Family Fun With Science
While many conventions and fairs are devoted to making the fantastic seem within reach, World Maker Faire-which made its third annual stop at the New York Hall of Science during the weekend of Sept. 29-30-was devoted to making the practical seem out of this world.
The family-friendly fair, a creation of Make magazine now in its sixth year, took over the interior of the museum as well as the outdoor grassy area for a wide variety of projects for adults and children of all ages.
Tents set up throughout the outdoor area served as mini-villages devoted to various do-it-yourself projects.
One such area, the Maker Shed, was devoted to kits and tools needed for such projects, as well as quick lessons in such needed skills as soldering.
Also being shown off at the Shed were 3D printing systems, which are very different than your standard office printers. One of the more popular systems, created by Brooklyn-based MakerBot, consists of a box with a nozzle that extrudes a corn-based plastic heated to 200º C.
Three-dimensional schematics are created on a computer and fed to the printer, which then reads the schematic and creates a three-dimensional mockup.
At the booth, MakerBot had a perfect demonstration of the things you can do with one of its $1,700 models, some relatively inexpensive circuitry and some elbow grease: an MP3 player enclosed inside a piece of MakerBot-made plastic that looked exactly like a cassette tape.
At another station, Tommy Acierno of StetchUp (a program you can use for 3D schematics) showed detailed, to-scale 3D printouts of homes featured in old Sears Roebuck catalogs.
While it may look like a hobbyists’ playtoy, 3D printers have realstory world applications: according to a MakerBot spokesperson, companies such as Hasbro and JBL, as well as the U.S. Army, have purchased MakerBot printers for use.
The circuitry for the player-and a host of other things-were also available. The Arduino Pavilion, located across the Faire, focused on the Arduino, a $35 board about the size of your hand that can be customized, programmed and modified to perform simple tasks such as recognizing temperature changes or sounds.
From the small to the very large
A portion of a grassy field inside the park was cordoned off for a giant, life-size version of the board game Mouse Trap.
It took 15 years for Mike Perez to construct the Rube Goldberg-esque machine out of spare parts from a junkyard, featuring bowling balls, pulleys, levels, and something called the “Brooklyn Tornado,” an homage to the 2007 Bay Ridge twister.
However, unlike the board game, the contraption finishes not by trapping a ball in a net, but by spectacularly crashing a two-ton safe onto a car.
Next door, an even larger stage featured the curious sight of 108 bottles of Coke Zero with PVC piping on top, signaling a staple of Maker Faire: the Coke and Mentos demonstration.
Created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, who run the educational website Eepybird.com, the demonstration uses over 600 pieces of the candy to create synchronized geysers.
Explaining the science behind the project, Grobe told the crowd that it’s not the ingredients inside the Mentos that make the soda spring up; rather, microscopic bumps on the surface of the candy interact with the pressurized beverage.
Grobe also had a message for the young children crowding the stage, looking to get wet: “Try this at home.”
For a slightly cleaner activity, children were encouraged to visit the first-ever Nerdy Derby. A creation of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the derby allowed children (with their parents’ help) to create wooden derby cars inspired by the Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby that raced on a miniature track.
Inventions indoors and out
A brief Sunday shower forced the crowd to race inside, where the New York Hall of Science building-constructed in 1964 for the World’s Fair-welcomed a glimpse of the not-too-distant future.
From lectures by such luminaries as New York Times tech columnist David Pogue to a version of the Korean pop hit “Gangnam Style” patrons could remix just by waving their hands, there was something for everyone: even a PancakeBot (which spit out silver dollar-sized pancakes gobbled up by patrons).
When the rain subsided, attendees returned outside as smaller groups showed off their wares. Among them were Mark Zappasodi, who brought a homemade, “steampunk”-style brewery that can make up to 10 gallons of beer every three weeks, and Lee Free of Brooklyn Bike Beat, who used an Arduino to create a bikepowered drum kit which he later used to perform on-stage.
One of the youngest inventors at Maker Faire was eight-year-old Grant Becker, who showed off an “amphibike” designed for travel on land or water.
Inspired by a previous visit to Maker Faire, he dreamt up the amphibike as a way to allow residents of Third World countries prone to flooding to travel to school or to the doctor.
He told the Times Newsweekly that “we’re going to see if the Red Cross wants it.”
M.J. Becker, Grant’s mother, stated that other children are coming up to his booth and getting the same inspiration.
“[The child says] ‘what about that thing I was thinking,’ and the dad says ‘yeah,’ and the mom says ‘let’s do it,'” she stated.
