
Kickstarter for Science - azazo
http://www.petridish.org/
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Jun8
The allure of Kickstarter, I think, is that the end product is something that
a typical layman can enjoy/use/appreciate, e.g. phone stands, documentary
films, weird art, etc. Compare and contrast with the following example, from
the algal spore research proposal:

"Your support will go towards financing the raw materials to make a device
that simulates the types of forces (shear forces) that spores are likely to
feel in a boundary layer..."

This is cool and I would like to support this research but this is more like a
charity than Kickstarter to me since I don't even have a good understanding of
the motivation and the mechanism of this work.

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derrida
Well, it is a different type of consumption. I notice you can buy the right to
have an Ant-species named after you, and be acknowledged in a journal. If I
had the dosh/partner, I could understand this. Name the ant species "<partner>
is really hot".

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jarito
Why not use Kickstarter for this? Is there something about Kickstarter that
makes it necessary to have a separate site for science? It seems that the
audience that uses Kickstarter is the one you want for Petridish.

~~~
vibrunazo
This makes it easy to find scientific research for those who are specifically
looking for it. I'm not very experienced with kickstarter, but I cannot find a
"science" category in it. And searching for it will find lots of unrelated
stuff. With petridish, by just visiting the website you'll find only
scientific relevant projects.

There's plenty of people who believe are taxes are not being properly
distributed. Who believe we should put a much bigger enphasis on science. With
an easy way to direct people to crowd funded scientific projects. You open the
possibility for us to choose to do justice with our own hands. You can take a
small amount of money and reserve it to invest in science every month. Just as
if it were a tax for science that you're doing out of your own will. It would
be very hard to do that on kickstarter because you have to sift through all
the entertainment stuff the something, petridish makes this simple.

A few years ago I never imagined that I would help fund scientists to find an
exomoon, but now I just did :)

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wgrover
More discussion about petridish.org on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3680033>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3680002>

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hahla
Got $5000 to spare? Get an ant species named in your honor.

[http://www.petridish.org/projects/new-species-of-ants-in-
mad...](http://www.petridish.org/projects/new-species-of-ants-in-madagascar)

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mcrider
Hey, this looks familiar!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577492>

This looks really executed though, best of luck to your project.

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EREFUNDO
This is so awesome! I am not a scientist but I know a quite bit about
astrophysics that I have a hunch that you can accurately predict a supernova
explosion (of massive stars) by simply knowing how much neutrino the star is
emitting and the rate of change. Of course you would need to know its exact
mass, and the only way to do that is to figure out its distance which at this
point are just rough estimates. Maybe I'll try to raise funding for it one day
through this.....

