun’s chaise on Thing a day, but also augmented it with the tasseled cushion you can see in the photo above.
If I missed yours, drop me a note in the comments. And if you make one, we’d love to see it in the flickr auxiliary!
Update: Here are more:
- From flickr user eugenesucks in the auxiliary
- From James in the comments below
Bristlebots by Klutz?
Some of our friends went to the NY Toy Fair (check out Make’s coverage— it looks like it was a lot of fun!) and came across a new offering from Klutz: “Invasion of the Bristlebots.” We were never contacted by Klutz (or Scholastic), which we find surprising, being that we are the instigators of the current brush-based vibrobot movement, and the coiners of the term bristlebot. Here’s our original story from 2007: Bristlebot: A tiny directional vibrobot. And here’s a round-up of some of the amazing reaction from the DIY community to this news from the toy fair:
- DVICE
- Make
- Make 2
- Make 3
- engadget
- Indie Craft News
- Hack a Day
- Popular Mechanics
- Kim’s Play Place
- CrunchGear
- cnet
- cnet 2
- Coolest Gadgets
- Geeks are Sexy
- Geeks are Sexy 2
- Boing Boing
- mental_floss
- Publisher’s Weekly
- techdirt
- Quill & Quire
Thanks to all of you for your support! We’re still figuring out how to react to this, and we’re waiting for comment from Klutz and Scholastic. We’ll try to update this post as additional stories and information arise.
Update: I’ve been adding news links above, and here’s the official statement from Klutz:
Update 2 (Feb. 20, 12:53pm PST): I just got off of a good phone conversation with Klutz and we’re exploring how we can get acknowledgment for Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.
Update 3 (Feb. 20, 4:45pm PST): Pat Murphy of Klutz will be sending out a note shortly to let everyone know that Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories will be receiving acknowledgment in the next printing of Invasion of the BristleBots as well as on the Klutz website. This is good news for us, and it seems like Klutz is really learning from this experience about how to work with the maker community. The online response to this situation has been overwhelming and I am glad that such an incredibly vibrant discussion was able to take place. I am truly impressed by and grateful for the support we have received.
Update 4: Here’s Pat’s note:
More Message Hearts
Some folks out there got a chance to try out our message heart cookies in time for valentine’s day. Some were successful, right down to the oversized sweethearts box. Some not so successful, including a convoluted story of trials and tribulations. If you try out one of our projects, we’d love to hear about it and see your photos in the flickr auxiliary.
Video Peggy in action
For a while we’ve been meaning to try out Jay Clegg’s TWI-video hack for the Peggy 2, and we must say, it’s pretty nifty. Using this routine, we can take webcam video (e.g., from our MacBook Pro’s built-in camera), sample it in a Processing routine, and send it to be displayed on the 625 LEDs of the Peggy 2.
Continue reading Video Peggy in action
Linkdump: February 2009
- Help fund linux projects
- Arduino-based Light Switch Complicator
- Down with Magenta!
- This Hard drive shredding video is strangely hypnotic.
- Some of you will think that this sign is funny.
- Ghostie Cookies
- Game of Life Generator
- One frame per game
- Designers beware! (Caution: JPEG artifacts)
- Layered Jello!
- MPG or GPM?
- DIY Flexible Circuits
- We’ve just updated our list of Resources for getting started with AVRs
- Guilloché Pattern Generator
- sierpinski carpet sponges (on Etsy too!)
- Nice knobs!
- Epic cupcake mosaic.
Fishbowl Cat Quilt
Like cardboard, cats love quilts.
My grandmother made my mother a lap quilt to keep handy in the living room, but whenever my mother wanted to use it, there would be a cat sitting on it. So my grandmother made a simple cat quilt out of four squares of leftover fabric. The cat always had a quilt to sit on, so the lap quilt was free for my mom.
In that spirit, here’s a simple fishbowl quilt you can make for your feline companion.
