20 September 2002

Wanderings

by Ralph J. Coppola
coppolar@mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca

This week I have listed a couple of ideas that may be of interest to someone looking for a project. The first is a group of organized birder projects that can be found on Cornell University's Ornithology site. The second is water. Building on the old saying Water, water everywhere and not a safe drop to drink! The World Health Organization estimates that over a billion people lack access to suitable clean drinking water, resulting in the death of more than 3 million children every year. This opens up many opportunities for amateur experimentation. Can you develop a method of providing safe drinking water to villagers in the developing countries? Any method must be effective, low tech, zero or low cost and feasible with locally available materials. I've listed a few leads to get you started.

As an addition to Paul Dito's previous article on stepper motors, I found this application for using stepper motors for a computer controlled drilling machine. This same technique doesn't have to be limited to drilling. What about automatically processing biological or chemical samples? Also, from the same site Build a Mini Wing Generator from a stepper motor or experiment with colloidal silver.

Other wind and solar power projects can be found at Otherpower.com and Windstuffnow.com.

Gordon Couger's Microscope Page contains an extensive collection of links to light microscope sites.

I came across an other collection of Electronic Circuits for the Hobbyist that some readers may find of some use.

Educational Innovations has an online catalogue of their science equipment that they have been supplying to students, teachers, scientists and tinkerers from around the globe.

This Stirling Engine page, from Japan, offers the history, theory, construction plans and links to other engine sites

Citizen Science Projects in Ornithology from Cornell University. Get involved in their many projects.

Bioacoustics The instruments & techniques for sound recording and analysis.

Tapping Into Fog Using a simple technology villagers along the coast of Chile are able to harvest drinking water from fog. Fog Catcher Photos from Ecuador. How a bumpy beetle collects its own water.

The seeds of the Moringa Oleifera tree help in water purification.

There has been some research done with simple solar pasteurization of drinking water. 2L plastic soda-pop bottles are filled with bacterially contaminated water and placed in the sun. A combination of ultraviolet radiation and temperature rise makes the water suitable for human consumption. Or at least, better than the raw water. See UNESCO's report on Solar Disinfection Studies