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Category Archives: Knowledge - Information - Scholarship

Dog Park Science Part 2: The Neurobiology of Dog Training

Monday, December 7, 2009

Last week I delivered the second of two talks on “Dog Park Science,” at the Exploratorium.  You can find the audio of the first talk here.  The two talks are on very different topics.  The first is on the evolution of the dog, while this second one is about some of the core animal psychology [...]

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Dog Park Science: Part 1 — The Evolution of Dogs

Monday, May 25, 2009

In honor of my dog Piper, who had a very bad day recently when he got a huge fox-tail stuck in his nose, I’ve posted the audio of a talk I delivered a few weeks ago at The Exploratorium about the evolution of the domestic dog.
If you have ever wondered exactly how the ferocious wolf [...]

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Maps of science

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

This is literally a mapping of the influence that various scientific fields have on each other generated by Eignfactor.org:
Orange circles represent fields, with larger, darker circles indicating larger field size as measured by Eigenfactor score™. Blue arrows represent citation flow between fields. An arrow from field A to field B indicates citation traffic from A [...]

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A Number of Numbers

Friday, December 19, 2008

A Number of Numbers

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Quotes on Design

Friday, December 19, 2008

From Quotes on Design
Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can’t invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.
— D. H. Lawrence

Good, fast, or cheap… pick two.
— [...]

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This New Ocean: The History of Space Flight

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

This New Ocean: The History of Space Flight is a fantastic, brief and broad history of space flight focusing, obviously, on or means of getting into space — rockets!
Allot of great images and information.
There is even a midterm and final exam for the eager.

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Gear Template Generator

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Here is a fantastic little web app that generates templates for spur gears.
Once you put in all your specifications (metric only) it generates a sing or a set of gears that can be printed and transferred to wood or metal. Another option allows you to download a file that can be imported into [...]

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Fantastic Contraption

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Awhile back I posted about Phun, an on-line, physics based game.  Well I’ve come across another one called Fantastic Contraption. The goal is to move an object into a goal area by building a simple device from a series of passive and active wheels and rods.  Below is a screen shot.

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Incra Rules

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Those who have worked with me in the shop know how much I like my precision tools.
Check out these rulers by Incra that I am currently drooling over.
The prices are not bad either.

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Iron vs Steel Rivets — Why the Titanic Sank

Monday, April 14, 2008

Can you imagine my pleasure today in finding a front page New York Times article that has two of my great loves: science and metal fabrication.
The article In Weak Rivets, a Possible Key to Tianic’s Doom, lays out the accumulating evidence that it was the use of cheaper, weaker, iron rivets, over stronger steel rivets [...]

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Creating Your Own Fonts

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A Wired wiki entry on creating your own fonts.

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Tube Coping Calculator

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I’m a big fan of on-line calculators while designing and fabricating. I regularly use a host of trigonometry and geometry on-line calculators and there are tons of others on the web.
But sometimes you need to calculate something very specific to metal working — like a tube coping — that does not easily fall out [...]

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Time Travel Mart

Thursday, February 28, 2008

826LA, which is the Los Angles version of 826 Valencia, the famous San Francisco Pirate Store, had their opening recently and in keeping with the “store front” theme (see also the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store) they are a Time Travel Mart.
Well done and quite clever.
This is all from the web site of Stefan Bucher [...]

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Heron Videos

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Heron of Alexandria was a bad ass (obviously or else he’d been forgotten) Greek mechanical engineer and fabricator who made incredible kinetic devices involving the movement of air, water and steam. (I’ve bloged about him in the past)
My current interest in Heron focuses on his Aeolipie — a steam jet engine. The first and [...]

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Physics Phun

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Phun is a 2d physics “sandbox” program that look like it would be great for teaching and for creating quick mock-ups of kenetic sculptures. I’d have tried it out and given a full report if there was a version for the mac. Check out this video of Phun in action. I think [...]

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The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria

Monday, February 18, 2008

From the Steam Engine Library:
THE
PNEUMATICS
OF
HERO OF ALEXANDRIA
FROM THE ORIGINAL GREEK

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Patina Formulas

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Patina formulas for Brass, Bronze and Copper

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