Today we got COSI's first MakerBot Replicator 2 3D Printer! COSI's Electronic Engineer, Mike Schoenborn, and I were the lucky ones who got to start it up - much easier than I expected. We've already printed our first test object, "Mr. Jaws."
As COSI's Technology & Innovation strategic area of focus lead, my favorite part of my job is meeting creative and innovative people. Last week COSI hosted The Columbus Idea Foundry's Ethan Dicks, and his group, The Central Ohio RepRap and Makerbot Operators User Group (CORMUG). They teach and learn about 3D printing, and if you're interested in tinkering, rapid prototyping or micro-manufacturing, this is the group to know.
There’s one rather cynical way of looking at science that goes something like this: everything in science eventually turns out to be wrong.
You can understand where such thoughts originate. Once, the best scientists in the world told us that space and time were separate. Then along came Einstein to show how they were linked. Scientists once thought that continents had always existed right where they are today. Then Eugene Wegener showed that continents drift across the globe. Once we thought atoms were indivisible. Then along came a whole zoo of particles that stream out of atoms every time we hit them hard enough. Maybe, this line of thought goes, science just describes what we can see today. When we can see more (with better telescopes, better microscopes, and so on), science will tell us something totally different.
People love their cars. But driving can be risky. When it comes to moving at 100 kilometers per hour, the laws of physics are not always on our side. Stopping a car, slowing it down, or changing its direction at high speed can be difficult and dangerous. But there is a solution to the problem of driving: remove the drivers.