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Quality never goes out of style...The Curiosity Show, a 70s and 80s TV show from Oz that introduced kids to basic science, is enjoying a YouTube-based revival.
Thankfully, the creators got control of the content and have put their work up on YouTube.
The story at ABC.
Highly entertaining, and better yet, engaging curious young minds in the possibilities of the world around them. They even have some episodes in German, which I never knew. Generally aimed at the pre-high-school age, just using basic household props mainly. Puzzles, illusions, basic household chemistry and physics, etc.
Their YouTube channel is here if you've got some kids or are just curious yourself.
To kick off the discussion: what are some other similar shows that should be revived?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:54PM (7 children)
I would embrace and extend your remarks with the analogy that watching woodworking shows is very entertaining/relaxing, but I'm not actually learning woodworking skills beyond reinforcing some vocabulary or something.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 24 2018, @11:43PM (6 children)
But it has the potential to give you some ideas on techniques you never knew they exist and/or projects you could use. E.g. how to make wooden gears or how to use your table saw as a lathe to turn a round (spoiler: with great care)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:47AM (3 children)
> how to use your table saw as a lathe to turn a round
I set up a vertical 1/4" bolt (smooth shank) for a pivot, off to one side of the table saw blade, set into a cross slider in a layer of 3/4" Baltic birch plywood. Suitable slots and sliders allow me to set the pivot anywhere on the saw table. Now it's easy to use the saw to cut smooth circular disks. The disks need a 1/4" center hole and should be roughed out first because the scrap isn't cut when it runs into the far side of the blade.
Or maybe were you thinking of making spindles (like table legs)? On first thought that does sound scary, since the spindle/work could "gear" to the saw blade and spin at a very high rpm. In this case the saw blade would be used in similar fashion (but reversed) to the cutter blades on a copying lathe (a truly scary machine).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:56PM (2 children)
That's the one.
The approach is: avoid putting the axis of the spindle transversal the saw blade, do it along it [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 26 2018, @02:11AM (1 child)
Thanks for the link to Izzy, lots of interesting ways to use tools, good "outside the box" thinking. Haven't spent much time in my shop in years (reasons), but looking forward to getting back there more often in the future.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 26 2018, @02:26AM
Turning wooden bowls on a table a saw [google.com].
Izzy strikes again in sophistication [youtube.com] but others are interesting too by the much simple means they employ with good results.
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Apart from being spectacular by "out-of-box thinking" approaches, those are examples showing video (as a delivery medium) and STEM are not incompatible. Saying that is not different than saying that "books and STEM don't go well together, because reasons"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 25 2018, @12:06PM (1 child)
I once fooled around with using a mill in a drill press and a homemade rotary table, a cross table, and some tilt vices to do a bit of woodworking. Tried to make dice. While I could get the angles correct without too much trouble, what proved too hard was shaving off just the right amount of wood. The precision required was pushing that method to the limit. One thing I learned is that you don't want to clamp directly to the faces of the die. Works better to whittle from a short distance. Clamp on to one end of a short stick, and mill the other end.
I abandoned that entire approach, and switched to glue (actually epoxy resin and hardener). Made a paper shell and filled it with epoxy. I'd never before used that large a quantity of epoxy all at once like that, and discovered that while curing the die got plenty warm. It didn't get hot enough to burn my fingers, but to be safe I left it where it wouldn't do any damage if it caught fire. Anyway, the result was a much more even shape. I thought about ice casting, but never tried that, on the thought that the heat of the curing could melt the ice and allow the shape to deform before it had finished setting. When I tried it again, it never quite finished curing, and I wondered if I had not gotten the ratio of hardener to resin close enough to 50-50. What I now think is that that particular batch of epoxy must have been too old. I have read that epoxy that's sat on the shelf too long will no longer cure properly. I was considering putting some sort of filler material in the center, to cut down the amount of epoxy required, but didn't feel too sure the result would be acceptable, so I didn't try it. Also, I wondered how well the dice would hold up. The dice that came with my first D&D set were made of a too soft plastic, and the corners chipped off after a modest amount of use. So I always picked high strength epoxy, and it seemed it was strong enough. Didn't use my home made dice much, but with the little use I did give them, I never saw any chipping.
For failures like those, the format is less of a problem than our culture or perhaps human nature. Is it worth hearing about the wrong turns and mistakes? Sometimes, and sometimes not. One of the toughest questions I face all the time in IT is which technology to use. Which programming language is best for a particular project? Which software libraries? Which platform? Way back in the day (1980s), the choice between Pascal and C wasn't so clear cut. Even BASIC (real BASIC, with line numbers, not that Visual pseudo-BASIC stuff) was a contender. One large factor was what compilers you had available, and how good they were. Today, I would choose C over Pascal every time, and I would choose C++ over C. Even if you wanted to use Pascal, you'd immediately run into the issue of whether to stay with Pascal, or use its ultimate successor, Modula-3. Pascal is dead. Beyond that, maybe Java would be better than C++? Or Python? Or even JavaScript? Which way is better, a standalone app, or a web page? Is it something that one could want to use on a smartphone, with their small screens? You really, really want to choose carefully before devoting the sort of effort it takes to create a polished piece of software.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 25 2018, @08:30PM
Life can get super exciting with some drill chucks only being installed with a locking taper, so milling will eventually work them loose under power, for some possibly extremely long values for eventually. If you're expecting it, you can plan for it and not get hurt, but by definition most of the people bit are not expecting it... My milling machine has a drawbar running up the spindle that prevents a taper from working loose.
Also in typical lazy machinist style, my drill press is not entirely colinear to the best of my measurement tools, so there's wobble that doesn't matter with flexible twist drills but would show up with rigid end mills, so thats interesting.