iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

It turns out you can make some pretty cool patterns with light and a curved mirror.

Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

We made some bridges for a canal museum. The arch bridges is pretty standard though reminds me of Hobbiton for some reason. The truss bridge is magnetic and the balls are attached to the sticks. The base came out surprisingly pretty.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

We built an exhibit where you can build a renewable power network that has to work in different weathers. To try and make it feel more tactile you interact with our by moving tiles around a map. It has been surprisingly popular being the favourite exhibit of many children. youtu.be/ahOoO4U1tlI?...

youtu.be

Renewable power network museum exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I have finally got a spectroscope working for my demo lecture in the Cambridge physics tomorrow ( A physical history of the light bulb ). I spent far longer than I would like to admit getting it to compile on 2026 rpios.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Just posted off a generator to a wind farm... Visitor centre. Though the design is actually based on a wind turbine design, though I took all the iron out of the design so the resistance to motion is less with no load, so the difference when you turn on a light is very very obvious.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Our solder pot died, and we needed one before Monday.... Luckily I had a cartridge heater in a drawer, and we built a new one.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

A build a landscape exhibit we built for a wetland visitor centre. youtu.be/FgBwrBJgCYY?... Fairly straight forward but it could be applied to a lot of situations.

youtu.be

Build a landscape interactive exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

It was a pain to build because granular materials are hard, but here is our exhibit on why normal distributions mean a small change in temperature might have a big effect on the probability of extreme events. youtu.be/8SYsT-k7ij0?...

youtu.be

Normal distributions and climate change exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

We made a surprisingly engaging exhibit to communicate the difference between types of plastics. youtu.be/PcfUeHN03ok?...

youtu.be

Ordering Game Exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

An exhibit we built recently that lets you pretend to be in a heist film and lets you find out why a short password is a bad idea. youtu.be/Ebw7R6gTtuw?...

youtu.be

Brute force safe cracking exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

I'll just cut a slot in this tube on the milling machine I thought... Somehow it involved CNCing 5 custom jig pieces and some other odds and ends....

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

We made a Morse code exhibit that can be used by people who don't know Morse code, at the cost of a whole lot of LEDs, and somehow over a thousand lines of code. youtu.be/MaQHN5bitLI?...

youtu.be

Easy to use Morse code museum exhibit

YouTube video by Dave Ansell (Sciansell)

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

We worked out a way to more than double the number of light beams on our magnetic light wall exhibit, and make them brighter.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

A slightly odd piece of kit I built for Steve Mould, reflecting a Newton's cradle back again with a lever. It doesn't work too badly... Though you could probably do better with serious engineering. youtu.be/kY2YeM5fNDw?...

youtu.be

The Lever Paradox

YouTube video by Steve Mould

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

My bathtub has been immortalised in a @stevemould video about the Brennen torpedo. Though it did involve a huge amount of swearing at propeller designs. I think it was such a pain because the propeller is running too shallow to be efficient. youtu.be/qvtZIdSI1Yk?...

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I realised that almost by definition the more economically important a STEM subject is, the less interesting what researchers are doing will be too the general public. Because if there is a lot of money involved researchers will be so far down a rabbit hole it will be about fractional improvement.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 10/11/2024

Somehow even when I buy a tornado bottle connector it ends up in the lathe because (a) modern bottles have a shorter thread which meant it leaked so I had to cut 3.2mm off each end. (B) They made the hole too small so I had to drill that out anyway... It works nicely now

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

The senior destructive testing engineer has just spent 10mins guessing 2digit random codes, which is probably a good sign for the exhibit based on this.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 22/10/2024

We have just finished a Scytale exhibit. A Greek means of encoding messages. Seemingly simple but there were definitely subtleties to the leather straps, and attaching bolts to the middle of a tube.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 17/10/2024

I was wondering if Musk's going mad and wrecking Twitter was actually all a plot by big social media manager... This thought brought to you by me wondering if I could be bothered to post about what I have just made on 5 different social media sites.

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Dave Ansell @sciansell.bsky.social · 25/09/2024

How am I seriously considering building a padlock just because noone sells the right kind that will let go off the key? This can't be sensible.

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