The 10th Bay Area Maker Faire was absolutely awesome. We reconnected with old friends, made new ones, and talked a whole lot. Above, my panelists talking about the past ten years of Maker Faire. Below, Windell talking about his new book, The Annotated Build It Yourself Science Laboratory. We saw many amazing things, some of which we captured with our camera sensor and have posted in a flickr album here.
The Make Blog is featuring some excerpts from The Annotated Build It Yourself Science Laboratory.
In modern times, our contemporary Maker and Maker education movements have helped to rekindle our cultural interest in hands-on education, especially in the STEM and STEAM fields, in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s — which is why it’s such a good time to bring this book back.
The article Can Analog Circuits Inspire Budding Engineers? over at Planet Analog discusses preparing students for dealing with real world circuitry by getting them started with analog circuits.
By building, probing, and observing the signals and their changes in these circuits without any code requirements, students can get a real feel for otherwise abstract concepts such as voltage, current, and more.
The author uses examples of projects and kits including our very own Three Fives Kit.
MakerCon is a short conference put on by Maker Media in the week leading up to Maker Faire about the business of making.
3D printing is a common maker topic, and MakerCon brought a few different twists to it. Above is Gael demonstrating InMoov, an open source 3D printed humanoid robot. There was also an incredibly inspiring talk about applications for medical 3D printing by Dr. Glenn Green.
3D printing can be whimsical as well, as demonstrated by this “25 mm” drill bit by Gigabot.
The folks from Strawbees had built a quadcopter rotor cage with a clever servo actuator for flapping sculptural wings.
I enjoyed seeing this attractive laser cut living hinge at the BotFactory demo.
Rogue Rovers are electric semi-autonomous ATVs designed for agricultural use to reduce farm injuries and pollution.
More pictures from the event are in my flickr album.
The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory has arrived! We’ve got them in stock and are now offering signed copies at our store, too!
“Would you like to know more?” I’ll be speaking about the book at Maker Faire this weekend, on the DIY stage. Scheduled times are Friday at 2:30pm, Saturday at 10:30am, and Sunday at 4pm.
WaterColorBot + littleBits by Super Awesome Sylvia. She’ll be demonstrating it at Maker Faire this weekend!
Code for the project is here.
We’ve just finished a major update to our store, giving it a much needed facelift and now much more mobile friendly. Woo!
Coming soon: The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory is a new, updated version of Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory, the classic 1960’s hands-on science book by Raymond E. Barrett.
The book is scheduled to make its debut at Maker Faire next week, where I’ll be speaking about it. It’s also available for pre-order now from Amazon.com and other sellers of books, as well as from our store.
We’ll be writing much more about the book once it’s out— about what’s in the book, the process of updating and annotating it, and about the hundreds of project ideas spanning biology, geology, chemistry, physics and more.
However, since we’re already in teaser mode, here are some photos of the original version from the 1960’s:
Fine print: “You can build these and many other experimental items with materials from your home, garage, or local hardware store. Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory will show you how!”
