Walking on Water
A team from Glasgow Science Centre entered the Walking on Water competition at the 2004 Edinburgh Science Festival. This involved making a pair of floating shoes to race down the 50-metre Commonwealth Pool. I was chief shoe-designer, builder, and pilot. We came 1st in the races in our section of the competition, and were judged 3rd in the Design Excellence competition.
Read more about Walking on Water.
Scrapheap Challenge
In 2004 I joined Drew Irvine and Robin Pollok from Glasgow Science Centre as the team Irn Cru in Channel 4's Scrapheap Challenge. Our task was to build a device to launch a bouncing "bomb" onto water to knock barrels off a floating pontoon. It worked, but tended to destroy itself in the process...
Read more about Scrapheap Challenge.
K'nex clock
In the early days of Glasgow Science Centre I sometimes whiled away quiet Sunday mornings seeing if I could make a clock from the construction toy K'nex. It did work, but it couldn't run for very long, and had its own unique system of time measurement.
Read more about the K'nex clock.
Speed demo-dating
This was about an icebreaking event that I organised for the British Interactive Group (BIG) Event held in Manchester in July 2006. People met in groups and showed each other science demos, before the groups were dissolved and recombined for the next round. In planning the event I discovered that I was trying to solve a famous problem in mathematics.
Read more about speed demo-dating.
Skateboard ramp
When my son Matt asked me if I could build him a small ramp for doing skateboard tricks on, I discovered that a little maths was necessary.
Read more about the skateboard ramp.
Auto-return and damping devices
The Stroop Effect exhibit on the Glasgow Science Centre Illusions Wall required the user to read first the front and then the back of a pivoted board. We wanted the board to automatically return to the front side, and we also wanted to make sure than the board would stop quickly when it was violently spun (as it inevitably would be). I designed magnetic devices to achieve both of these aims.
Read more about the devices.
Minor building projects
Some smaller projects that don't merit a full page each. Read more about the minor projects.