Getting a robot to stand on two wheels without tipping over involves a challenging dance with the laws of physics. Self-balancing robots are a great way to get into control systems, sensor fusion, and embedded programming. This build by [mircemk] shows how to make one with just a few common components, an Arduino, and a bit […]
What’s that smell? If you can’t tell, maybe a new laser system from CU Bolder and NIST can help. The device is simple and sensitive enough to detect gasses at concentrations down to parts per trillion. The laser at the system’s heart is a frequency comb laser, originally made for optical atomic clocks. The laser […]
Things are heating up in the world of nuclear fusion research, with most fundamental issues resolved and an increasing rate of announcements being made regarding commercial fusion power. China’s CNNC is one of the most recent voices here, with their statement that they expect to have commercial nuclear fusion plants online by 2050. Although scarce […]
Want to make your own air knife to cut things with? Unfortunately that’s not what these devices are intended for, but [This Old Tony] will show you how to make your own, while explaining what they are generally intended for. His version deviates from the commercial version which he got his hands on in that […]
A team from the University of Chicago brings us a new spin on sensory substitution, the “Seeing with the Hands” project, turning external environment input into sensations. Here specifically, the focus is on substituting vision into hand sensations, aimed at blind and vision disabled. The prototype is quite inspiration-worthy! On the input side, we have […]
Money, status, or even survival – there’s no shortage of incentives for faking results in the scientific community. What can we do to prevent it, or at least make it noticeable? One possible solution is cryptographic signing of measurement results. Here’s a proof-of-concept from [Clement Heyd] and [Arbion Halili]. They took a ThermoFisher Scientific 7500 […]
LEGO! It’s a fun toy that is popular around the world. What you may not realize is that it’s also made to incredibly high standards. As it turns out, the humble building blocks are good enough to build a interferometer if you’re so inclined to want one. [Kyra Cole] shows us how it’s done. The […]
Muon tomography (muography) is the practice of using muons generated by cosmic rays interacting with Earth’s atmosphere (or equivalent) to image structures on Earth’s surface, akin to producing an X-ray. In lieu of spending a lot of spending a fair bit of money on dedicated muon detectors, you can also hack such a device together […]