DIY Projects

This is a DIY project waiting to happen.

The combusting stick of wood you see in the picture to the right is brought to you by the guys at MIT. They’ve come up with an ingenious, very inexpensive way to capture solar energy. They’ve built a parabolic dish out of cheap alumnium tubing and lined it with cheap flexible mirror. This creates a focal point that when pointed at the sun gets extremely hot, concentrating the sunlight by a factor of 1,000. Think of melting steal, and you’re about right.

At the focal point of the dish, they’ve run a coil of metal tubing with water running through it. The water gets flash boiled, creating steam. This steam can be used for whatever you need: heat, cooling, electricity, sauna…

Video, Pictures, and the original story.

I’d love to see this hooked up to the Green Steam Engine, which is a small, easy to build steam engine that can be easily hooked up to an electric generator.

A few people have asked about the picture wall I made for Amy’s Christmas present. Here it is:

The most time-consuming part of the project was creating the design for the arrangment of the pictures. The hardest part was actually putting the pictures on the wall. It wouldn’t have been so hard if the hooks on the backs of all the frames had been the same place, but they seemed to be randomly placed on there. My method for getting the frames in the correct place was actually Amy’s idea. I’d fold the hook down and tape a push pin with the point sticking out right where the nail would touch the hook. Then I could just push the frame where I wanted it and the pin stuck in the wall. Simple but very effective.