By Andrew Liszewski

The majority of people who are afraid of what will happen when CERN’s large hadron collider is finally put into operation probably have no idea what it really is, or what it’s designed to do. But what better way to educate the masses on the intricacies of the world’s largest science experiment than through an intricately detailed pop-up book? That’s what made me the amateur surgeon I am today!

Voyage To The Heart Of Matter – The Atlas Experiment At CERN was written by Emma Sanders, though it’s probably the paper engineering skills of Anton Radevsky that will make this a must-have Christmas gift for everyone from amateur physicists to the scientists actually working on the ATLAS experiment. But since it won’t be available until the end of November for about $33, it might be cutting it a bit close for the gift giving season.

[ Voyage To The Heart Of Matter - The Atlas Experiment At CERN ] VIA [ Shiny Shiny ]

If you were the type of kid that would get in trouble all the time, because you blew things up or mixed the wrong chemical elements, and if now you have a child who is like you in your early ages, or if you just have a boring job, which makes you miss a lot the childhood days? You can try some scientist websites which will make your time pass faster, and entertain you in an “academical” manner. You can unleash the mad scientist inside you and you can try having fun with experiments, at home.
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Evil Mad Scientist website has as motto “Making the World a Better Place, One Evil Mad Scientist at a Time”, and they present weekly a do it yourself project, which are more advanced than those presented on the old website. This means that you will have to go and purchase some things to create the projects they present on the website, but the ideas are pretty cool and they stimulate your creativity. Another similar website, which offers a lot of do it yourself project is Joey Green’s Mad Scientist Experiments website; there, Joey Green offers hundreds of unknown uses for well known products, which means a lot of innovation. The science experiment section is a treasure, and if offers hundreds of interesting and entertaining experiments to do at home.

If you want to host a mad scientist party there is a website which offers you all the information you have to know about hosting this kind of parties, beginning with invitations and ending with an evil eye cake. If you and your friends gather at such parties, there is a website where you can send the results of your experiments. The Public Broadcasting Service hosts a popular kids show, Zoom Science, and it associates the website fun with the experiments on the screen, and it also allows you to contribute with your experiments’ results.Steve Spangler also performs experiments for a local TV show, and he also uploads them on the website. The website features funny and simple experiments, and be sure that you will find there experiments for the mad scientist inside you.

An interesting new type of websites is “ask a scientist” type, which relies on experts to offer answers to questions submitted by people on the website. These are very useful resources for projects where you will use a lot of technology information, and you want to use it correctly. Teachers have learnt to check if the projects are copied from the Internet, and now they appreciate more and more originality and creativity. Getting an expert’s answer in your homework could somehow be construed as cheating, but I see asking an expert a very mature and correct source of getting information. Even if you could read an entire book to find out Einstein’s equation’s history, it is infinite easier to ask an expert a specific question which will elucidate all the mystery around the topic you are interested in.

This kind of websites might receive daily few hundreds of questions, so don’t expect to get an answer in the first five minutes after you post the question on the website. It is very important for the experts to have time to get exact information about the matter you are interested in, because it is obvious that they are not ambulant encyclopaedias and they also need time to give accurate answers.There is a tremendous amount of information available on the web, and most people don’t find the information they need because they can’t properly use a search engine.  Wikipedia-like projects are great ideas of general knowledge, and they offer a very vast amount of useful information, but there are errors too. It is very important to use the proper keyword when looking up for information on Internet. If all these community knowledge wikis can’t help you find the info you need, you can choose an “ask a scientist” website, but make this decision carefully, in order to get the best answers for your questions. It is important to choose a website with well prepared experts, who have studied a lot in interest domain.

The best “ask a scientist”websites are those run by government, special domain agencies or universities. There are a lot of websites associated to publications. There are also science websites which present daily news and progress in technology around the world or in specific areas.

Remember making that science experiment where you have to drop a contraptions that houses an egg? Oh yeah. It’s a classic. Well, the geeks at Popular Mechanics did a similar thing expect with a Dell notebook, a Nikon camera, and a Nokia cell phone. Results? The notebook fared a hell of a lot better from an eight foot drop than the pricey Durabook I tested and broke.

The original article is worth your time but the skinny is that tennis balls and foam board was used to protect the notebook from an eight-foot drop. The end product doesn’t look that bad either. For the cell phone, an off-the-shelf food vacuum sealer created a water-tight casing that works but also seals in the power outlet. Both those solutions saved the devices. The camera didn’t follow the same path though.

The Coolpix camera was encased in a water-tight enclosure made out of PVC for the zoom lens, a plastic bag for the body, and a bit of foam taped onto the sides. The makeshift case kept the camera dry, but a drop test jarred the lens just enough to mess it up.

Anyway, give the whole thing a read. I am definitely going to use the phone trick next time I go fishing. It’s about time I use that vacuum sealer we got for our wedding years ago anyway.