Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Old Magazines




This past weekend I was cleaning the basement and found a couple of boxes full of old magazines. One box had old Astronomy magazines. The other one had old Scientific American magazines, I kept these for the Amateur Scientists column. Also in this box was Science Probe - The Amateur Scientist's Journal. I have 8 issues of Science Probe, I am not sure how many were released. I believe that a new journal for Amateur scientist's should be released again. There is Make magazine and it is a wonderful magazine, but it does not have enough science related articles. I have tried to search for Science Probe on the net but have found very little about it.

Also in this box is the CD of the Scientific American - The Amateur Scientist 2.0 - the complete collection. I can't remember what company this was purchased from. It has all the experiments from the Scientific American - The Amateur Scientist column. It is quite a treasure to find. Along with this I have the book "The Amateur Scientist" by C.L.Stong and "The Amateur Biologist" by Shawn Carlson. The CD contains old experiments with old information but a lot of the biology and chemistry experiments can still be done. The other experiments that include electronics and hardware that you may not find anymore may be hard to do or will require some tinkering to make happen. One thing I would like to do is create the electron microscope and attach it to a computer. I have always wanted to play with an electron microscope. I think you can still get the CD from the Society for Amateur Scientists. They can be found at sas.org.

I will be spending the next little while looking through this little piece of treasure that I found and dream of my next experiments.

Friday, March 20, 2009

My Lab


This is a picture of my lab right now. It is some what cluttered. I have small and large bins, parts drawers. They hold all kinds of things, such as rubber stoppers, corks, magnets, marbles, Y tubes, connecting tubes, lenses, etc. There is a couple of shelves that hold chemicals. The top shelve (not pictured) holds lab equipment.

In picture 9) on the right side you see I cut out the tops of juice and milk containers and used them as bins. They are placed in a metal shelving unit with the shelves about 1 foot apart. They hold all sorts of lab items. Test tubes, petri dishes, glass casters, cheese cloth, cotton balls and pads, electronics, plastic and glass jars, etc. The good thing about these is I can keep collecting filling them as I go along and they are free.