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Science Meets Art in Paper Horse Kit

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:48:22 +0000

Art and science complement each other very nicely in this incredibly cool and simple paper kit to build an articulated horse by James Watt from Clockwork Robotics. (Any relation to the Steam Engine linkage inventor James Watt?)

It may not look all that interesting in the static photo above, but check out this video of the model in motion!

The natural motion of the model is derived from a neat construct of linkages driven by a single small motor. Here’s a small animated GIF of the CAD model that abstracts the linkages and the drive motor.

James’ site has some great images of his initial brainstorming that led to a few art pieces and the eventual paper kit product.

(Note that it all starts with a little brainstorming on the chalk board or notebook!)

The folks over at Make magazine have a nice sequence of images outlining their step-by-step assembly of the ~$15 kit which only took them a few hours.

For any of you participating in the FIRST or other similar robotics competitions, this kit is a great intro to customizing complex motions through multi-arm linkage design. For you artist-types, don’t let the enginering mumbo-jumbo put you off, as it’s only a few hours of cutting, folding and pasting!

For those of you REALLY into this type of design/art, you can find some nice curriculum materials with real-life applications of kinematic design and hands-on crafty engineering excellence over at the fantastic Cornell University KMODDLE site. They are perfect for high school math, physics, and robotics classes, and some would even inspire the precocious middle schooler. If there is any interest I can post some follow-on materials and pointers to those lessons.

In the meantime, go forth and design. And don’t forget to post your comments, pictures and results here if you build one of these or anything inspired herefrom!

Maker Faire This Weekend: Don’t Miss It!

Phillip Alvelda — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:48:00 +0000

This has become one of my favorite events anywhere, anytime. You’ll find a great collection of art, technology, science projects and demonstrations, contests (like the “King of Fling” catapult contest) kits for sale, tools…and of course the people that make and use them! It is a completely unique collection of interesting things and people.

I strongly recommend the Faire to any family that can make it to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, not just the nerds among you. There really is something for everyone. Even my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter was enthralled last time around, so don’t miss it!

Click on the picture link above for more info and tickets!

Videorama

Phillip Alvelda — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 23:06:00 +0000

Photojojo had a nice post about stitching snippets of panned videos together to make a single video panorama that they call a videorama.

Cool, eh?

Here’s a link on how to make your own video-ramas with Flash, or with Final Cut Pro.

Matchstick Eifel Tower

Phillip Alvelda — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:54:00 +0000

I just love projects that highlight both engineering and art, particularly when they are managed with limited resources and simple tools.

Check out this fantastic model made with matchsticks! Did the hobbyist is qustion, one Alexandr Pashkevich of the Ukraine, simply have too much time on his hands? You decide.

Carving Crayons

Phillip Alvelda — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:41:00 +0000

From the folks over at the Make blog, check out these carved crayons by artist Pete Goldlust.

Where There’s Math, There’s Fire

Phillip Alvelda — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:57:00 +0000

I’m always on the lookout for a good screensaver. And mathematically-defined flames just seem too good to pass up. These tasty little bits of eye candy are based on the work of Michael Barnsley from Georgia Tech (One of my freshman calculus instructors, incidentally) who invented Iteratted Function System fractals, which were used by Scott Draves in 1992 to make artificial flames. These examples were made by rajah, and you can see many more examples and animations here and here.

Now you can go and make your own artificial flames with a freeware application called Apophysis that runs on the Windows operating system. Donwload it here. If you’d just like to check out some animations and images, look here.

Art Restoration With Nanotechnology

Phillip Alvelda — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:35:00 +0000

Nanotechnology has certainly garnered its share of media attention over the last year or so in applications ranging from drug delivery and high-density magnetic recording materials to new LED lighting systems. But yesterday I stumbled across an unexpected application that showed remarkable results; the restoration of antiquities through the removal of resins and salts from paintings, consolidation (reattaching and solidifying) paint on canvas and frescoes, and de-acidification of paper.

The key limitations of the traditional techniques centered around the fact that the cracks and pores in the antique surfaces were too tiny for the materials with macro-sized particles to effectively penetrate. Enter the new techniques for fabricating nano-scale particles of the same treatments.

This is a scanning electron micrograph of a Calcium-hydroxide nanoparticle synthesized through an homogeneous phase reaction at 90 degrees celcius.

These nanoparticles can now enter easily into the tiny pores in the paintings and frescoes and work their chemical and fixative magic without leaving any annoying discoloring films. The effects are remarkable.

Crucifixion by Beato Angelico (15th century, Florence). On the left, pre-restoration images of the wall painting. On the right, apost-restoration image. Desulfatation and consolidation was performed with the Ferroni–Dini method (ammonium carbonate plus barium hydroxide). (Courtesy of Daniela Dini).

Here is a link to the technical paper describing the restorations from which these images were taken. Here are a couple more amazing examples from this web site.

Santa Maria Novella Basilica in Florence, wall paintings by Andrea da Firenze: conservation carried out by means of lime/alcohol dispersions.

The fresco by Pozzoserrato (XVI century) in the Conegliano’s Cathedral after the cleaning with the micellar solution developed ad hoc for this workshop.