Right. I'm bored.

[teddywolf]

Tell me about something to do (online or offline) and give me a good reason to do it. Things I can't do soonish will be saved for future consideration.

Comments

[kayre]

Help me figure out how to build a small mechanical-action pump (to operate a small fountain). My daughter wants to figure out a way to build a fountain that would operate for, say, 5 minutes, with no batteries or electricity. Volume could be very very small. Windup, counterweight-driven, anything-- the more elegant-looking, the better.

Why? because it's a challenge, and would help a teenager follow up on a spark of curiosity and creativity!

(found you reading callahanians/friends, btw.. we have a bunch of friends in common)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Yup, I've seen you round :-)

I am not up on my mechanical engineering. That said, it occurs to me that a fillable resevoir that is placed high up in a fountain space would let gravity do the work. If you want something fancier I'd say have a resevoir of water that is fillable and sealable and use a pressurized air container on slow release to force the water up.

But like I said, I wouldn't be good at designing such, just thinking of a method or two.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You could hack together a super soaker for the pressurization chamber. . .

[thunderstorms.livejournal.com]

I've done that before. In 8th grade, we were put into different groups and were given assignments. That was mine. It's hard and complicated and I would never want to re-live the hell of 7 8th graders trying to figure out where to put things.

I'm not a real engineer, but...

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Take a liter-and-a-half plastic water bottle, the tiny straw from a WD-40 bottle, and some tubing. Shrink-heat the tubing to mold to the lid of the bottle and to the straw. Turn the bottle upside-down and the water will take forever to get out. It'll also blow the tube off one end or the other if you don't bring a lot of duct tape into the project.

Now you don't even need a wind-up -- just a bucket, lots of duct tape, and some crud from the hardware store.

-not quite Mister Wizard, Dante