The Astrolabe Project

Astrolabes were on display at Maker Faire Nova. The Maker Faire at George Mason University was this past Sunday. A good time was had by all. I had a prime site for my display and had a constant stream of visitors. On display were all my various paper versions of astrolabes and quadrants, along with a selection of the new work in wood and acrylic. I had the chance to demo the functions of the astrolabe and discuss history and its uses in period.

Lessons

The booth setup worked well, giving me plenty of room to move about, and lots of room for visitors to look. actual live demos did not come off as much as I would have liked, I had prepared walk-through sheets for each of the instrument types, but the only one that got any use was the one for doing math on the sine quadrant.

Another problem was the age of a lot of the participants. Many of the visitors were too young to have enough of a background in astronomy or math to really understand what I was explaining. There were surprises though, one young lady had done a report on astrolabes the previous month and was quite knowledgeable.

Finally, I set up a slide show with photos of extant pieces, and video of the laser cutter and 3D printers working. But I think having the simulators available would have been more of a help.

See also:
http://www.astrolabeproject.com/17/05/2019/nova-labs/
http://www.astrolabeproject.com/24/05/2019/thingiverse/