Low-Cost Homemade Car Runs 40 Miles Per Gallon

With the frame and wheels of a 1934 Ford, a 12-horsepower four-cylinder water-cooled engine, a clutch, transmission and rear end from a junk yard, a former instructor at Dakota Wesleyan University built a unique automobile. The body of the car was made from scrap lumber, covered with hardboard and held together by two boxes of screws. Headlights, tail-lights, radiator grille and windshield were obtained at minimum prices. The hood ornament was the container for an airplane’s loop antenna and a glass dome for the top is from a refrigerator. The builder, Nelson Beck, devoted six weeks’ work and $76.68 to his project which has begun to repay him by running 40 miles to the gallon at an average speed of 55 miles per hour.

While not quite to this scale, Greg Leyh had an amazing pair of 9-foot tall Tesla Coils this weekend at Maker Faire.

Maker Faire was unbelievably cool and wonderful. All of the exhibits were great and the everybody was incredibly warm and generous. It was a very heartening experience. If you can, I highly recommend you go when they do it all again in Austin this October.

Giant Sparks To Thrill Visitors At Exposition

PEERING into a cylindrical cage eighty feet in diameter and equally tall, visitors to the international exposition at Paris, France, next summer, will see one of the world’s most powerful high-voltage electric generators in action. Ten-foot-long sparks will snap between huge brass spheres mounted on insulating pillars, with a sound like the cracking of a giant whip. Should any of the sparks go astray, they will be harmlessly grounded by the metal cage, which safeguards the spectators from their terrific power. Operators will control the spectacular display from within the hollow spheres, where, strangely enough, they will be equally safe.
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VARIETY OF TOYS MADE FROM COFFEE CANS
A can opener and some straps are all that are required to turn empty coffee cans into toys. A drum is made by cutting two slots in the side of a can to take a neck band, as shown. The lid is secured with a drop or two of solder. The clackers or can-walkers are prepared by making two slots diametrically opposed in the bottom of a can to receive the strap for the foot.

The loose or false rims inside the modern type of coffee can are easily removed and make excellent toy embroidery hoops
without alteration.—D. A. Butler.

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Tom Thumb Planetarium Easily Built from Odds and Ends

By GAYLORD JOHNSON

SIMPLE PROJECTOR MAKES THE CONSTELLATIONS MARCH ACROSS A SCREEN IN YOUR LIVING ROOM

IF YOU ever attended a performance in a large public planetarium, you probably envied the lecturer’s ability to rehearse any part of the drama of the skies at will. Or perhaps you never have witnessed the march of the stars across a giant dome, and are anxious to see a man-made sky in action. At a cost of less than a dollar, you can assemble, from odds and ends, a midget planetarium that will put on a performance right in your own parlor.
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