Weird Science Offered As University Class

Posted by kdawson on Monday December 10, @07:45PM
from the matter-of-degree dept.

ludwigvan968 writes "The ACTLab at the University of Texas at Austin is making waves with its Weird Science class. The link is to the TA's blog with documentation of some of the projects: a laser harp, a 3D environment constructed with fog and an LCD projector, and a 'water bridge' using a 50,000-volt transformer. Next semester, they're introducing a new class called 'Disruptive Technologies.'"

[+] education, hardhack, science, oingoboingo, slashdotted (tagging beta)

This is from Joey's blog

Alright, so my posts are falling behind. But the good news is it is because I have been so busy helping people “make stuff”, as well as “make stuff” myself. So lets get started!

First off, Weird Science Fall 2007:

This has to be one of the best ACTLab class presentations I have seen in a long time. Pretty much every project hit hard. And there were many that hit well above the mark. So lets take a look at those:

Laser Harp! Yeah that is right, Derek, a student of mine, along with Drake as his programmer and Sandy as a consultant created a laser harp. While he ran into many issues, he did have a proof of concept to show off. Check it out:

Next up is Johnny’s Smoke Gun. This student had been working all semester to figure out our course, he thought he was going to be writing papers all semester, so when we told him to “make stuff”, he freaked out, but he totally came through and put all his heart into our class. Check it out:

This next one was done by Tyler. Now Tyler had been blowing us away all semester with his special effects abilities in after effects, however this time he decided to take his project to the next level and after consulting with myself (who had orginally got the idea from the Asian Cowboy), he decided to use a smoke machine and LCD projector to create a 3D experience. Not only did it work, but it put you in another world, further experimentation is a must!

We also had ward show off his “water bridge” project where he sent roughly 50,000 volts through two glasses of water and made them create a bridge between each other. The videographer was a little timid about being around that much voltage so he stayed back, I got some close photos with my camera:

We also had some great installations and video presentations, here are some recap pics: