Like many of us, Matthias Wandel spent a lot of time robotically swapping disks in and out of his CD burner, ripping music, and doing backups. Then he thought he could rig up something to perform the tasks for him.

With the peak oil crisis looming, the Vee 9 solar vehicle has been getting a lot of press recently. And for good reason — it promises the same guilt-free commute experience as trendier rides like the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape — but for nearly $20,000 less.

With big, expensive equipment and closely con- trolled experiment schedules, particle physics has never been a field for the do-it-yourselfer. But that didn’t stop Tim Koeth from building two operational cyclotrons on his own time and dime.

Forget billionaire Richard Branson’s overpriced tourist spaceships. For a few thousand bucks, physics student Art Vanden Berg put his computer-controlled model glider 79,000 feet into the stratosphere.

Garnet Hertz will never want or need to debug his mobile robot, because it’s controlled by a live cockroach.