Paper Bits

Nov 17

What you’re looking at is actually the crystalline configuration of diamond, which is also the exact same configuration of the atoms in silicon semiconductors. In semiconductors, different atoms are pushed into the lattice, replacing silicon atoms, to alter the local average number of electrons, which in turn makes it possible to build diodes and transistors in high densities through a combination of technologies related to photography and, well, clay firing, which enables complex but inexpensive circuits like microcontrollers, which in turn enables low-cost 3D printers, which is where we get models like this one…

(via Thingiverse)

What you’re looking at is actually the crystalline configuration of diamond, which is also the exact same configuration of the atoms in silicon semiconductors. In semiconductors, different atoms are pushed into the lattice, replacing silicon atoms, to alter the local average number of electrons, which in turn makes it possible to build diodes and transistors in high densities through a combination of technologies related to photography and, well, clay firing, which enables complex but inexpensive circuits like microcontrollers, which in turn enables low-cost 3D printers, which is where we get models like this one…

(via Thingiverse)

Nov 2

bashford:

LumiBots by Mey Lean Kronemann are small, autonomous robots that can leave glowing traces. The robots are equipped with a UV LED at their tail which leaves a glowing trail on phosphorescent sheet. The traces not only create generative images, but have a deeper meaning for the lumiBots: With their light sensors, they can follow the other robots’ as well as their own trails, and amplify them, thus creating an ant-trail-like mechanism luring more and more robots on the same path.

Mesmerizing.

Aug 29

“You can’t get very far in science by trying to explain one mystery with another mystery.” V.S. Ramachandran, “The Tell-Tale Brain”

Jul 2

“Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence.”

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain

Via Amber Ying.

(EDIT)

I should add that just because we feel this way, that doesn’t make it so.

Jun 21

“Francis Bacon had this notion about how to find objective truth. Today, we call it the scientific method. Bacon dubbed it, “progressive stages of certainty”, which I think absolutely nails the point. He figured that each idea has to be solid before you can move forward, and each idea has to fit in place when it’s all said and done. Anything that doesn’t work gets tossed out the window, no matter how much you liked the thought and no matter how much you want to stomp your feet about it. That sounds as much about design as any scientific reasoning.” Jason Permenter (via viafrank)

(via viafrank)

Jun 17

“When we study physics, chemistry, or biology, we study organized accumulations of information. These are not science itself but the products of science. We may not be able to use much of this material when we enter new territory. Nor should we allow ourselves to become enamored of instruments of research. We tend to think of the scientist in his observatory or laboratory, with his telescopes, microscopes, and cyclotrons. Instruments give us a dramatic picture of science in action. But although science could not have gone very far without the devices which improve our contact with the surrounding world, and although any advanced science would be helpless without them, they are not science itself. We should not be disturbed if familiar instruments are lacking in a new field. Nor is science to be identified with precise measurement or mathematical calculation. It is better to be exact than inexact, and much of modern science would be impossible without quantitative observations and without the mathematical tools needed to convert its reports into more general statements, but we may measure or be mathematical without being scientific at all, just as we may be scientific in an elementary way without these aids.” From “Science and Human Behavior” by B.F. Skinner, my B.F.F.