This Thursday night, we’re going to be making paper airplanes! We’ll have paper, markers, and scotch tape for you to make your own paper airplane and decorate it with hot rod flames or butterfly wing designs. You’ll then have to throw it across the room through a hoola-hoop on stage. If your airplane makes it through, you’ll move on to the next round! No paperclips, stones, lead weights, or just crumpling a piece of paper up into a ball and throwing it through the hoop!

Paper airplane building starts officially at 6:30 with the throwing beginning at 7:30. Do you have some mad crazy awesome paper airplane folding skills or just like to make cool airplanes? Stick a piece of duck tape to your chest where you would normally put a name tag. That’s the secret sign that folks will be looking for when they need an expert to teach them how to make a sweet paper airplane! (Duck tape will be provided)

Bring safety glasses, you enter the paper airplane zone at your own risk. Safety glasses are the new black!

Do you know of any resources for awesome paper airplanes? Put links in the comments! I’ve got a paper airplane design that a red headed gal taught me how to make in the first grade. I’m going to reproduce this design and upload it to the Make: Flickr Pool later. If you’ve got a tried and true design, find a way to document it and upload it to the pool too!

After the paper airplane madness, Brady, who writes for the Radar blog has a ton of awesome speakers lined up for the ask later presentations!

As always, there will be a bar where you can buy drinks and there will be lots of chit chat and hanging out. It’s a great place to go up to someone and ask them, “What do you make?”

Seattle geeks, nerds, and makers unite at Seattle Ignite!

(Photo Credit: Global Hermit)

Update: I’ll be testing firing contraptions this week, wait to build your egg drop safety container until after Friday so that you can see the firing contraption in the podcast. Rules may change at that time to accomadate something like a giant crossbow!

On February 13th, Brady and I will be hosting Ignite Seattle, a Maker/Geek event here in Seattle. We’re going to be having an egg drop. You make an egg-safety device that is smaller than an 18″ x 18″ x 18″ cube and less than 3 pounds. You bring it to the event at 6:30 PM at the CHAC upper level on February 13th and we’ll put it in a giant slingshot and smash it against the wall. If you’ve done an egg drop event and have any advice for me, drop me a note in the comments!

You can make your own egg safety container on your own time or since you can come and work on your design as early as 4:30 if you want. I’ll have popsicle sticks, hot glue, and newspaper there for you to make your own. If you have any other ideas for supplies to have there, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll see what I can do. No matter what, all building stops at 7:30 so that we can put the eggs into a giant sling shot made of a lot of surgical tubing and fire them at a (plastic protected) brick wall. No metal or glass allowed since we don’t want to break the place.

Did you do an egg drop in school or have a brilliant idea for an egg cushioning device? If so, you can help out by uploading a picture of your cushioning strategy or drawing a diagram and upload it to the MAKE: flickr pool. I’ll be putting some of these pictures in the Weekend Project podcast this weekend which will be all about egg drops and I may even try and use one of the uploaded strategies.

What is an Egg Drop? - Link

We maxed out the lower level of CHAC last time we were there. While we weren’t looking, CHAC went and renovated the space upstairs into a massive awesome space that’ll be perfect for Ignite Seattle!

We stopped into to take a peek and a rock band was setting up.

They’ve made a bar that we’ll have all to ourselves! Mmmm, drinks!
So you should remember that it’s at the same location and still free, but upstairs instead of downstairs!

Ignite Seattle Deux (that means 2 in fancy-talk)

February 13th, 2007 6:30 - 11:00

CHAC Upper Level (MAP)

621 12th Ave

Seattle, WA 98122 (206) 388-0521

On10.net came to the bridge-building portion of the event and made a great video! - Link

Seattle geeks packed the house to build bridges out of popsicle sticks and hot glue at Seattle’s geek event, ignite. 13 teams basked in the glory of success or had their dreams crushed into tiny shards of wood as they stepped on their bridges and found out if their bridge would hold their weight. While the winners won the latest magazine, an amazing amount of applause was given to teams whose bridges were crushed. Hurray for destruction!

Props go out to the team that used 998 of the 1000 popsicle sticks allotted and managed to hold 5 people on their bridge. They brought an iron that they plugged in and turned upside down to heat up a makeshift aluminum foil pot of hot glue. Props also go out to the family that made the artistic bridge that managed to hold the 4 year old member of the team!

After the last bridge had survived crushed into the ground, Ask Later began. Moderated by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar, the audience was enthralled as the superstars of local start-upscreative innovators, scientists, hackers, puzzle-makers, and regular folks doing cool things managed to dump their brains into five minute power-point presentations.

Thanks to all the Make: and Craft: peeps who came out to have a great time, I look forward to seeing you all again at the next ignite in February. [My photoset] [Scott Beale’s Photoset]

I’ve got 20,000 popsicle sticks and I’ve done some tests.

First, here are the rules:

1. Your bridge must span 15 inches. That means it needs to be a bit longer than 15 inches.  The popsicle sticks are 4 inches long so you’ll need a bridge that is 4 popsicle sticks or more long.  You will use hot glue and get 1000 popsicle sticks.  There will be lots of teams and so it wouldn’t hurt to bring your own glue guns and glue.
2. You will have 30 minutes to complete your bridge.  In reality, some teams will have more time as we test the first bridgets

3. When you are done, you will put your bridge between to bricks spaced 15 inches apart and then you will put a scale on top of your bridge and then you will start to stand on it, calling out the amount of pounds that it can hold.  If someone on your team can stand on your bridge, each person on your team will get an issue of craft or make.  If there are more winners than magazines, I’ll collect emails from your team and send out digital editions.

4. You need not be a structural engineer to play, this is for anyone who likes to make things.
5. There may be more rules if they make sense at the time.

Here’s what I learned from messing around with popsicle sticks for 1/2 hour with my brother:

You are going to be on a team and someone on your team needs to come with a plan.  I finished 1/3 of a bridge in 30 minutes.  My brother made 1/5 of a bridge in 30 minutes.  His is the shorter one with an awesome overlapping design.  How many people should you have on your team? I suggest at least three.  Be friendly to people who come alone and join your team, they may be the missing link that give you an edge.

Above all the goal is to have fun, I’ll see you there at 6:30!

Ignite is going to be a great night of makers, geeks, scientists, and innovators hanging out at the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle. The fun will start at 6:30 with a Make: Magazine sponsored bridge building competition. Using popsicle sticks and hot glue, each team will have 30 minutes to make a bridge. Then we’ll weigh them down until each one is destroyed. The team who has the bridge that holds the most weight will win prizes. Stick around after the competition for some interesting presentations! All ages welcome until 10pm and then it becomes a 21 and over event.

This contest will be very informal since teams will only have 1/2 hour to make their bridges. I’m looking at the bridge building competition website and I got the above photo from http://www.garrettsbridges.com/ and I really like his style of finding how much weight a bridge will hold by putting the scale right on the bridge.   Feel free to bring your own LED’s, wire and batteries to make your bridge light up!

We’ll be providing the popsicle sticks and some hot glue guns, but if you’ve got your own glue gun, bring it. Also, bring along your own eye protection please.

This will be my first bridge building competition and I’ll need help to help load the weights and pass out supplies. If you can help, shoot me an email at bre@makezine.com