Monthly Archives: March 2015

How I watched the solar eclipse: low-cost and safe

eclipse_4My experience with the solar eclipse on March 20, 2015 began one day before: A primary school teacher told me that the parents had to sign a form freeing the scool from any responsibility if their children get hurt from watching the eclipse. Furthermore, the parents were made responsible to equip their children with appropriate eclipse glasses. Children who didn’t bring the signed forme were refused to watch the eclipse. So what i’m asking myself is: What do these children learn? Do they learn something about nature and how to deal with extraordinary events or do they grow up in a climate of fear and learn how to delegate any responsibility to somebody else? Btw. the german word Angst also exists in english… Continue reading

Building a hot wire foam cutter – mechanics

hot_wire_cutter_0A hot wire foam cutter is a very useful tool to cut any type of styrofoam boards (expanded or extruded polystyrene) into the shape you want. The goal of this project is to build a low-cost cutter mostly from parts I found in my workshop that is able to do precise and straight cuts. Vertical and also miter cuts should be possible. This is a real hardware-only-project: no arduino, no programming, just plain mechanics and electrics: A thin wire is held in place and heated by a current. Continue reading