videos: December 2007 Archives
20
Dec
2007
Here's a great article at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories showing you how to make a skittering robot out of a toothbrush, a little electric motor, and a watch battery. Nice little film there, too
We did something similar to this on the last series of The Big Bang, using scrubbing brushes and the cheapest electric toothbrushes we could find. You glue a stick to the toothbrush head so it waggles back-and-forth, then rubber-band the whole toothbrush to the scrubbing brush. On a smooth surface the resulting contraption will wander around – ours mostly went backwards, as I recall.
You'll find more about these – and a bunch of other great ideas – in Neil Downie's terrific book 'Vacuum Bazookas, Electric Rainbow Jelly, and 27 other Saturday science projects' (we're not kidding, that really is the title).
20
Dec
2007
We've only just heard of this project sponsored by Google and Specialized bicycles. Sadly it's now too late to enter for this year, but making pedal-powered contraptions was still a genius idea. There are videos of dozens of entries; our particular favourites include the bicycle tennis server, the elegantly-simple but perhaps mildly pointless pedal hacksaw, the amphibious bike-yak (though – hang on a minute – why doesn't it sink again?), and the bicycle water distiller, which must be darned hard work.
01
Dec
2007
In the iPM interview I referred to a film of toast landing butter-side down, which wasn't actually on the site when the interview went out. Oops. So here's a quick rough-cut of it, so you can see what I was talking about.
01
Dec
2007
Just three new films this week; two connected to the new Inside DNA exhibition which opened in At-Bristol, and one charming little make & do for a rainy weekend. Click through to the main site to view them.(And yes, we will get downloads and a podcast feed going just as soon as we can, so you can have the latest films delivered to you automatically)
