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Box of Kittens

The teens at Paschalville used our PicoCricket kit and made a DIY tilt sensor to make this box that would meow when shaken. 

It was an awesome opportunity to talk about circuits, sensors, coding, and kittens. 

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Little Bits, Morse Code, & Libraries

We’ve been using Little bits and Morse Code to get teens at different libraries across the city of Philadelphia to talk to each other.

This is one of the video messages within the series of communications.

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Many Many Too Many Cats 2 - Johnny on the Run

I’ve been lucky enough to help facilitate the teens make this stop motion animation at The Free Library’s Paschalville Neighborhood Library.

We’ve had over twenty participants work on the Too Many Cats Trilogy at different times but it’s been spearheaded by Jessica and Nick. They both wrote it, helped shoot it, and voice it.

We’re currently working the third movie in the series!

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Many Many Too Many Cats 1

A story about the dangerous and troublesome life of Johnny Catsmith ~ A man who has many many too many cats. 

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Playing, Learning, and Making things light up in City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.

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Makerspace @ The Tech: A How To Cookbook

A comprehensive yet playful manual outlining the hands-on design challenge activities developed by Maker Corps members and The Tech's Learning Department for "Makerspace" 2013 programs.

A guide we built at the Tech Museum of Innovation for anyone who wished to replicate our programming!

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A sampler video of all the awesome programs Lindsay Balfour, Bridget Rigby, Jessica Henricks, and I prototyped the summer of 2013 at the Tech Museum of Innovation.

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This past week at Makerspace guests were able to partake in two activities at our Wild Wild Tech cardboard carnival. As our finale, we asked guests to create a ping pong ball launcher and take aim at inflatable paper targets they also made! 

First, visitors built, iterated, and reiterated their own ping pong projectile launchers then put them to the test at our practice range. When testing the launcher, guests began to see how is to fulfill design challenges such as holding the ping pong ball, being able to aim straight, and the power of each launch. One young girl stayed the entire 2 hours to make sure her slingshot was more powerful than the last. 

After iterating slingshots, catapults, and launchers, guests made paper inflatable targets to fit on our target gallery range. Guests were then able to take aim at their own paper targets. The gallery was a gathering of creative paper inflatables! Examples include Evil Tofu, a waffle, a banana, an alien, a spinning target flower, a "Don't Hit Me" sign, and more! 

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With this Makerspace we saw an opportunity to build off of our previous Makerspace program Aerial Antics. Aerial Antics was a program where guests made flying hovercrafts and tested them out in our wind tubes. We challenged guests to keep their hovercrafts flying within our wind tubes as long as possible.

This week we decided to take our challenge to the next level by adding LEDs and creating light paintings. We were inspired by some of the artbot and wind tube innovations we had seen at other museums. So we thought it would be cool to combine them by innovating artbots in the air!

Guests were invited to build, test, and iterate their flying objects at our inside air tube. Visitors then added LEDs to make their flying objects unique and iterated their designs. After plenty of fantastic failures and innovative redesigns, guests went outside The Tech Studio to make light paintings with their UFOs in the darkness of The Tech Atrium.

In The Tech Atrium guests placed their LED covered hovercrafts into our wind tube and let them fly. As visitors' UFOs were hovering, we took long-exposure photographs. These long-exposure photographs created beautiful and rich light paintings and revealed the hovercrafts' flight paths! Visitors were amazed by the light paintings their UFOs made, and so were we!

Many guests made alterations to their UFOs to change their craft's light painting. Some added extra propellers, tails, lights, and more. 

Many guests also named their hovercrafts. Our personal favorite was Sparkly Sunshine! This past week of Makerspace made us feel like Sparkly Sunshine at 100,000 lumen All of the long exposure photographs from the previous Tuesday, Thursday, andSaturday of our UFOs Makerspace can be seen on our Facebook. If you would like to create your own light paintings at home, Glowdoodle is an awesome and free application that can help you get started.

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This past week at Makerspace visitors were invited to make hovercraft designs and test how they float in our wind tubes.

We were again impressed with the innovation of The Tech's visitors. They cut and taped together materials including straws, strawberry baskets, coffee filters, pipe cleaners, and even plastic eggs into many configurations. With all the variables it was fun to predict how a hovercraft would behave in the wind tube before it was released into the air stream.

But the designing didn't stop after a maker's first flight. Makers iterated their designs over and over as we challenged them to build hovercrafts that could stay within the wind tube or move in unusual ways. Visitors tinkered with various materials and forms until they found the right balance of lift, created by catching the upward blowing air, and weight.

Many guests named and decorated their flying objects as well. One boy called his hovercraft Super Craft because it had a red cape. Another guest decorated her hovercraft like a Jellyfish. 

We were inspired by the Wind Tube guide from the Exploratorium Tinkering Studio. We expanded from that idea to reconstruct the base to be taller, have a powerful airflow, a window for easily placing hovercrafts, and ultimately create a stunning presence. All of the materials were found in the Tech Studio to reconstruct the base with exception to the Polycarbonite plastic for the tubes.

We worked together to solve problems along the way: how to elevate the fan from the ground for powerful air flow, what to make the base out of, how to hold the tube to the base, how to use minimal tools, and more. We originally started with cardboard as the base, but decided to move to the familiar Thinker Linkers as a stronger and easier customizable support for the tube! From that point, the innovative process had begun and we began to come up with solutions. Paint stirrers to hold the tube to the base, zipties to lock the Thinker Linkers in place, and dowels to hold the fan and lock into notches of the Thinker Linkers. Lots of innovative tinkering from the Maker Corps crew! If you would like to create your own wind table at home, The Exploratorium's Tinkering Studio has an awesome guide here: http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/tinkeringsite/files/2010/10/Wind_Tubes.pdf

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This past week at Makerspace we challenged guests to the ultimate collaborative game!

The game was called The MaKey MaKey Chain Chain Game and visitors were asked to divide into teams and compete against each other to complete the most circuits within 60 seconds. When targets lit up on our scoreboard, teams had to stretch across The Tech Studio to complete the corresponding circuit. 

In order to complete these circuits, visitors had to join together in massive human chains. When human chains were not long enough, guests used an array of tinfoiled objects as conductive extenders. 

Guests were amazed by the fact that electricity could pass through all of their bodies to complete a circuit.

Guests were also surprised by how much physical exertion The MaKey MaKey Chain Chain Game required. One mother even excitedly explained, "I would have never expected to break a sweat at The Tech! But I'm glad I did".

We used a MaKey MaKey and the programming language called Processing to design our game. For more information about the MaKey MaKey check here, and for more information on the programming language check here. 

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We challenged guests to engineer strong and durable structures using only paper and masking tape. Visitors were amazed by the strength that could be created by simply rolling papers and folding triangles.

Structures were put to the ultimate test when challenged to protect ice cream cones from various falling weights (also made out of paper)!

Guests would count down " 3, 2, 1 … ice cream!" and watch in peril as the weights came crashing down. When paper structures were crushed by the weights, explosion sounds were triggered by a pressure sensor and Arduino.

One girl named her structure "The Wawesome Pyramid". She explained to us that "Wawesome" was a new word she invented that meant both weird and awesome! Not only did she get a Maker Kenny high five for having the most creative structure name, but she also got a high five for beating all the paper weight drops. One family's structure was so strong it was able to hold up Maker Lindsay's full weight!

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This past week we invited guests to come to The Tech Studio and interface paper switches with a computer game.

Visitors made switches with paper and copper tape. After creating them, they were able to test them by connecting them to a PicoBoard with alligator clips.

The PicoBoard hooked into our computers, controlling a game of Whack-A-Bot made in the programming language Scratch. Whenever guests closed their switches, they scored points and the corresponding robots in the game disappeared.

We saw some pretty innovative switches this week. Many guests made awesome paper fortune tellers, cranes, paper puppets, and so much more. And one guest even created a ball-machine-like switch!

The PicoBoard was developed by our friends at Sparkfun. And Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT .

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! Makerspace celebrated the first week of July glamouring the sky with red, white, and blue projectiles! 

Guests were invited to paper craft their own rockets and use our patriotic launchers to send their rockets in flight. After countdown, surprise firework sound effects littered the air from an electronic pressure sensor connected to an arduino under the bottle launcher! Crackle, Crackle, POP! Visitors were astounded as they watched their stomp rockets fly, float, or flutter in the sky! 

Some guests iterated and reiterated their rocket designs based off their launch. Visitors would re-engineer the rocket cone tips, tape up holes, lighten the load with less decorations, or snip off long streamers creating too much drag on launch! 

An unexpected event also happened when some kids took their Patriotic Projectile to the Hands On workshop and animated it on as an automata! Super creative!

If you want instructions on how to make your own PVC launchers and paper rockets check it out here.

3, 2, 1 ... BLAST OFF! 

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So many Makers in the kitchen! This week, over 500 guests visited the Makey Kitchen and found their inner creative musician.

We transformed The Tech Studio into a musical food lab, and used the incredibly awesome MaKey MaKey to turn household fruits, vegetables, and even people into fun music-making tools.

Visitors were blown away as they used their bodies to complete circuits and trigger various drum sounds with vegetables. Some people didn't believe our MaKey Kitchen was stocked with real fruits and veggies, but we assure you they were real!

We encouraged people to collaboratively complete the circuits. We completed a music-making circuit with 33 people holding hands in one human chain! One family of 4 even created a family chain that had their baby’s foot playing the sounds. After guests got their fill of food and music, they created their own musical keyboards by drawing circuits. Once plugged into the MaKey MaKey jam station, their graphite drawings functioned like real keyboards since graphite is also conductive.

The energy of our conductive Makers has made our Makerspace an electrifying success! 

For more MaKey MaKey info, examples, and tutorials, visit the official MaKey MaKey homepage. The MaKey MaKey was developed by Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum based on research they accomplished at the MIT Media Lab.

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Our first week of Makerspace was a squishy one to say the least! We chose to create a collaborative squishy circuits universe.

Squishy Circuits are simple circuits made using batteries, Play-Doh, and homemade insulating dough to compose a current to power LEDs, buzzers, and motors. Play-Doh is conductive due to its high salt content while the insulating dough holds resistant qualities because of sugar. Rather than using wire, both types of dough can be used to complete a circuit and it’s easy to change parts and figure out basic electronics!

Guests were able to get hands on with the basics of circuitry. We encouraged kids and parents to work together to build squishy creations and add them to an illustrated solar system we had laid out on the table. Guests sculpted planets, aliens, asteroids, animals, and rocket ships!

Some of our guests even came up with names and stories for their squishy creations. One guest called his squishy creation a "Genetically Modified Giant Space Ameoba that could communicate across the universe in Python code.” Another called his the "Blinking Light Factory at the End of the Universe."

Squishy Circuits instructions, kits, projects, recipes, and more can be found on the Squishy Circuits homepage. Squishy Circuits was developed at The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota by AnnMarie Thomas.

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So my sister Angela and I decided to build a clubhouse together. The first half of the video is us interviewing each other. The second half is the showing off of the clubhouse - which includes an interactive disco party box and a talking party sandwich! Lots of fun! This was my freely developed project as part of the Maker Corps program!