House plants are a refreshing reminder of the rich biosphere teaming with life just outside of our hermetically sealed human dens. They calm us and clean our air. But what would you do if you came across a glowing green flower on your dinner table? I would be startled, but not shaken.
Rockets are lots of fun when you are launching them. However, finding them can be an arduous if not maddening task. Fancy space rockets have lots of tracking equipment to make touchdowns as simple as pie. Today, we look at embedding LEDs into your hobby rocket for easy night flight fun!
The only thing better than successfully pulling off a new experiment is doing it with household materials. You get to laugh in conceit as professional scientists everywhere spend all their grant money on the same project you just accomplished with some under-the-sink chemicals! However, there are times when DIY gets dangerous. Some household chemicals are not pure enough to use and some are just pure dangerous. Let's take a look at two problems I have encountered in the course of mad sciencing.
Glass is one of the least reactive substances known to chemistry. It is the standard container material for almost all lab chemicals because it's so inert. But there are a couple of substances that have strong reactions with glass. Sodium hydroxide, aka solid drain cleaner or lye, can easily be stored in glass as a solid, but when molten, it reacts violently with glass and can actually dissolve it away! So, the next time you clog up your drains with broken glass beakers and flasks, rest assur...
Science-fiction writer Jules Verne predicted many scientific breakthroughs, including the moon landing, tasers, and nuclear submarines. In his 1874 book The Mysterious Island, Verne writes:
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the community corkboard, and come play on our free server!
Around the world, X-People (yes... there are X-Women, too) are under attack from an intolerant sapiencentric ruling class. Integration without equality is a farce. Autonomy is denied outright. Human prejudice cannot abide a mutant state. Human fear, born to hate, imposes itself on the life of every mutant.
Everyone dreams of having super powers. Flying, invisibility, and x-ray vision are popular, but my favorite is fire power! I've always wanted to be Wheeler from the Captain Planet kids show, and now I can with these handheld fireballs of awesomeness. The fireballs burn at a low temperature, so they are safe to hold in your hand and throw (shoot) at imaginary enemies.
Writing secret notes with lemon juice was one of my favorite pastimes as a child. All it took was a small flame to lightly scorch the paper and reveal the hidden message. Now that I'm tall and pay bills, lemon ink just isn't exciting enough anymore. Luckily, we can use another kind of invisible ink to write in fire! By using the saltpeter, we can whip up invisible fire ink in no time.
Jet engines combine oxygen from the surrounding air with on-board fuel to burn at very high temperatures and create thrust in the direction of the flame. Rockets, which we will learn about in a later post, are similar but carry oxygen internally and can therefore function in space!
We're officially seeking Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the community. Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (IF up to par, of course). There is no need to be intimidated if you fear you lack the writing skills. I will edit your drafts if necessary and get them looking top-notch! You can write tutorials on any skill level, and about anything you feel like sharing that...
In this article, I'll show you how to make a portable prank stun-baton. Powered by static electricity, simply charge up the baton, and discharge it for a static surprise. The concept behind this device ties in with Leyden jars, and their tendencies to retain static electricity.
In this article, I'll show you how to make a glowing orb. The orb is a fun, round flashlight useful for lighting your path in a magical way. Consisting simply of LEDs, a tennis ball, a battery and a switch, it's a great simple project for beginners with electronics. Here's a video of it in action: Tools and Materials
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Mining obsidian is not only time consuming, but dangerous. Looking for caves with obsidian and risking death by creeper, zombie, or lava just isn't worth it sometimes. Luckily, obsidian can be farmed, just like cobblestone! You'll no longer need to put your life on the line for this most-indestructible of building materials.
WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects.
In honor of the new Astronomy World, I thought we should look at a few planetary icosahedrons. The icosahedron is the most round of the Platonic solids with twenty faces, thus has the smallest dihedral angles. This allows it to unfold into a flat map with a reasonably acceptable amount of distortion. In fact, Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize the polyhedral globe/map concept with his Dymaxion Map.
Here's a Math Craft project that takes less than 20 minutes, has an attractive, practical result, and is at least a little mind-blowing due to folding along curves.
These boxes are inspired by a comment from Imaatfal Avidya on a corkboard post on Platonic polyhedra from sonobe units. Imaatfal was commenting about how the cube and octahedron are related to each other.
Since it is now the holiday season, I thought we could spend this weekend making some baked goods that have mathematical patterns on them. In this post, we'll look at making cookies that have a fractal pattern based off of a modification of the pixel cookie technique.
Is that House? Built in Minecraft? Well, time to cross out one more item off my bucket list! As inspiration for this week's Minecraft-themed Tuesday Giveaway (enter here to win an awesome Minecraft Pickaxe!), I present a roundup of amazing things found in Minecraft.
Last week in New York, I saw the new show Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities at the Museum of Arts and Design, at Columbus Circle near the edge of Central Park, between Broadway and Eighth. Below is the museum’s description of the show:
Minecraft is the most basic and barren open sandbox building game. There are a limited number of materials and recipes to craft. But with these few building blocks, people have been able to creatively build some amazing structures and cities. There is a physical limitation, but the beauty of the game is turning that limitation into a strength.
Back in the Super Nintendo days, playing one RPG after the other, memorizing maps and mazes became second nature if you didn't want to look at the mini map or get lost often. I would make it a point to memorize corners and the overall structure of the dungeon or location, so that graphically I would know where I am at all times. It's not like today, where major games come out with 200+ page guides detailing every last inch or going online where you can download a map or look at Youtubes for h...
What Dad Really Wants from You for Fathers Day!
Solar Shades Looks like it's going to be another hot summer and this time of year, I always get questions about the best kind of Shades for the home! I may be a little bias in my opinion because I'm going through a more minimalist "less is more" style in my life right now. Taking the more modern design approach that is very popular right now, I wanted to talk a little about Solar Shades for the home.
Do you ever really know someone? I mean really really? Super really? Sometimes we can talk and be with people normally for years and then bam: five people dead, house on fire, dog missing. All the while people shake their heads and regret that if they had just put the little clues together all of this could have been averted.
This is a tool I wouldn't want to do without in my kitchen. It's full name is the Jaccard Super Tendermatic Meat Tenderizer but if you refer to the "Jaccard", most food folks will know what you are talking about. Jaccard makes lots of food prep products but this is probably their most well known. There are other tenderizers on the market, but this one is better made and uses higher quality materials than most. High quality stainless steel blades in a sturdy plastic case that is machine washab...
Halloween just isn't Halloween without Jack O'Lanterns. Below, anything and everything you need to know on the art of pumpkin carving.
Defined by Urban Dictionary, Nerdtastic: Something generally not cool, but to a nerd it's freakin' fantastic. Below, a collection of WonderHowTo's top 10 favorite, utterly nerdtastic Halloween costume tutorials. The clock's ticking, so if you don't have your costume yet, peruse below and get started!
Scenario: it's late at night, the roads are completely empty and you are stuck at the longest light ever. Solution: don't run a red- change it to green yourself. Avoid a ticket, save yourself some time (and perhaps a little gas).
Whenever we make a homemade circuit, we use what are called through-hole components. Any components with long metal leads is a through-hole component. They are great for soldering to, but it's tough to fit enough through-hole resistors and capacitors into a smartphone. To get those last microns, we have surface-mount components for SMDs (surface-mount devices). These are all of those teeny, tiny things you see when you crack open your digital camera or laptop case.
Ever wonder how all of those tiny chips and components can fit inside your laptop or smartphone? If you tried to squeeze them in there yourself, your laptop would quickly become too heavy for your lap, and your mobile phone would need wheels to stay mobile.
Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons of fun and useful designs on a 3D printer.
Smartphones are crazy awesome. You can do your banking, track your children, find directions, and even pretend to have a mustache. The only thing that these personal supercomputers are missing is physical interaction with the environment.
Last time we took a look at some of the creatures of the pond, including the dragonfly nymph. Today, we examine the all-grown-up dragonflies in the field you are used to seeing on summer days! Dragonflies are not dangerous, but the extra large ones can bite you something fierce if you handle them wrong.
There is a secret world hidden just beneath the surface of every pond, lake, and stream. Those waters are filled with wails of hideous creates murdering other hideous creatures for food and sport. Beautiful animals like dragonflies and damselflies that you see in the light of day start their lives in this sparse spartan hellscape. Luckily, being giant mammals, we can pluck these creatures from the depths and look at all of their cool behaviors! All you need is a pond, net, and curiosity.
Metal is a great material to work with. It's rigid, tough, malleable and conductive, but sometimes the part we need doesn't exist in any store. In order to create custom pieces, you need to either melt the metal and cast it in a mold, or heat it until it's soft enough to shape with your hammer. Properly melting metals can be a bit dangerous in our home shop, but we can make a coffee can forge for all of our home blacksmithing needs.
Fans of Doctor Who know that the sonic screwdriver is the ultimate tool. It can unlock doors, turn on lights, detect life forms, solder wires, and sabotage weapons.
Even if you live in a big city, chances are you have some wild raccoons or foxes that cannot abide a vertical trash barrel. While apparently omnipresent, these phantasmic critters usually vanish in the night leaving only a shameless trail of refuse you never wanted to see ever again. While I haven't found a way to stop them, I can help you snap some photos of the dastardly creatures.
I think it's fair to say that every maker yearns for a 3D printer. You can replace circuit board connectors, fix your glasses, create ski grips, and make whole machines out of printed plastic parts—even a 3D printer. But without a 3D printer on hand, you can always resort to Sugru.
