Making Toys

This work includes two parts: one is a video hang on the wall, telling the story of the author, the other one is a blackboard around it with a title said: What inspires you? Although this piece of work doesn’t have high – tech visual effect, I think it deeply interacts with people, who may watch the video to not. Further, people who draw on the board later would got inspired from people who draw earlier. In a world there full of technologies and mouse-keyboard interactions, drawing on board might be a harbor for people to get over a “shock”.

The first one is a bubble tank for etching printed circuit boards, which hasn’t finished yet, and the second one is a modular robot controlled by Arduino. It was designed using OpenSCAD software. This is the first 3D printing projects I saw, and that’s why I got impressed by the convenience of how one can make prototypes quickly and precisely. I particularly like the board the creator made for the display of his entire process, it’s a piece of artwork itself.

The last one is a cosmic ray detector. It is a cloud chamber that contains a layer of supersaturated alcohol vapor. Since the vapor is supersaturated it will easily condense into liquid form. When an electrically charged particle comes along, it ionizes the vapor, tearing away the electrons in some of the atoms along its path. This leaves these atoms positively charged. Other nearby atoms are attracted to the charged atoms. This is enough to start the condensation process. So you see little droplets of alcohol forming tiny clouds along the paths the particles too throughout the chamber. I didn’t really like it at first sight. but after seeing the introduction of these tiny white lines and dots, I was shocked. The cosmic ray detector may be familiar with some people, but for me, I never thought of these invisible rays can be seen and “feel”. What impressed me more is how the “rays” have been created.

Other interesting things I found: