openMaterials

University of Illinois researchers explain how they make their conductive ink on this step-by-step tutorial. (via Boing Boing)

The Resistor JelTone is an edible toy piano created by NYC Resistor members Ranjit Bhatnagar, Astrida Valigorsky, Mimi Hui and myself for the Jello Mold Competition. As part of our experiments we realized that jello and fruit, which contain a lot of water, are conductive. Embedded in each jello/fruit key is a sterling silver pin (food [...]

Empa’s EAP propelled airship with Dielectric Elastomer (DE) actuators as muscles.

This is from quite some time ago, but a beautiful artwork from Philip Beesley called Hylozoic Soil which I saw at VIDA 11.0 last year. I just love the way he’s used nitinol in the work-

I keep thinking that even though we tend to use conductive fabric and other soft circuits materials mostly for wearables and such, there has to be much more to it than that. Ayman’s drumsticks are a great of example of other interesting applications for these materials. He made them for his iPad iSteelPan application, but [...]

This featured video is part one of five in Nanoseries, introducing carbon nanotubes. What is a carbon nanotube? Here is the rest of the series- How are carbon nanotubes made? How can we see carbon nanotubes? Where are nanotubes used? Carbon nanoforms