The awesome Craig Smith is at it again. He continues to explore the venerable crystal radio, now focusing on miniaturization. And that, of course, means on thing: Mint Tin Crystal Set! Craig writes…
I’ve made a half dozen battery-free crystal radios in about eight weeks. But I always wanted to try to stuff one inside of an Altoid tin for on-the-go. The short ground wire and long antenna wire that connect via an RCA plug, store neatly inside the tin. The 2000 ohm crystal earphone would fit in the tin if the long tube was chopped off. 200 turns of a 27 gauge wire on a 5/8" cylinder gets me tuning in the upper AM band. Perhaps I need to include a 3" copper ground spike to get a good ground in the field. Or would clipping onto a damp root be a better ground? Input?
Speaking of office supplies, a box of mailing tubes showed up in our Museum of Mathematics office and I couldn’t resist making a geometric construction. All you need to make your own copy are thirty tubes and sixty rubber bands. All the tubes are surrounded similarly. Each touches four others, approximately outlining an icosidodecahedron.
I showed this to Keith Hoffman and he made the same structure from 510 Lego studs and 60 tiny clear rubber bands.
Frits (from Denmark), who works professionally in web concept development, is the creator of Letsmakerobots.com, a popular international source for hobby robotics. His cohost, Rik (from Holland), is part of the team that runs Letsmakerobots.com and assists its online community.
This prototype clock from UK designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau is powered by a microbial fuel cell. It features a conveyor belt of flypaper that attracts flies and drops their bodies into the fuel cell. Depending on the available fly supply, the process can generate enough power to sustain itself and power a digital clock, as well. [via Boing Boing]
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, this cool vid from Jessica Rosenkrantz featuring a simple Hele-Shaw cell, which, per Wikipedia, demonstrates “Stokes Flow between two parallel flat plates separated by an infinitesimally small gap.” Further, “[v]arious problems in fluid mechanics can be approximated to Hele-Shaw flows and thus the research of these flows is of importance.”
All of which means very little to me. But I can tell you this: Jessica’s video shore is purty. Give it a watch.
The MintDuino is the newest product in our Mintronics series of kits. It's perfect for anyone interested in learning, or teaching, the fundamentals of how micro controllers work. Inspired by Tom Igoe's Arduino tutorials, the MintDuino will have you building your very own ATMega based micro controller on a breadboard. Afterwards, you can easily programming it from almost any computer via an FTDI programmer (not included) and the Arduino IDE. (free download)
Unlike pre-built micro controllers, the MintDuino demonstrates the specific relationship between the wires, resistors, capacitors, and integrated circuits that enables you to program the micro controller from your computer. After building the MintDuino, you'll have a much better understanding of how micro controllers work, and how electronics can interact with the physical world. Please note: An FTDI programmer is required to upload code to the MintDuino. Our FTDI friend is a perfect match!
Check out this Hasselblad pinhole camera from Kelly Angood. It accepts 120 film and looks looks a little less conspicuous than an oatmeal container. [via RetroThing]
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