Category Archives: Citizen Scientist

Forrest Mims, Radio Shack, and the Notebooks that Launched a Thousand Careers

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There was a time when Radio Shack offered an incredible variety of supplies for the electronics hobbyist. In the back of each store, past the displays of Realistic 8-track players, Minimus-7 speakers, Patrolman scanners, and just beyond the battery bin where you could cash in your “Battery of the Month Club” card for a fresh, free 9-volt battery, lay the holy of holies — the parts. Perfboard panels on hinges held pegs with cards of resistors for 49 cents, blister packs of 2N2222 transistors and electrolytic capacitors, and everything else you needed to get your project going. It was a  …read more

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Forrest Mims, Radio Shack, and the Notebooks that Launched a Thousand Careers

Posted on by

There was a time when Radio Shack offered an incredible variety of supplies for the electronics hobbyist. In the back of each store, past the displays of Realistic 8-track players, Minimus-7 speakers, Patrolman scanners, and just beyond the battery bin where you could cash in your “Battery of the Month Club” card for a fresh, free 9-volt battery, lay the holy of holies — the parts. Perfboard panels on hinges held pegs with cards of resistors for 49 cents, blister packs of 2N2222 transistors and electrolytic capacitors, and everything else you needed to get your project going. It was a  …read more

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Citizen Scientist Radio Astronomy (and More): No Hardware Required

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We sometimes look back fondly on the old days where you could–it seems–pretty easily invent or discover something new. It probably didn’t seem so easy then, but there was a time when working out how to make a voltage divider or a capacitor was a big deal. Today–with a few notable exceptions–big discoveries require big science and big equipment and, of course, big budgets. This probably isn’t unique to our field, either. After all, [Clyde Tombaugh] discovered Pluto with a 13-inch telescope. But that was in 1930. Today, it would be fairly hard to find something new with a telescope …read more

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Hackaday Prize: 20 Projects that Make Us All Citizen Scientists

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We live in a time of unparalleled access to technology and this has the power to make life better for everyone. Today we are excited to announce twenty spectacular builds that use access to technology to move scientific exploration within the reach of all. These are the winners of the Citizen Scientist challenge of the 2016 Hackaday Prize. Themes tackled in this round include blood glucose monitoring, insole sensing for analyzing your footfalls, lab equipment like automated microscopy, sensors to measure the world around us, and more.

The winners for the Citizen Scientist portion of the Hackaday Prize are, in …read more

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Last Chance to Get In on the Citizen Scientist Challenge

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The last week of the Citizen Scientist challenge round is drawing a close. Here’s what you need to know to enter your project, and to give it the best chance at making the top twenty. You need to do this by Monday morning, July 11th, to be in the running.

What is Citizen Scientist?

Citizen Scientist is part of the Hackaday Prize. This round challenges you to make meaningful scientific study more approachable for everyone. Examples include projects that let people build their own lab equipment, sensor modules that can be distributed (or bootstrapped) for widespread data collection like weather …read more

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Become a Peer Reviewer for Citizen Scientist

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One of the keys to our scientific community is the concept of Peer Review. When important discoveries are made, the work is reviewed by others accomplished in the same field to test the findings. This can verify the work, but it can also open up new questions and lead to new discoveries.

We’re adding Peer Review to the Hackaday Prize. It’s a new way to apply your skills for the benefit of all. The current challenge is Citizen Scientist; calling for projects that help make scientific research more widely available. A set of independent eyes giving constructive feedback to these …read more

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