Retro Thing

Putting Wile E. Coyote Physics To The Test

Don't ask how, but I once had a really nice long talk with Mr. Wizard's son in law about the state of science in childrens' lives. I complained that toy stores have few toys that aren't a character tie-in, and the aisle dedicated to classic hobbies and science is gone. No more chemistry sets or model rockets. In their place are what I like to call "boogerology" sets - playsets that lure kids into liking science by emphasizing the gross things that come out of all of us. That's fun, and there may indeed be some learning going on, but that kind of thing shouldn't be the only option.

We've seen lots of attempts to make science fun, of course. Even Mr. Wizard's low-key 1950's TV approach was fun, and made science practical and accessible. Today, Mythbusters is a great show with the same goal. They even upped the stakes by adding an explosive element to many of their experiments. I do genuinely admire their work, but sadly there are lesser shows that have only taken a single charred page from Mythbusters' book - that it's cool to blow stuff the hell up. Just don't try to make it seem more important by superimposing a poorly thought out science lesson on top.

I have no objection at all to making science more practical and fun - not just for kids, but for everyone. The danger is that the pursuit of fun and ratings can mean dumbing the original lesson down so far that there's little of practical value left. Also annoying is that some of the boogerology sets I mention above feature bufoonish "mad scientist" types which flies in the face of all the things I learned about respecting chemicals and electrical current, and that can't be good in the long run.

Now, let's give equal time to a discussion on behalf of buffoonery and blowing things the hell up.

Who knew that the field of launching 100 pound anvils into the air is crowded enough to have a world champion? It's Gay Wilkinson, and here's a video of him launching an anvil.

Black powder? Check.
Anvil? Check.
Carved up legal pad + Acme Anvil Sealant (peanut butter)? Check.
Impossibly short fuse? Check.

Fortunately no one here is pretending this is science, though this is a case where it wouldn't be out of place to make elements of this "demonstration" into part of a physics lesson. Overall it reinforces one of the greatest lessons I ever learned in life. Learning is important, but sometimes it's just really cool to blow big stuff up.

[Thanks to my friend Eric Franks @ videopia.org]

related:
The ultimate science kit
ACME Corp. Online Catalog For All You Looney Tunes Out There
Download fun 1950's songs about science

A modern descendent of classic 150-in-1 electronic kits

 One the toys that made the biggest impact during the final days of my childhood was a Radio Shack 150-in-1 electronics kit. Above all, it taught me that electronic components are harder to destroy than many people think. It's still possible to get your hands on fantastic "N-in-1" kits such as the $69.95 Elenco 300-in-1 Electronics Project Lab.

Of course, modern kids might not be tempted by the chance to build "old fashioned" transistor radios and voltage controlled amplifiers. Have no fear! Thames & Kosmos - makers of a fantastic range of 'classic' chemistry sets - offer a $149.95 Microcontroller Computer Systems Engineering Kit - sounds like a perfect way to convince MI-6 that you should be hired as the new 'Q' to create gadgets for good old 007. Just don't expect to construct your own functional defibrillator or Bond girl with one of these puppies.

Thames & Kosmos Microcontroller Computer Systems Engineering Kit

16-Piece Deluxe Watch Opener Tool Kit

I have a handful of watches sitting in a drawer with dead batteries. Even though I'm unlikely to start wearing a couple of Casios on each arm in the near future, it seemed like a good idea to pop them open and remove the dead batteries before they cause any damage.

That thought led me to Amazon, where I stumbled across this inexpensive 16-piece watch tool kit for under $10. It's just the thing you need for adjusting watchbands and popping the back off the occasional watch case. The only potential hitch is that there are no instructions, so a bit of experimentation is required to perfect your watch smashing technique.

16-Piece Deluxe Watch Opener Tool Kit [Amazon]

Folk Art Of The Future: Pokémon Toolbox

At my local thrift, they sometimes give me stuff that doesn't sell, and somehow this precious artifact from the future just wouldn't move. Thanks to the branding I recognize the characters as being from Pokemon, and the toolbox as being a little higglety-pigglety in construction. Did some young lad or lass do their best to build a toolbox, and then emblazon with their favorite really odd characters? Or did dad turn his back and find his tools were now an ad for the strange fad?

Whatever the motive might be, I have a feeling that someone was being teased for having such a goofy toolbox, and it ended up abandoned at the thrift. I'm left to wonder what will happen if someone discovers this toolbox a century from now. Will they think the mysterious made-up word is some forgotten language? Or that odd spherical demons ruled the earth of the early 21st century? Or will President Pikachu simply capture the artifact, and commit it to the National Pokéball Archives?

The Briel PockeTerm

Vince Briel designed the PocketTerm as a low cost terminal for vintage microcomputers. It lets you use a spare VGA monitor and PS/2 keyboard for input and output.

Dual serial ports are included for debugging and development - you can transfer data to/from a PC while still attached to the host device. The tiny 4.5" x 2" board uses a Parallax Propeller microcontroller and is VT-100 compatible. The only thing it doesn't include is a case.

The DIY kit is now on sale for $60, or purchase your PockeTerm assembled and tested for $90. Blank PC boards are available for $18, if you happen to have a few spare Propeller chips lying around. 

The Briel PockeTerm

200 Years Of Electric Light

MAKE contributing editor Bill Gurstelle demonstrates how to build an arc light. It's based on the first electric light, crafted by Sir Humphry Davy in 1809.

Make a simple arc light

Woolen Lemmings

June Gilbank is now my crochet idol. She explains, "There are tons of Mario and Pacman crafts out there, but I think that one group of old-school video game stars has been sadly neglected (until now).

Gamers of the ’90s probably remember the classic Lemmings video game franchise – those hapless green-haired troops who followed each other in a line and would walk straight off a cliff to their doom if you didn’t create a path to safety for them.

My favourite part was making the tiny accessories - and the wire stand for the floater so he actually floats - do you see his dangling feet? I have more details and a free pattern to make the basic Lemming on my blog, if you're interested." [via technabob]

Crafters Love The U.S.A. One Stitch At A Time

As night falls this July 4th, lots of Americans will hit the streets to set off all manner of fireworks and (unfortunately) illegal ordnance. Calamitous events of recent years have renewed patriotic ostentation - especially the kitschy kind. We've featured many classic examples of such - we still get email about the Marx Plastic Presidents from my earliest days at Retro Thing. It's easy to see that this country has a long rich history of political & social innovation... commemorated by tacky crap.

My mother is a witty little knitter. I mean it, she's a machine at the artful tangling of yarn and thread and turning out breathtaking artisan work. That's why I've never understood plastic canvas cross-stitch. A staple of the roadside craft fair scene, these plastic canvas productions always seemed like a project for juveniles or the recuperative set on their way to more advanced crafting. Clearly this is a far more popular hobby than I thought as thrift stores are piled high with this stuff. Mostly you find these opuses in the form of decorative wall hangings, but occasionally these projects take advantage of the plastic canvas' stiff structure to build 3D functional objects... like a patriotic tissue box cozy for example.

For a country that is very sensitive about display of the flag, and what is and isn't appropriate behavior around Old Glory, we're sure content to put our flag on darn near any piece of junk. I don't begrudge anyone for expressing their patriotism through their craft, but it seems odd to think that the drippy-nosed among us will feel our souls stir every time we reach for a tissue.

"Ah-choo!"
"Bless you."
"God Bless America, too..."

related:
Puzzle version of the U.S. by Hasbro
Presidents immortalized as aftershave
Cross-stitch your own heirloom clock

Atari 2600 Cartridge Wallet

While some Atari 2600 games are rare and precious artifacts, some carts are crazy common. There's practically a DIY genre focused on finding other uses for the stubby chunks of 70's plastic.  This video shows off one crafter's idea for turning a typical Atari cartridge into a wallet. What makes this particular design interesting is that it re-uses every part of the original game except the screw that secures the two halves of the cart shell.

These carts are for sale on etsy.com, but I'm sure that some of our ingenious readers can ad lib something a bit similar. Just get in touch if you're going to hack up a Chase The Chuckwagon cart.  I'll trade ya a couple dozen Combat games.

Etsy store featuring these wallets

related:

Atari 2600 joystick TV remote DIY project
Wicked DIY arcade cabinet kits
DIY: upgrade your iPod Nano screen the retro way

The Sound Lab Ultimate Analog Synth

It takes a lot to get me excited about music gear these days, but Ray Wilson's Sound Lab Ultimate modular analog synthesizer kit is amazing. This instrument is the followup to his original Sound Lab mini-synth. It features three musically accurate oscillators, white noise generator, active mixer, a 12 dB/Octave lowpass filter, envelope generator, dual low frequency oscillators and more.

The $130 "Deal Clincher" kit includes the PC board, two faceplates, three axial compensators (to keep the oscillators in tune as the temperature changes) along with a Wall Wart power supply board. You can order nearly all of the other project components directly from Mouser for just over $225.

This definitely isn't a beginner's project, but anyone with a bit of kit building experience should be able to assemble this incredibly cool instrument in only a few evenings.

Music From Outer Space Sound Lab ULTIMATE synth kit [via Matrixsynth]

related:
PAiA: Affordable DIY Synthesizers
Build An Analog Synth With A Screwdriver
Join The "Synth Module Of The Month Club"

The Lego Turntable

The inexorable march of time means that those precious devices that defined our lives become the curious playthings of the next generation. Where you and I might debate the finer points of turntable manufacture, the youths in this video figured out how to build one out of Lego.

Here's a great little project using advanced Technic Lego blocks, a Lego motor, and a few other sundries that might have come from the kitchen drawer. Their unlikely device does work. The spindly fellow plays barely audible music (good music choice, by the way) using the same principles as the earliest limited fidelity platter spinners.

Will the be the future of records? Relegated to science fairs, and celebrated as an arcane oddity on morning chat shows? No matter what the future may hold, the boys should be very proud of keeping vinyl music alive in their own way.  Though I wonder how quickly that pride will transform to abject fear once Dad sees what they've done to his Ozzy records.

related:
Build your own turntable
The DIY Audio projects blog

Wooden Widget Folding Dinghies

Benjy Benjamin from Wooden Widget writes, "I thought you might be interested in mentioning my folding dinghy designs. They are after all an old design from the 30s that has been vamped up a bit, quite retro really. You might also find my newest design, the Deckster, amusing as well as it uses a mad new propulsion system and has a hole in it!"

The neatest feature of the Deckster is its clever pedal-powered Mirage Drive, which uses two flexible blades that swing from side to side like fishes' fins to generate forward motion [here's video of it in action].

If you'd prefer to take advantage of the wind, the Origami sailing dinghy is a brilliant little design that folds down to a size small enough for most roof racks and weighs only 20 kg. Plans cost £25-£30. Figure on spending about £200 for your supplies, plus a few glorious hours in the workshop constructing your new sea-faring vehicle.

Wooden Widget Folding Dinghies

DIY $33 Oscilloscope Kit

I know it's not Retro, but you can certainly use this clever DIY oscilloscope kit to repair vintage gadgetry. It has a maximum analog bandwidth of 1MHz with 8 bit resolution, includes auto, normal and single trigger modes, adjustable vertical position, frequency counter, and a built-in 500Hz/5Vpp test signal.

It runs on 9-12VDC and weighs in at a featherweight 70 grams. The big downside is that there's no case, but I'm OK storing it in a cardboard box when not in use. The kit requires surface mount soldering, but you can also buy the little beast fully assembled in the USA for only $49.

Ultra-Affordable Digital Storage Oscilloscope

Build Your Own Turntable

Charles Altmann is a German DIY fanatic. His creations include a diesel motorcycle, natural sound hi-fi speakers and the Altmann DIY turntable. He says, "After the success I had with my homebrew tonearm, I decided to build a turntable that is able to fathom the sonic delicacies that the tonearm is able to produce.

Those who visit my sites regularly already know that I am a sucker for natural tone. Therefore the turntable is made to large parts out of wood. Wooden base, wooden motor base, wooden turntable-platter, wooden tonearm. Some ideas make this turntable easy and cheap to build. Depending on your local price for wood, and your ability to find some surplus parts, total cost can be as low as $50.

The turntable consists of two separate massive plywood-blocks (glued together from boards). One supports the platter and tonearm (main base), the second supports the motor (motor base). The platter is driven by a simple thread out of mom's sewing box. This way the motor is decoupled from the main base.

Between the main base and the motor base, there's a gap. By moving the motor base away from the main base, you can adjust thread tension."

Visit his site for pictures and a description of how a handful of Harley Davidson components ended up serving as a turntable platter bearing, along with details of his other ambitious projects.

The Altmann DIY Turntable

DIY Mopeds For Under $130

Fifty years ago, American manufacturers like Whizzer produced thousands of quirky motorized bicycles. Similar motor bikes are returning to the road, driven by the ailing economy and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

The most affordable way to get your hands on one is to modify an existing bike. Zoom Bicycles offers a range of bolt-on 49cc and 80cc 2-stroke motors. You can expect maximum speeds between 30 km/h and 50 km/h, depending on the engine displacement and overall weight. Fuel economy is up to 150 mpg, although these little motors demand 89 Octane fuel premixed with 2-stroke synthetic motorcycle oil.