I named the horse Francis.

[mrissa]

songwind was talking about school projects, his own and his daughter's: a model pizza restaurant and a straw house with a three-pigs diorama. It reminded me: I once built a toothpick model of the Trojan horse, complete with a trapdoor in the belly.

What was the neatest thing you ever made? Objects only; many of you have made nifty novels, but that's not what I'm getting at here.

Comments

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

I still have a "mystical" ceramic goblet I made in ceramics class when I was 10. I've used it has a candle holder as well as a jewelry holder. It has my 10 year old idea of what magical symbols look like. I love that thing.

[gwynnega]

In grade school I made a papier mache Sherlock Holmes, complete with deerstalker hat and pipe (the pipe was just drawn onto his mouth, I think). My mom still has it!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Neat. What color(s)?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We once made my grandmother a papier mache scarecrow mask head for Halloween, and no one at work recognized her, and she (unintentionally) scared the daylights out of the neighbor kids when she sat on the porch to hand out candy, because they thought she was a dummy.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I once made a sheetcake representing a cell for biology class. Andes mints formed the cell walls, and orange slices (the candy) represented mitochondria. I barely remember the rest, except it was delicious.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I made a diorama when we were studying Greek mythology in 7th grade. Dressed several Barbie dolls in priestess garb, with one dressed as Athene seated on a throne above it all, put a toy sheep on the altar and slit it open with entrails falling out. Put foil knives in the priestesses hands and splashed everything liberally with red food coloring blood. Got an A.

These days they'd probably suspend me and make me see the school psychologist.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Francis was for a seventh grade Greek mythology unit, too, only Marylyn would never have let anybody suspend anybody for sheep guts.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I made a Navajo hogan out of popsicle sticks. I had a little flock of plastic sheep and everything.

My favorite school project story involves a Roman-style bridge made of sugar cubes that my friend Tonya made for Latin class. She even had a river of blue Jello under the bridge. Mr. O. was so impressed that he insisted it go in the display case in the school lobby. Tonya suggested that might not be a good idea, but Mr. O. paid no heed to her protests. In a couple weeks? You guessed it: the mighty River o' Bacteria. :-P

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I made a model bomb shelter for a science fair project. It won first prize for the school. I got the idea during the weekend of the Cuban Missle Crisis. I know this dates me considerably.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

In high school I made a model of the supreme court overturning a law, with little clay people, including a flat, oppressed taxpayer and a circle of senators, house members and a president dancing gleefully on their corpse.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

That is so cool.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I don't remember making anything interesting before college. I had no artistic ability.

Sophomore year, herpdaddy and I made a 25-hour clock for circuits lab. Got an A anyway.

In grad school shop class, I made a vice. That's probably the coolest thing. Also the most fun, got to play with the milling machine and the lathe. It has my name etched in and still smells like oil.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

My friend Danny and I did a joint physics project in high school wherein we built a model of a magnetohydrodynamic propulsion system (Hunt for Red October's "caterpillar driver"). Since we didn't know how to make a working boat, we set it up to just expel the water and cause it to circulate back to the intake.

[gaaneden.livejournal.com]

I wanted to make it black and gold but the teacher did not want me using black for it. So, it is a brown. I'll have to get a picture of it and post it sometime. Proof that I have always been a dreamer.

[lexiphanic.livejournal.com]

ALong similar lines, we made a papier mache pinata Gumby dressed as a flamenco dancer (think Carmen Miranda) for our Spanish class. I have no idea why we picked Gumby, but it made our teacher laugh.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

My brother and I made a scale model of Carlisle Castle, once.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I have never been good at making physical objects. The "neatest" one I made was a soldered metal balance scale, ala the constellation Libra. It was made of lots of copper wire.

I think my father has it.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

A round chessboard, made out of leather.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

My pasta bridge in high school physics had a load:weight ratio approaching 100:1. I thought that was pretty cool.

Also, I made a napkin holder in Cadets that got used regularly. Unfortunately it was a bit too narrow for some of the napkins.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

In sociology class for college, I did a realistic teepee. The rules were no legos, lincoln logs, or any sort of building sets. It has to be as natural as possible. And you could pick any sort of dwelling.

I had a small, shallow box lid, that I filled with red clay. The frame was wooden rods that were burnt at the ends, and stuck into the clay. The covering was thin leather, cut into irregular shapes and stiched together. It also had drawings on the outside.

I was very self-conscious about it so I took it in before my class started. He was so impressed by it that he brought it to the classroom to show everyone. I am almost certain this is why I got an "A" in his class.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

My favorite memories of making things are costumes. There was the Halloween I was a TV show, with a cardboard TV on my head. There was a costume dance party I was a eucalyptus tree: I attached leaves and twigs to myself, along with my stuffed koala. I already mentioned the church-and-church-mouse Halloween on the costumes thread...Actually, I've made some cool jack-o-lanterns too. I guess this is my time of year for making things.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I got to learn to play with the lathe and the milling machine and all that, too. I made a depth gauge with a gnurled handle. My mom is so proud of my gnurling to this very day.

Jen The World's Best Lab Partner and I made a single-photon interference set-up with some neat stuff to it, but we had to take it apart again when the semester was over.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's hard. I spend a good deal of my life making stuff, so this turns into one of those total-ordering questions.

I think the coolest thing I ever made was my daughter's mini Viking tent. (Footprint about six by eight, peak about six and a half feet.) It's spiffy and it's practical and it stays dryer than any other tent in camp, plus it has painted end-beams with dragons on them. She's camped in it for 11 years now and she really needs a bigger tent, but she doesn't want to part with that one.

In a non-total-ordering universe in which I coiuld have many coolest things, my coolest things would be the first thing I make when learning a new skill. My first silver bracelet, the first knife blade I forged, my first mosaic tabletop, my first really elaborate 12th Night dress, the necklace made of my first 150 or so glass beads. I always get this feeling of amazement when I step back and realize that I have enough of a new skill set to make a Thing.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

My dad and I made a gothic cathedral, with flying butresses, out of cardboard for a grade school project. I think he did the butresses, but I put together the main parts of the building. And we (again, Dad and I) once made a huge snow monster in our backyard. At least it seemed huge at the time. I think I was pretty small.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

I remember both of these! I remember trying to make a bridge like yours when we did something similar in 7th or 8th grade science. Mine didn't hold much weight at all.

[brooksmoses]

For a statewide high-school science contest that was held during my junior year of high school, I and a friend of mine made a toothpick bridge -- mostly my design, but he did a good bit of the building.

From what I remember, the rules of the contest were essentially "One 800-toothpick box of square toothpicks, one tube of glue, and a 25cm span to cross," with a few specifics about the size and location of the load-bearing spot on top of the bridge. They brought a small engineering material-stress-testing machine out on the stage, and put the bridges in it, each in their turn, and tested to see how much weight they'd hold up before breaking.

In the morning session, our bridge put enough sideways stress on the base supports to bend them, thereby cracking the bridge. The contest was adjourned to the afternoon while they built a stronger base and we hastily repaired our bridge with the last of the glue in the tube, and dried it with a hair-dryer.

In the afternoon session, the base held, and there was this nice dramatic start of the announcer listing off the readings in a quick sing-song voice "100, 200, 300, 400, 500...." and then the readings started to slow down, and then at about 1200 pounds there was a fairly loud bang and bits of toothpick went everywhere.

I don't know that that's the neatest thing I've ever made, but it was a fun school project.

[brooksmoses]

Oh, I forgot part of the rules -- one half of one side of every toothpick had to be visible -- thus, no heavy solid beams more than two toothpicks thick.

[noluvlikeapathy.livejournal.com]

i need to build a pasta bridge for physics that needs to hold 44 pounds. how did you build yours???

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Hello, random LJ person.

I wrapped spaghetti around a dowel and then coated the outside liberally with hot glue. This made fairly strong but light tubes after the dowel was removed. Then I assembled them into a railroad-trestle like design--- a trapezoid with internal triangles and cross-braces.

However, if all you need is a certain weight, one of my classmates just built a solid brick (a cantilever!) out of lasagna noodles.

[noluvlikeapathy.livejournal.com]

thanks!!
but what exactly is a dowel??