Thread: I need some ideas...

I’m trying to find something to do outside, but not sure what to do. I live in the country with a creek, animals, and forested areas. I sort of want to set up a science experiment or make a homemade nature documentary. I do have some guns, but shooting them gets boring after awhile. I’ve got barns, machinery, etc. that I can work with, just not sure what to do with it. Any ideas are much appreciated.

Dear idontknowanything. If you lived in a crowded Tenement in the downtown area of Chicago would that help you find something to do? What are your real motivations? If you are in a sparesly settled area could you manage a good telescope capable of say, studying Saturn or the moons orbiting some of our outer planets? This would be great and maybe your efforts would be rewarded by some new aspect that you may detect by diligent observation. MeteorWayne could advise you on what you may expect from this interest. westwind.

I would guess that my real motivation would have to be something with film to study or document nature or myself in some way. We have owl, hawks, possums, small birds, deer, chickens, bison (in some parts), cows (in some parts), lizards, snakes, rabbits, spiders, etc. that I could make a documentary about. I would like whatever I do to somehow be recorded on video and put on YouTube. I live in the country of Oklahoma on land that is my dads and would like to take advantage of this opportunity in some way. We have a local and city lake with gar, catfish, bass, perch, etc. as well. Maybe I should start with an ant farm?

Astronomy sounds cool and we’re away from city lights so the night sky shines bright, but that doesn’t feel like something I can really show the world or would be too interested in. I’ve been thinking of getting a telescope though someday.

If I had the time and equipment, I would make a parabolic distillation unit with an automatic water feed and a clock drive to keep it in alignment with the passage of the sun across the sky.

I would build a six cylinder rotary stirling engine with the drive/cooling encased in an inner intake pipe with the heating section encased in a larger OD pipe for the exhaust/heating area.

I would mount a small rocket with a camera on an helium balloon and see if I could launch it into space and record the results.

I would buy a kite mounted camera and take pictures of surrounding farms for money.

Search the internet and find out what you like and try some things.

I've had two ideas kicking around.

One if following a herd of Rosevelt Elk for a week with my backpack and camera equipment.

The other shooting an extreme fly fishing portofio...like fishing "unreachable" holes from a repel rope, fly fishing the spawn run of starry flounder in the tidal zone.

Some simple and interesting nature projects might include seting up those night cameras, which are now relatively inexpensive, along game trails.

Blow stuff up, build robots that bow shit up, play computer games for insperation.