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3 DIY Projects for Nerdlings____Never-Ending Demolition Derby RC cars? Cool. RC cars locked in a perpetual destruction match? Way cooler. Glue some Lego baseboards to as much of the autos' exteriors as possible to build elaborate armored exoskeletons. Let the vehicles duke it out. Pick up the pieces. Repeat.
See the World From the Sky Satellite stills from Google Maps are fine, but you can outdo them with a Flip. Pack the camera in Styrofoam and tie on a 500-foot spool of kite string and 16 helium-filled balloons. Send it up. On a calm day, you'll get great bird's-eye footage of your neighborhood.
Electronic Origami Pimp your origami! Use the conductive ink from a circuit-writer pen to draw positive and negative "wires" on the paper. Attach the wires to a watch battery and complete the circuit with an LED. Now you've got a delicate paper swan that shoots lasers from its eyes.
Back in the 1970s, Ken Denmead was your typical awkward kid — obsessing over videogames, science fiction, and model trains. Now he's passing the torch to the next generation of dungeon masters and DIY enthusiasts with his new book, GeekDad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share, a guide to living la vida nerdy with your offspring.
GeekDad started as a blog created by Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson, who handed the reins over to Denmead in 2007. Since then, Denmead, a civil engineer, has enlisted a legion of contributors to make GeekDad a must-read for dorky parents — a one-stop resource on everything from educational science projects to reviews of kid-friendly videogames. The book presents some of the projects from the blog plus a bounty of new activities intended to spark youngsters' desire to build, dismantle, and understand. "I wrote the book to be pretty accessible so you can do the projects in a weekend afternoon," Denmead says. "I hope they'll teach kids about physics almost unconsciously, while they're having fun."
