Maker Camp is under way

This is a boat... no really.

As we reported earlier, Maker Camp is under way.  It started yesterday and so we here at Digital Diner decided to try it out.  Bix made a lovely paddle boat out of some plastic bottles, and we were able to float it in the bath tub.  Simple yet somehow awesome.  You can learn to build your own here.  And, by the way, it is important to actually go through the exercise of building stuff.  As our acquaintance Jim Wiltens says, "there is a difference between knowing and doing."

The boat in action

Every day they will have new projects and things to learn in live Google hangouts online which you can attend as they happen or tune in later.  ...and its all free.  Tomorrow will be all about balloon blimps.  It sure seems like a fun way to spend a summer day.  

More info at Maker Camp online.

This time lapse of plants growing is simply amazing

We live in an incredible world.  If you have any doubts, just watch this video.  Filmmaker Daniel Csobot has created this macro time-lapse video of seeds growing into plants over a four month period.  I find it stunning, and it just makes me feel that plants are incredibly animate  but they live on a different time scale than us.  Who says watching the grass grow is dull?

The film itself is beautiful.  To learn a few tricks about how to make your own, check out the website novalapse.

Visualizing Electromagnetic Fields

Visualising electromagnetic fields from Luke Sturgeon on Vimeo.

In yesterday's post I mentioned my interest in ham radio as a youngster.  I think part of the intrigue comes from the idea that there are these invisible fields around us all the time and they can be used to communicate information.  It seems like magic.  Some folks have been coming up with techniques to visualize this hidden world.  I like this idea.  The video above shows the electromagnetic fields around electronic devices by taking long exposure photos while moving an android phone configured as an electromagnetic field meter along the device in question.  It is a great technique and the results are informative and artistic.

Someone else did something similar with RFID below.  In this case they used a device that blinks whenever the RFID reader senses it.  The space it defines is the area in which the reader can sense an RFID (ie how close an RFID tag needs to be in order for the reader to sense it).

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from Timo on Vimeo.

Is Heathkit back?

Heathkit HW8 QRP Transceiver - Photo courtesy of Wikipedia user F1jmm

Back in the day, I used to spend hours pouring though the Heathkit catalog wishing for all the kits that would let me build everything from ham radios to stereo components.  Heathkit helped me to learn to solder, understand basic electronics, gain a respect and fascination for physical things and the hidden world inside them.  Heathkit helped feed my interest in ham radio and taught me that people can build cool stuff.  It was the Maker movement back in the 70s, long before 3D printers and Arduinos.  It was a sad day when Heathkit disappeared... or did it?  I lost track of Heathkit in the 80s an then in the 90s they appeared to be some sort of an educational/training company and that carried through to the modern age as chronicled by the wayback machine.

Well, recently I discovered that there is a mysterious website at http://www.heathkit.com.  I heard some rumors last fall, but now the web site simply says, "the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated."  Hidden in the legalistic fine print are two links that you wont find unless you move your mouse over them.  One is the privacy policy.  The other is a FAQ.  The latter link leads you to a page that begins like this:

Q. Is Heathkit back?

A. Yes. We're back.

Q. So are you really going to make Heathkit® kits?

A. Yes.

Q. Wow! That simple? “Yes?”

A. Yes.

This is exciting.  Also hidden in the links is a survey that you can take that gives you some idea of what they have in mind.  They appear to be returning to their roots and will be selling electronic kits, possibly including ham radio gear.  If you follow the survey through, you get a chance to get on a "Heathkit insiders" email list presumably to learn more as the news become available.  They may finally provide a little competition for our friends at Elecraft (who we like very much).

Jumping bead chain: Slow motion doesn't always help

This video shows a weird phenomenon where a chain literally jumps out of a container as it spills onto the ground.  The theory is that the weight of the falling side pulls the chain out and in order for the chain to get out of the container it must go up before it goes down.  Since it can't change directions instantaneously it actually pulls itself up a bit before going down.  The super slow motion video is quite cool, but doesn't do much to make the phenomenon more understandable, at least for me.  (Don't get me wrong.  I still really want a super slow motion camera) It all looks quite magical.  I would love to try this, but I have no idea where to find 100 ft of bead chain.

Twelve Tones of Vi Hart

Vi Hart's latest video, Twelve Tones, requires a bit of work to watch.  Unlike her previous videos, this one is 30 minutes long and it explores math-a-musical theory at some depth.  It is mind bending and numbing and worthy of all 30 minutes, but be prepared.   You need to be ready to spend a half an hour of intensely focused time to get the most out of it.  Enjoy the journey.

NASA IRIS Mission to launch this afternoon - see it live today!

Our star, the Sun that we see everyday, still holds plenty of mystery to us.  On that has been quite perplexing has to do with the temperature.  We know that at the surface it is very hot and that as you move away from the surface into the photosphere, it gets cooler, but strangely as you continue out through the atmosphere to the corona, it gets hotter again... several times that of the hottest spots on the Sun itself.  It isn't clear exactly what the mechanism is for this.

To help figure out this and other questions about old Sol, NASA has created the IRIS mission (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph).  It is a satellite that will orbit the Earth in a polar orbit so that is always is exposed to the Sun and use its specialized instruments to examine the Sun.  It will launch today at 6:37pm PT.  We will be heading over to NASA to watch it live, but it will also be available online or on cable on NASA TV.

NASA Says:

IRIS will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun’s 6000 K surface to its million K outer atmosphere or corona. A fundamentally mysterious region that helps drive heat into the corona, this area has been notoriously hard to study. IRIS will be able to tease apart what's happening there better than has ever been done before.

The mission has three objectives:

1. Which types of non-thermal energy dominate in the chromosphere and beyond?
2. How does the chromosphere regulate mass and energy supply to corona and heliosphere?
3. How do magnetic flux and matter rise through the lower atmosphere, and what role does flux emergence play in flares and mass ejections?

More of the science of the mission is detailed here.

One of the really interesting things about this mission is how the spacecraft will get into orbit.  Rather than lifting off from a standing start as most space missions do, this one will be carried aloft by an L-1011 jumbo jet.  The plane will take from Vandenberg Air Force Base and take an hour to fly out over the ocean and gain altitude.  At a height of 39,000ft it will drop the Pegasus XL, a rocket that will boost the IRIS into orbit in a mere 13 minutes.  This launch method should save significant amounts of fuel and cost compared to a traditional launch.


Departure is planned to occur at 6:27 p.m. PDT and the drop of the Pegasus XL is targeted for 7:27 p.m. PDT on June 27.

You can watch live on the web starting at 6pm PT on NASA TV.

IRIS Mission home page
NASA IRIS Mission Web Site
NASA IRIS MIssion Overview
IRIS Educational Study Guide

(all photos courtesy of NASA)

Ice cube tricks for your entertainment

Ice Ice Baby!

In anticipation of a warm summer, we've been telling you about some chilly summertime ideas.  This post is similar and I hope you enjoy it, but it is particularly for my family.  You see, when I was but a wee tot, back in 19mumblemumble, one summer afternoon in a small town in Ohio, we had some drinks with ice cubes in them.  We drank these drinks with straws.  After the drinks were gone, there were a few ice cubes in the bottom of the glass.  Rather than waiting for the ice to melt, we found that blowing warm breath through the straws into the ice cube would make it turn to liquid more quickly.  Because the straw directed your warm breath in a particular spot on the ice cube, we soon found that you could basically drill holes in the ice with our breath.

Straw balanced by ice

As we played around, someone made a hole all the way through the ice cube.  This is where the fun began.   We found that you could balance the straw sideways across the rim of your glass with an ice cube suspended over the glass by the straw.  If you didn't center your straw, you would have a long bit of straw on one side being balanced by the weight of the ice cube.  As the ice cube melted, the weight distribution would change until, suddenly, the straw would tip over.  Based on this simple mechanism, we started creating machines.  When an ice cube melted, it would cause a straw to drop another ice cube onto a fork that would act as a lever to lift something else up and so on.  In the end we created an ice cube powered Rube Goldberg machine on our dinner table to build a sandwich.  The trickiest part was getting the toothpick to stick into the sandwich.  I'm sorry to say that this all happened before the internet and YouTube, so there is no history of this event other than what I have written here.

The video below is the closest I've seen to the ice cube shenanigans we performed that day.  It is only vaguely reminiscent of our fun day, and really is much more a rip-off of Eepybird (of Coke and Mentos fame including the two arm victory salute at the end).  Of course, even that is relevant for my family since our ice cube incident happened during a time when we hung out with Fritz Grobe of Eepybird before he got all famous and stuff.  Still it is entertaining and I hope you enjoy it.

For comparison here is the Eepybird video.... just sayin....

Controversies aside, summer is officially here and I hope the warm days make you appreciate the miracle of the ice in your freezer.  The ability to create ice through refrigeration (which we take for granted) has a long history that includes notables such as Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday.  During the winter it is so plentiful that in Sweden they build hotels out of it (see below), but during the hot summer, it is the technological miracle of refrigeration keeps our food and medicine from spoiling, gives us air conditioning and ice and generally makes life much more pleasant.  So during a particularly hot day this summer, take some ice out of your freezer and think about just how awesome it is that you can play with it as it melts away.  Enjoy!

Widdikay and Bix hanging out in the Ice Hotel in northern Sweden

It's time for Maker Camp

Are you a teen (or do you know a teen, or do you occasionally feel like a teen) looking for something interesting to do this summer?  You might want to try the virtual Maker Camp.  It's free on Google+.  It promises "30 days of awesome DIY projects and cool virtual field trips."  The camp runs from July 8th to August 16th on your computer screen. To join in on the fun follow Make on Google+ at g.co/makercamp.  BTW, don't just watch... get out there and make something too...  We certainly will be checking it out here at Digital Diner.

Ice Cream Sandwiches: You're doing it wrong!

I thought I knew how to make an ice cream sandwich, but it turns out I was completely wrong.  This is the proper technique.  Clearly I have spent my life merely watching shadows on the wall.  Excuse me, I think I need to step out to grab a pint of Ben and Jerry's,