Ralph J. Coppola --- r_j_coppola<at>hotmail.com
SAS Disclaimer
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Feature
A
few weeks ago I was re-reading the SAS E-Bulletin from 27
July 2001 (Scroll down to “Searching for F. B. Lee”). In it, Shawn Carlson was
reminiscing about F. B. Lee—“a true legend in the world of homebrew
instrumentation.” I did a quick Google search on his name and found that he
founded a company called Science
First.
The search also turned up some interesting DIY articles that he wrote which
leads me to the purpose of this Feature.
The
articles resided on Science First’s Web site but were not linked to from any of
their current pages. For example:
http://www.sciencefirst.com/artcls/6.pdf
I
thought that I was missing something, so I sent an e-mail to Science First and
inquired about the missing links. They promptly replied:
“Thank
you for your interest, but we no longer support these articles on our website.”
They,
also, told me that their legal department told them to remove the articles in
case someone might use the information.
If
F.B. Lee was still alive, I don’t thank that he would be too happy about this
decision.
“Fear
of litigation has made suppliers unwilling to deal with amateurs. The fear of
law suits has also diverted some nice stuff away from people into the dump. It’s
simply hard to buy something that you could possibly get hurt on.” F.B. Lee.
All
of which brings us to the fact that the Web is not “etched in stone”. What is
there today may not be there tomorrow. If you find something of great interest
--- download it --- don’t just rely on a bookmark.
Steve
Hanson’s vacuum site, the Bell Jar, has some material on
F.B. Lee:
An example of page disappear
This project was originally located at www.alumni.ca/~farese/#toc but when I recently
tried to view it I found that it was gone.
Fortunately,
there is a Web service called The
Way Back Machine that tries to archive much of the Web. And that’s where I
found the missing document A
New Approach to Water Purification.
And,
yes I downloaded a copy.
Wanderings
Take
a little bit of yttrium oxide and throw in some barium carbonate and cupric oxide and you end up with your
own home-made-superconductor.
Yttrium
Oxide MSDS sheet
Barium Carbonate MSDS
sheet
Cupric Oxide MSDS
sheet
International
Chemical Safety Cards (ICSC)
The NIOSH Pocket Guide to
Chemical Hazards
Morning Coffee Physics is Jasper Palfree’s blog about
physics.
DIY
Science at Morning Coffee Physics.
Science Base --- David Bradley’s science blog.
Stupid
Science from Science Base.
The Science
Page --- Mark Csele’s personal memoirs of his adventures in science
and how he got started in science and electronics. [This site is well worth
a visit! Editor.]
Bill
Beaty’s traffic waves might prove to be an
interesting area of further investigation.
Brian
Manning’s article covering how An amateur built a ruling
engine to produce a diffraction
grating for use in a spectrohelioscope can be found in the Instruments and Imaging Section of The British Astronomical Association’s web site.
Scilab is a free
open source scientific software package, similar to MATLAB, for
numerical computations providing a powerful open computing environment for
engineering and scientific applications. Download
your free copy of Scilab 5.1.1.
PINOUTS.RU is a collection of hardware interfaces of modern and obsolete
hardware, including pinouts of ports, expansion
slots, and other connectors of computers and different digital devices.
PC Parallel Port
Interfacing Made Easy: Tomi Engdahl shows us some simple circuits and programs on how to use the PC
parallel port output capabilities.
Last
month I wanted to build a circuit for work. Basically, we have a computer
system that sends control signals to a radio transmitter. The software expects to
see certain responses for the different controls. If it alarms, things will just
not work. Since I do not have a transmitter in my office, I designed a
simulator based around 5 double-pole, double-throw relays. I did not want to
take the time and trouble to make a printed circuit board. For one thing, it
would be a mess as there would have been many crossed traces. So what did I do?
I reverted to Wire Wrap, a technology that I
haven’t used in years, but it worked out great! Check here for a quick lesson
on Wire
Wrapping Techniques
There
are many science related videos posted on the popular YouTube site. But EXTREME CAUTION must be exercised when
trying to duplicate some of the postings, as many are frauds and/or out right
dangerous. In fact I have started to collect a list of the fraudulent videos
which will be posted when I have collected a suitable number. So please send me
any that you think are suspicious --- or --- videos that you really like.
See
in the dark!
Bill
Beaty’s Dangerous
High-Speed Magnetic Levitation Maglev
MrfixitsRick and his Tesla CD Turbines and Homopolar
Motors
Mendocino
Motor ---
Solar Powered and Magnetically Levitated.
Lego
Motor --- Another Solar Powered Levitated Motor.
391
Homopolar Motors on YouTube
392,000
Science Videos on YouTube
52,900
Science Experiments on YouTube
607
Science Projects Ideas on YouTube
Here is an amazing video of a
bursting water filled balloon and here is a video of a water balloon
not exploding.
The Xerces Society is an international,
non-profit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of
invertebrates and their habitat.
iGEM is the international
genetically engineered machines competition. The objective of the competition
is to design and build an engineered biological system using DNA.
The Home
Chemistry Society (HCS) is devoted to helping those who are fascinated by nature
and science but who are not affiliated with a major university lab or large
company lab to meet others, acquire reagents and lab ware, perform experiments
and further their knowledge of chemistry.
Ideas for
building amateur research equipment
Build a DIY Magnetic
Stir Plate
Here is United Nuclear’s DIY
Ball Mill
Home Made Bunsen Burner
WorldWide
Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a
virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and
space-based telescopes in the world.
The sling was likely mankind's first, true
projectile weapon.
The Centre for
Alternative Technology, in the UK, tries to demonstrate practical ways of addressing the
problems of climate change, pollution and the waste of precious resources.
The MadSci Network represents a collective
cranium of scientists providing answers to your questions.
Life
without numbers --- The tiny Amazonian Piraha tribe is said to have no concept of
numbers, time or colors.
What
do you do if you catch an Ultra-Rare Megamouth Shark? You eat it, of course!
In
a way it’s amusing. On the political level some countries are “at each others
throats,” but on the academic level there appears to be co-operation. Take, for
example, the SESAME Project (Synchrotron-light for
Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East). By the way the
founding members are Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey
The
Kids Room
Mothers CAN do science! Here is a selection of
home science experiments for mothers of elementary school children. For example Water
Rockets are always a great hit with the kids.
The Nexus Research Group’s website is full of fun
scientific activities and ideas for parents, teachers and students of all ages.
It's 02:00, and with plenty more home
work to finish, and you discover that you have just used your last sheet of
graph paper! Don't worry …. Angelica says. Print your own!
The Science House’s mission is to increase student enthusiasm
for science by partnering with K-12 teachers to promote hands-on inquiry-based
science learning.
LabVIEW is a platform and
development environment for a visual programming language which is commonly used for data acquisition, instrument control, and industrial
automation. A student version of LabVIEW can be obtained from National Instruments.
Suppliers
and Stuff
Being
listed here does not constitute an endorsement by SAS or me of any information,
product or service.
The
Online Science Mall has a nice looking propane
/ butane Bunsen burner for $13.95 US.
On
The Lighter Side
The
Impossible Figure
From
The Far Side
The Alchemy Web Site
_______________________________
The
Citizen Scientist (05 June 2009).
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