My Vacuum Chamber Terrarium
by Hanly on Mar.16, 2009, under Uncategorized
About a month ago or so my neighbor and I signed up for the Wisconsin Entrepreneur 100 hour challenge, in which we were given $15 worth of our choice of UW-SWAP items to create something: creative, innovative, or artsy. We started off with this vacuum chamber, an old analog balance, and several pieces of chemistry glassware. We had decided on making a Rube Goldberg machine in which a diet coke and mentos reaction inside the vacuum chamber would release the gas and cause a ping-pong ball to shoot up a thick buret like cylindrical tube and start a series of other actions which would in the end cause a light to turn on. Needless to say that there were several unfortunate accidents in which the large buret like cylinder shattered. We gave up and kept the pieces. I stayed with the vacuum chamber, a 240V electric motor, and a distillation flask which I now use to water my plants…yes people look at me weird when I go fill it up in the bathroom.
The vacuum chamber sat in the way for some time, until after reading the lifehacker RSS feed the other day I got the idea to make it into a terrarium. So today after work I went into the woods with several bags looking for moss, rocks, bark, and some dirt. After several strange looks from people as I dug and bagged my materials I finally had everything I needed. I headed back to the dorm and built my terrarium. Below is a gallery of the finished project.
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