Photos: The scenes (and science) from this year’s Maker Faire festival

by THE SIX FIFTY staff May 21, 2018 1976 Views

Photos: The scenes (and science) from this year’s Maker Faire festival

From cupcake cars to robotic avatars, the San Mateo-born creativity carnival was as engaging (and visual) as ever.

Photos by Federica Armstrong and Amar Dillon

The 5pm time slot posed a real dilemma. How does one choose? Do you watch the 7,000-pound off-road racing mech, or the Coke Zero and Mentos geyser fountain? The latter was billed as a “mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains,” while the former was….well… a 7,000-pound hulking robot (or rather, as its makers call it—The Anti-Robot). Ah…tough choices.

But therein lies the allure and out-and-out awesomeness of the Bay Area-born Maker Faire: an abundance of unique and amazing (and uniquely amazing) creations in every direction throughout the weekend.

From left: “TRY THIS AT HOME!!” The members of Eepy Bird get creative with mentos and diet soda: 540 mentos are dropped into 108 bottles of Coke Zero (diet soda has more carbonation) to create a series of homemade fountains. Right, big crowds gather to see a demonstration of Prosthesis: the Anti-Robot. Prosthesis is the world’s first 100% human controlled, 100% electric powered off-road racing mech. (Photos by Amar Dillion and Federica Armstrong)

Now in its 13th year, the creativity and innovation festival returned to its home stomping ground on the Peninsula — the San Mateo County Events Center—for two highly interactive days of science, art and miscellaneous marvels of many, many kinds.

Now in its 13th year, Maker Faire has a reputation more for hands-on interaction than spectating. (Photo by Amar Dillon)

The list of maker attractions is long, eclectic and wonderfully eccentric: Check out Mechateuthis—the giant mechanical squid—or scope the repurposed rides of the Power Racers as they battle it out on the track, say hi to R2D2, ask Rick where Morty is, learn how to solder (finally!) and get acquainted with Herbie the Mousebot. Much like the mech and the Mentos fountain, it was often a challenge just to fit everything in (though hopefully you did catch the very engaging—and really, uplifting— talk by MythBusters host Adam Savage.)

The Six Fifty made the rounds throughout the weekend to take photos of the many spectacular sights to be found in San Mateo throughout this year’s Maker Faire weekend.