Something for the weekend: Measuring the Plank Constant With Lego tells how you can do science experiment with LEGO. A Watt balance looks like a double-armed scale where one weight can be compared to another weight of known mass. Instead of using two arms, a Watt balance only has one arm, brought into balance by a current flowing through a coil. The only major non-Lego parts in the Lego Watt balance described in A LEGO Watt Balance: An apparatus to demonstrate the definition of mass based on the new SI paper are a few coils of wire wound around a PVC pipe and a few neodymium magnets. Check out the paper PDF.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Other scientific use for LEGO:
Lego contraption allows scientists to safely handle insects
http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2015/02/lego-contraption-allows-scientists-safely-handle-insects
Handling insect specimens can be more precarious than lassoing a fly. Delicate antennae, legs, and wings break with the slightest blunder. Now, researchers have found a solution, and it’s built from Legos.
Their contraption
can move and rotate insects every which way while keeping them stable and positioned under a microscope. The design improves on previous insect manipulators because it’s cheap, customizable, and easy to build
IMp: The customizable LEGO® Pinned Insect Manipulator
http://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=4667
We present a pinned insect manipulator (IMp) constructed of LEGO® building bricks with two axes of movement and two axes of rotation. In addition we present three variants of the IMp to emphasise the modular design, which facilitates resizing to meet the full range of pinned insect specimens, is fully customizable, collapsible, affordable and does not require specialist tools or knowledge to assemble.
We believe the insect specimen manipulators presented here are a valuable addition to any entomologist’s toolbox and that the use of any insect manipulator is in the interest of anyone dealing with valuable specimens as the actual handling of the specimen is reduced to a minimum during examination.