Chemistry lab

Manplus2 built this university chemistry lab. I really like how he captured a lot of the details found in all of the various labs I've ever taught in.


Details include the periodic table, and a waste container for disposing broken glass, needles, and other sharps.

Here's an eye wash and safety shower.

Here our student is working in the hood. Hey, shouldn't he be wearing goggles?

BELLE-II-detector

An international team of scientists and engineers are working together at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan. Electrons and positrons are slammed together in a particle accelerator at very high energies. The result of these collisions will be studied using the BELLE-II-detector to learn about CP symmetry violation. The idea here is that the equations used to describe matter suggest that you should be able to switch a particle with it's anti-particle, and the Charge and Parity should work out the same. However, everything around us seems to be made of matter, not antimatter. So why, if the equations suggest that these should be equally probable. This is one of the things that the Belle experiment is examining.

This LEGO model was on display last year at the funding agency of the KEK. I don't know the name of the builder.

Ethanol

Bunnyman came up with this LEGO depiction of ethanol.

Seven minutes of triumph

I've previously noted Apojove's (i.e. Stephen Pakbaz's) Curiosity rover, here we see it being lowered from the sky crane, what mission planners had dubbed the 'seven minutes of terror'. Stephen offered his rover as a Cuusoo project and it achieved the crucial 10,000 votes. I hope they make this, as this seems perfectly in line with LEGO's and Cuusoo's ideals - given past LEGO/NASA collaborations and the two initial Cuusoo Japan sets. The only sticking point is that by the time a set gets made, public interest in the rover may have waned. I also wanted to highlight this interview with Stephen on Brothers-Brick about a month ago.

Perpetuum Mobile

A perpetual motion machine has long been a dream for many. If you could start one up, you could hook it up to a generator and have free electricity forever. The problem is, it just can't work, as it would violate the laws of thermodynamics. The first law could be construed as "You can't win" (that is, you can't get extra energy from nowhere) and the second is "You can't even break even" (entropy of the system increases, so it will run down due, for instance, to friction). Hmm, come to think of it, those are also the first two laws of Las Vegas. Anyway, this hasn't stopped people from trying. One scheme to produce a perpetual motion device is the overbalanced wheel, first proposed by Bhaskara in the 12th century. In this scheme there is a spinning wheel with weights on the spokes. On one side the weights are farther from the axis, but as these spin around to the other side they move closer in to the axis. A weight further from the axis produces a greater force, or torque. Since the weights on the left side in the picture below are further out than those on the right, this should produce a downward pull on the left side, and the wheel will spin counter-clockwise. Unfortunately it turns out that the energy produced by the weights moving down on the left is used to lift them up on the right and also to move them out from the center, and so no new energy can be produced. What's more, even if you give this a push and start it moving, friction will slow it to a stop. That doesn't stop Maarten Steurbaut's Perpetuum Mobile from being a beautiful and intriguing LEGO creation, though.

Difference Engine

In 1822 Charles Babbage described the plan for a difference engine - a mechanical device that would use turning geared columns to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions. Due to technical difficulties and cost overruns, it was never completed, and Babbage moved on to his analytical engine (unfortunately for mechanical computing, also never completed). Today, through the magic of LEGO, we can see his dream realized, the 3-digit difference engine by Aecarol.



And here you can see it in action.

Digi-Comp II

Yesterday I discussed the Digi-Comp I, an educational toy that was a mechanical computer. The same company followed up with what was probably a more fun version, the Digi-Comp II. In this version, marbles rolled down a ramp, and depending on how you set different gates, they would roll to the left or right, flipping switches as they went, leading to the output of a mathematical problem. A bit like the game Plinko on the Price is Right, but the balls aren't just bouncing randomly. Here's a good explanation on a giant version. Brdavis built a LEGO version.



Here you can see it in action with his explanation.

Digi-Comp I

A simple computer works by combining binary bits of data via logic operations. 0 OR 0 gives 0, 0 OR 1 gives 1, 1 OR 1 gives 1. 0 AND 0 gives 0, 0 AND 1 gives 0, 1 AND 1 gives 1, and so forth. Clever combination of AND, OR, NOT and IF functions allow you to perform mathematical and other operations on multi-digit binary numbers. Do this millions of times on a silicon chip and you've got the laptop I'm typing on right now. Before silicon chips, transistors and vacuum tubes, there were mechanical computers that work by physically moving switches or wheels to indicate the changes in value. An extremely simple example is the odometer on your car (if it's not electronic). Every so many rotations of the axle leads the tenth-mile wheel to move forward. Once that wheel turns all the way around, it causes the mile wheel to move forward one click. Once that goes around from 0 to 9, it causes the ten mile wheel to move forward one click. If you go 100,000 miles, or a million, or however many digits the odometer has (I'll have to go out to my car and look), the whole register clears and it flips back around to zero. This, of course, is an extremely simple mechanism only built to count in a forward direction. The early history of computing is all about the development of mechanical adding machines and other calculators.

This leads us to the Digi-Comp I. This was an educational toy sold in the 1960's where you move two levers back and forth, and depending on how you 'programmed' it, that is, how you arranged a series of wires, a little counter would give you the result of a simple mathematical operation.



Recently Nico71 built a LEGO Digi-Comp I.



You can watch it in action serving as a counter.

Neil Armstrong

Several people have made MOCs remembering Neil Armstrong after news of his death.

MooseBot.


Si-MOCs.


TheBricks.


Chiukeung.


The-Flash98.

Ornithology

Ornithology is the branch of zoology that focuses specifically on birds (Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Aves). Ornithology is a fun science in that anyone can get involved. I grew up with a field guide to North American birds and a pair of binoculars sitting next to our kitchen window where we could sit and watch the various birds (and squirrels) coming to our bird feeders. You can tell that DeTomaso is a bird lover as well, as he has made a large number of very accurate and lifelike models of different birds. He's done over 20 so far, and keeps on going. He's proposed this as a series of actual LEGO sets, which you can suppor on Cuusoo.

Scarlet Tanager



Robin



Goldfinch



Kingfisher

Neil Armstrong 1930-2012

I just saw the news that Neil Armstrong passed away today at the age of 82. Here's Balakov's LEGO reproduction of a famous photo from the first moon landing. It's actually a photo of Buzz Aldrin, but it was taken by Armstrong.

Shuttle launch

Kevin Miller made this mosaic of the Space Shuttle.

One small step for man

CustomBricks made this rendition of a footprint from the Apollo moon landings (seen via the blog Lego Diem).

Polymerase Chain Reaction

DNA replication is the process that your cells use to copy their genetic blueprint. This occurs every time cells divide, so that each new cell has a complete set of instructions. The process involves unzipping the two complementary strands of the parent DNA, and then using free nucleic acids and an enzyme called a DNA polymerase to construct new strands to pair up with each of the parent strands.

Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, is a process to run this replication artificially in a laboratory. This is often used to analyze DNA samples. Typically analysts get only a very small amount of a DNA sample, and by using PCR they can create a large amount of identical DNA to study. This might be used to identify a blood sample or other evidence at a crime scene, in something like paternity testing, or to identify the DNA of a bacteria or virus to diagnose disease. The Abbott m2000(R) is an automated instrument to run PCR testing to identify various disease agents. Dave and John from briXwerX have made a number of m2000 models on commission for Abbot Molecular.

Newton's cradle

A Newton's cradle (here in LEGO by Monsterbrick) is a device that demonstrates the principle of the conservation of momentum. Five steel balls are suspended from a frame so that they are just touching. As the ball on the left is lifted up and let go, it swings towards the other balls. When it strikes them it stops, but that momentum has to go somewhere. It is transferred through the balls to the right hand ball, which swings out. As this reaches the top of its arch it swings back, repeating the pattern. If there were no loss of energy due to friction this could go back and forth forever.

Launch Complex 39A

Mick Chan built this amazing version of Launch Complex 39A (more pics).

Parkes Observatory

We are all familiar with optical telescopes that allow you to see magnified views of distant stars and planets. Visible light is only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, though. Electromagnetic energy is a series of energies that travel as waves and they differ in their wavelength (which relates to energy). Visible light is just that section of wavelengths that our eyes can interpret. Radio is another portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with longer wavelengths (lower energies) than visible light. Stars produce energies across the electromagnetic spectrum, and to fully study them we should observe all of these different types of energy. So in addition to optical telescopes, we need other instruments. One example is the 64 meter radio telescope at the Parkes Observatory in Australia. Ross Crawford has built a couple of different LEGO versions.

Movin' rockets around

Vincez01 built the Saturn V launch pad and the Space Shuttle crawler-transporter.

July 20, 1969

Legorevolution celebrated the Apollo 11 moon landing. There's so much to love about this model. In addition to the great figure, note how he did the surface of the moon, and the frame includes Armstrong's famous quote and micro versions of the Saturn V, the lunar lander and the command module.

Flight at Kitty Hawk

Waarkjær shows us the Wright Brothers' first flight.