Back of my hand

By Bionic Laura

At the end of Science Hack Day you show what you made over the 36 hours Thanks to the sponsors SFI Ireland , TOG , Science hackday and all the attendees who helped us out on the day. Here is a 98FM article on the blogpost

Kmeans clustering of a image of Jen's hand

Paolo the nattily dressed English accented zoologist met me before opening at Dublin's Dead Zoo . There is a great podcast of him here . He explained to me all the facts below. First thing is human skeletons tend to be many different people because that’s just how bones were collected Animals specimens were usually collected for the task so are more complete. With an experts eye Paolo can show you where the animal was shot. for example the apes in the pelvis and the arm Or in the case of the polar bear 19 times when he wandered into a camp and all the explorers just started blasting away. Then they ate him. But avoided the liver as that has so much Vitamin D it’ll kill you. Kill you by causing excess bone growth
. " A polar bear's liver contains between 24,000 and 35,000 IU per gram. Compare that to the tolerable upper level of vitamin A intake for a healthy adult human: 10,000 IU’
 Onto hands Orangutans have really short thumbs not going past the knuckle. T

In any short hackathon there are things you do not have the time or the equipment to do. I will list some of these below in case we can get them done in future. Medical: MRI scan, XRay, EEG scan while hand in use, EMG and nerve conduction study, grip test A Map made out of the shape of a hand Agar of bacteria and fungus grown from the hand Makers: 3d printed, laser cut, laser scanner and other hackerspace tools to recreate and examine a hand. VR: Like the Augmented Hands Project which explores how we react to changes in our own hands. Glovers, Hologram,Chinese medicine, Palmistry, hand gestures, UV light,sign language.

Do other languages have an idiom to describe something they have a good knowledge of? The German 'Ich kenne es wie meine Westentasche' means 'I know it like my waistcoat pocket' The Turkish 'Avcumun içi gibi biliyorum' translates as 'I know it like the palm of my hand' French 'connaître sur le bout des doigts' is 'know at the fingertips' If you know the equivilant idiom in another language please comment it below.

Pouring a small drop of a softdrink onto the palm Viewed through the microscope, we can see small particles on the surface of the liquid.  Similarly we can see the surface tension holding the liquid in a roughly hemi-spherical shape on the palm. For some reason the group decided to pour pepper into a palm and microscope it.

We wrapped a hand in PVA to get a picture of the textures and geometries of the hand. Viewed through the microscope, the PVA really emphasises some of the amazing geometries of the back of the hand.

We worked through a series of studies of one of our group (James) hand, picking out and emphasising details.   As you can see, the hands have a series of really interesting features, often lost when seen together. This deconstruction and superposition forces us to see the details we often glaze over.

We made a musical glove using the BBC Microbit and based on a design by Helen Leigh . We programmed it to make a different sound depending on what compass direction the wearers hand was pointed. and also based on how your hand moved in the x,y and z plane. Pimoroni sell a kit to make a proper version of this here The glove was made by Laura and the circuit soldered by Claire, helped by Duncan.

Jen used her sculpture knowledge to build alginante mould of her hand. And then cast it with plaster of Paris. The plaster of paris did not have enough time to set due to the science hackday rush so Jen's hand lost a few fingers. This was great fun and I think the other hackers liked seeing some sculpture being made beside all the electronics hacking.

Jen's hand embroidered by Bionic Laura

You can tell your heartbeat with just a webcam, some python, opencv and the back of your hand. Code from webcam-pulse-detector here

Cartoon hand with code from Aschinchon again

We worked up a series where we looked at different aspects of the hands through a USB digital microsope. Looking at a marker smudge on a palm revealed the microscopic strangeness of ink meeting skin patterns. This inspired us to test how different liquids and inks looked on skin at a microscopic level. A rose gold wedding band, appearing smooth, reveals years of dings and scratches. Nailbeds full of alginate - suffering for her art!! Highlights were combining clean skin and black ink - the ink highlights the chasms and geometries of the skin. We also had a lot of fun working with silver and gold inks