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Advanced DIY Science for Students?
Adam Wise asks: "I'm a high school senior planning a career in science, and I don't have any plans for the summer. I'd like to put these two facts together to entertaining and educational results of the do-it-yourself variety. Reading about the home made electron microscope got me thinking along the lines of a similar project. Are there any resources specifically geared towards DIY scientists beyond baking soda and vinegar volcanoes?"
If you want some electronics, you can study for an amateur radio license. The ARRL has a lot of plans for good radio-related equipment you can build from scratch. Plus, you can get in on developing and testing software radios.
For the aspiring metallurgist in you, you can do your own metal pouring and casting.
Summertime is a good time for stargazing. You can build your own telescope.
How are you with circuitry? There's a series of "Electronic Project Lab" toys you can get that give you a whole bunch of components - resistors, capacitors, light bulbs, etc - and teach you how to build circuits with them. You're encouraged to experiment on your own.
Here's the 60 in One set. I've never heard of this retailer, so I'm not recommending them, but the page is a good guide to what you can do with it. You can also do a Google search which hooks you up with all the different sets they make.
grep -ri 'should work'
If you look through some old volumes of Scientific American, they have some pretty cool projects in the re. One that caught my eye that I remember was a gravity interferometer that you can measure slight changes in earth's gravitational field with. Pretty snazzy.