Imaginon
Exploring infinite water at Imaginon with Heron Fountains Google and Make’s summer Maker Camp Imaginon with Makerspace Charlotte
There is nothing quite like handing kids a jigsaw and a large sheet a plywood. But less than an hour later, with all fingers in tack, they were racing around on their very own hoverboard. Powered by a cheap electric leaf blower, the hoverboard would slide along smooth concrete surface of the warehouse with almost not friction. It’s a super easy project requiring very few special tools, and not a lot of time.
We travelled to Clemson for the total solar eclipse. We threw a few simple, random building materials I the car as we we’re heading out. And when we got there we had a little bit of time… So we made a cereal box viewer, sans the cereal box… And way better. Josh gave lots of demos and explained how it worked and some of the more interesting properties. So much so that we were interviewed for and included in a book!
One of the neat things about the book was that Marie Harris, one of our favorite librarians from “The Loft” (a cool teen only space at Imaginon – the Children’s Library) in Charlotte – send me an email after she read the book. We’re quoted talking about Baily’s Beads which was truly the most amazing thing that I got to see being in totality.
When it comes to making your own launcher, it’s hard for me to do much better than the Instructable I put together a few years back.
If on the other hand you are looking to make rockets, fast and furious, check on my video on YouTube is the place to be. There is also another video where I make a high pressure rocket in about 2 minutes.
Hackerspace Charlotte and later Makerspace Charlotte have had a great relationship with Discovery Place. We created several lab events including LED blinkies, RC Hovercraft, Compressed Air Rockets with parachutes, as well as soldering labs, bug bots, feltronics demos and talks among others.