Compressed Air Rocket

Compressed Air Rocket
Rick Schertle | Make Vol. 15- 2008 | Pdf | 13 pgs | 4 mb

PAPER, TAPE, COMPRESSED AIR... LIFT-OFF!
Blow your friends away as you send this 25-cent
rocket hundreds of feet in the air. You can build this
easy launcher and rocket with common hardware store
items in an afternoon.

All the parts for this simple but impressive air rocket and
launcher are cheap and easy to find. Building it is a breeze
and the modifications are endless. It's legal in a big city,
reusable, clean, and can be launched even in high winds
on a small field.

Believe me, folks are quite taken by the 200- to 300-foot
flights fueled by 18 or so bicycle pumps of compressed air.
Whether you're launching on your own or with a whole
group of rocketeers, watch the crowds gather ... 3,2,1,
and away!

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The Year People Learned to Fly

The Year People Learned to Fly
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the flight of the Gossamer Condor
Ben Shedd | Make Vol. 11- 2007 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 1 mb

One of the great home-built family maker projects
celebrated its 30th anniversary on Aug. 23, 2007:
the flight of the world's first truly successful
human-powered airplane, the Gossamer Condor.

The plane was designed and built by Dr. Paul B.
MacCready, along with his family and friends, on
weekends over a year's time in 1976-77. The goal
was to win the first Kremer Prize, a $100.000
reward for the first human-powered airplane that
could take off using human power, fly over a 10-foot
marker, make a complete left turn and right turn
around two pylons spaced half a mile apart, and
then fly over the 10-foot marker again at the end
of the mile-long flight.
...

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The Little Cart That Couldn't

The Little Cart That Couldn't
Wind-powered vehicle claims look like hot air
Charles Platt | Make Vol. 11- 2007 | Pdf | 7 pgs | 2 mb

Can a wind-driven vehicle outrun a tailwind? A Florida tinkerer named
Jack Goodman claims it can, and he put a video on YouTube to prove it. Some
sailing enthusiasts became convinced that he was on to something, while
others were equally sure it was a hoax - and I decided to put it to the test.

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The iConveyor

The iConveyor
John Edgar Park | Make Vol. 15- 2008 | Pdf | 6 pgs | 2 mb

The iConveyor is a simple motorized conveyer
belt with an RFID (radio frequency identification)
reader under the belt. It lets you visit websites
or load applications on your computer by simply
dropping a chip in the belt. Each wooden chip
has an RFID tag attached to it. The reader picks
up the unique ID number of the tag and sends
the number to your personal computer, through
a cable. A computer program written for the
iConveyor looks up the name of the website or
application assigned to the ID number and loads it.

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Vortex Cannons

Vortex Cannons
Edwin Wise | Make Vol. 15- 2008 | Pdf | 9 pgs | 3 mb

DOING DONUTS
A smoke ring, or vortex, is a beguiling thing to watch:
a coherent, moving structure made out of thin air. Here
are 3 cannons that can throw these "chunks of air"
across a room.

I'd been aware of vortex cannons for quite some time,
mostly as an interesting toy, and after I kept stumbling on
the concept while touring the web, I decided I had to build
my own. There's something fascinating about taking a
substance as ubiquitous and amorphous as air and trans-
forming it into a coherent and persistent structure, almost
like a crystal. I also hoped to find some use for my cannon,
perhaps to propel scents or give the touch of a ghost in
a haunted house.
...

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