Other Non-Bike Stuff...

[mimbresman]

Inspired by the non-bike addiction...

I like building low-cost science equipment. I’ve built and developed all sorts of stuff and lessons to go with them. I have a pipe-dream marketing and selling it someday.

One of my favorite apparatus’ I've built is my wind tunnel. The first generation was built in 2003 as part of a Flight unit in commemoration of the Wright brother's 100th anniversary at Kitty Hawk. The Wright bros. used a wind tunnel to test different airfoils. They measured both lift and drag. The cool thing about their design was their linkage that made the measures was all made of bicycle spokes.

The first generation had an internal drinking straw suspension system and a simple balance system that could measure the lift force with a precision of 1/20 (0.05) of a gram. A second type suspension system measured the drag force with the same precision. I presented this design at the NSTA (National Science Teacher's Association) national convention in 2005.

The second generation wind tunnel has an external suspension made from balsa wood. Lift forces are measured slightly differently and are calculated to the nearest 1/10 (0.1) of a gram. I haven’t built the drag suspension system for this wind tunnel yet.

Both tunnels so far have been made of polystyrene sheets. Cheap. If I build a third generation, I want to build it out of a/c duct work for smoother airflow and have a real fan to blow air through it.

See my blogsite (http://mimbresman.blogspot.com/) for the latest use of the wind tunnel.

[RandomDood]

I like to come up with more efficient energy devices. Last thing I made was a solar water heater. Before that was a PV, battery and DC motor and pump for a swamp cooler. Working on a 12 KW hydro plant for a house with water rights to a large stream, on a hillside.

I wear a pocket protector and can use a slide rule. :D

[mimbresman]

I like to come up with more efficient energy devices. Last thing I made was a solar water heater. Before that was a PV, battery and DC motor and pump for a swamp cooler. Working on a 12 KW hydro plant for a house with water rights to a large stream, on a hillside.

I wear a pocket protector and can use a slide rule. :D

Cool stuff. I've had students make solar water heaters. Last year in my physics class, when covering lenses and mirrors, we made a crude parabolic reflector that heated water. It worked.

Back in 1980 I worked for the USFS in Idaho. One weekend I drove my Jeep to Big Creek, ID, which is way out in the sticks (at least it was back then). The village had their own small scale hydroelectric generator running off the creek. It was way cool.

At work, I usually have a calculator and digital camera in my pocket. :rolleyes:

[davkatreb]

I wear a pocket protector and can use a slide rule. :D
I usedeta keep protection in my pocket, and slide it in, as a rule.

Suddenly I miss our departed friend OTB. Perhaps I was channelling him, just now.:confused:

[PutAwayWet]

I wish I had you as a teacher, Mims!

[tryandgetme]

reminds me of a physics teacher I had in highschool that used to do cool demonstrations like lifting a car with garbage bags and a vaccum cleaner, or freezing and smashing stuff with liquid N.

I like to find problems and solve them. I'm a tinkerer by nature. The car runs great now, the bike has never worked bad, the horse jump standards at the near by horse arena now have a wheel on them for easy moving, the internet comes from a friend's place nearly 300m away through dense trees, and the front door opens again.

[real_ss_budgie]

....................

[rockhound]

I like to come up with more efficient energy devices. Last thing I made was a solar water heater. Before that was a PV, battery and DC motor and pump for a swamp cooler. Working on a 12 KW hydro plant for a house with water rights to a large stream, on a hillside.

I wear a pocket protector and can use a slide rule. :D

Good Lord, we're all enginerds around here!

[Jay13]

I wish I had you as a teacher, Mims!

I teach at a high school in central Fl. A couple years ago we had a Chem teacher who was "encouraged" to resign for undisclosed reasons. The guy was a bit strange but nice enough... He later got a job in an ajacent county... only to be arrested later that year for teaching a couple students how to use black powder to make bombs... I saw it on the news, it was weird to see someone I worked with in a mug shot. I don't know why but this reminded me of him...:D