The Cyclotron Comes to the ‘Hood
Folks trying to keep a Maker’ down! – “Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home. But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard. Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank’s permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.” [via] Link.
“There’s a super article in Popular Electronics, May 1996, pp 48-52, 78, titled “Build a Magnetic Ball Levitator”, by James Cicon. It describes how to build an electromagnet with an optical sensor which will keep a hollow steel ball floating in the air about 1/4″ below the electromagnet. This is like the globe of the earth which is suspended in air under an electromagnet that can be purchased for about $125. The material costs for this project is only about $20.” 
MAKE’s special projects editor David Pescovitz wrote a great article for Salon about “Big Ideas” in tech, including a section on the Maker mindset. “Robugs, biologically based software, the GeoWeb, transgenic art and other hot frontiers in technological innovation.” I really enjoyed it. Oh, when you click the link, you have to “click here and watch a brief ad” to get to the article unless you have a Salon account….
This guy invented a device that he says emits sounds only young people can hear – it’s used to chase them away and stop them from doing bad things. Nooo!! Not the Ludwig Van, and the dreaded Ninth Symphony! “Howard Stapleton, inventor of the Mosquito, with a speaker mounted on the wall behind him, at a store in Barry, Wales, where boisterous teenagers once gathered. The device projects a very shrill and very annoying tone that only youths can hear. Then they flee.” Thanks Nick! 
Here’s a fun Google video of what happens when you put Mentos in soda (you might want to mute the sound). The video doesn’t explain how it works, but there’s an overview 
Great bike hack on Instructables from Maxwell – “How to Build a Tall Bike, one that you can stop safely, and could be construed as street legal in most places. With this method, you’ll be able to stand over the bike, allowing you to hop down easily, have two brakes, a full complement of gears, And have a better riding position than two bikes stacked on top of eachother. You’ll only destroy one bike, The top portion is bolted to the bottom bike, so if it breaks, or you get tired of it, the bottom bike can be reverted to normal. All in all I think this makes for a suprisingly sane tall bike. Not that you’ll look any less the madman riding it through traffic.” 
In MAKE 03 we showed you how to 