Sweet! Someone actually asked the question to which I have a very good answer (and yes, there is only one such question in the Universe).
So first, a few details about my story to give you a little background. I'm a grad student doing research in biophysics, and I want to enter dent school in 2005. A couple of months ago, I went in to my pre-health advisor counselor thingy person and got the exact same advice. So, when I got back to the lab, I started thinking: what could be used to carve chalk? Scalpel? Really dangerous... anything else, probably not sharp enough... but then I remembered a VCR I had taken apart several months back, and the little motor that popped out of it (I think it was the rewinding motor because it goes pretty fast). I took a pipette tip, put a little mixture of 5-minute epoxy and beach sand on the tip, found a way to attach it to the little motor, and thus my chalk carving instrument was born!
I've made several more since then, and I've been thinking of selling them to pre-dents to help pay for the costs of interviews (pleeease let there be interviews!), because I'm *really* short on cash and long on debt at the moment (i.e, in perpetuity).
Initially, I wanted to sell them for between $50-$100, to whatever "rich kids" could get their parents to pay for them (and no skin off anyone's nose, really, and more money for me). I think a fair price, though, is $25, which would include priority shipping. That offsets the cost of the materials with a little left over for the time it takes me to make them (which I think is kinda fun anyway). And carving with it is extremely addictive, to which my officemates can attest.
Anyhow, if anyone's interested in getting a nice little motorized chalk carving tool, give me a holler by PM or visit the website listed with my SDN user profile to take a look.
I hope this wasn't too offensive an advert, but someone did ask the question.
