Fun & Games

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.

Lego Hadron Collider

Lego Hadron Collider

This model by Bohr Institute physicist Sascha Mehlhase does not, of course, represent the whole Large Hadron Collider, which is a huge circular underground accelerator. Even at minifig scale, such a model would be enormous. Rather, it represents what is probably the most iconic part of the LHC, the ATLAS detector (Wikipedia). Dr. Mehlhase reports 80 hours of work in the build, about evenly split between design (in software) and physical assembly of its almost 10,000 bricks. [Thanks, Rachel!]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan4
The First Citizen of My Personal Robot Nation Has Arrived

The First Citizen of My Personal Robot Nation Has Arrived

Back in November at AnDevCon II, I met Jonathan Hirshon of Horizon Communications, who hooked me up with a complimentary robot from My Robot Nation. This had nothing to do with Android; it probably came up because we had a MakerBot running in O’Reilly’s booth printing out little Androids (using casainho’s Android magnet design from Thingiverse). Enough about androids and robots. As ST:TNG’s Lt. Commander Data is so fond of reminding us, there is a difference between the two!

Continue Reading Brian Jepson10
Breaking into Making: A Meditation

Breaking into Making: A Meditation

At what point did you know you were a “maker?” Making springs from an insatiable need to learn about, dissect, and modify. For some this impulse came early, for others, it didn’t arise until later. Maybe you were the kid who could always fix a broken bike, or you dug into your family’s first PC at a young age and didn’t stop until, years later, you had graduated to making complex gadgets using physical computing.

Continue Reading Michael Colombo24