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.
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most popular communities. Users can join and participate in any World they're interested in, as well as start their own community.
So, I got this email today from Groupon claiming today is Earth's 400 birthday. Groupon is known for their humor, but how (and why) did they pick today as Earth's 400th birthday?
This is the first thing I have ever built for a weekly challenge. I am a big sci-fi fan so I just had to jump in on this one.
Food is the meeting place of left and right brainers: Culinary arts call for creativity, but is also deeply rooted in the What, Why and How of basic science—baking powder vs. baking soda, the rising of dough, the falling of a cake, etc. Below, two plays on left brain principles—the Möbius strip and the law of gravity—both executed with right brain flair.
DIY is a far-reaching term—though culturally it tends to refer to hacks, mods, crafts and constructions, its meaning can also extend to the ongoing trials and tribulations of the evolution of mankind: astonishing developments in technology, desperate acts of self-preservation or as in today's topic, discoveries in science that truly move the needle.
Calling all curious minds—scientists, anthropologists, relentless tourists: Saturday, April 9th, is International Obscura Day, the day to "explore hidden treasures in your hometown," or so says Atlas Obscura, a website dedicated to public curiosities and esoterica. If you're the kind of person who appreciates public oddities every day of the year, tomorrow is icing on the cake. Celebrate Obscura Day in one of hundreds of locales—from Los Angeles to Sydney, from Berlin to Manila.
It's tough to figure out what a mummy would have looked like when he was alive; soft tissue of a human body decays, even in ice. But, Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis took the challenge. Using techniques that belong to both science and art, they managed to reconstruct the face and body of Otzi the Iceman, a mummy who was found in the Italian Alps in 1991.
Not in the mood for a sappy ending? Well, strap in because "Emotional Response Cinema Technology" lets your own body physiology control the movie music, the special effects, and even the movie ending. A collaboration between BioControl Systems, Filmtrip, and the Sonic Arts Research Center at Queen's University Belfast, the technology was recently showcased at the SXSW film festival in Austin, TX, where the newly minted horror film Unsound interacted with the audience through wires connected t...
Ever wonder what your brain looks like on video games? Below, Matt Richtel of the New York Times lies in a $3 million M.R.I. scanning tube while playing a simple driving game, as researchers sit by and observe the real-time images inside Richtel's brain.
A group of nano-scientists from the University of Glasgow have created the world's smallest Christmas card, measuring in at 200 micro-meters wide by 290 micro-meters tall. (BTW, a micro-metre is a millionth of a meter, and the width of a human hair is about 100 micro-meters.)
WonderHowTo favorite NurdRage once again triggers the inner mad scientist in all of us (well, all of us WonderHowTo-ians at least). Below, watch what happens when steel wool- found in every common household Brillo Pad- is lit on fire.
Far away in Finland, where the ice is plentiful and the temperature is bitter cold, the Finnish Nokia team have created the world's first touchscreen display made entirely of ice. Constructed with massive slabs of river ice, the display was first shaped into neat square slabs with a chainsaw, and then smoothed into a watchable surface with a powerful heat gun.
Missions to Mars are far and few between because the fuel is so costly. Solution? A pair of scientists are proposing that elderly astronauts are sent on one-way missions to Mars, to boldly go... and not come back:
David Adams' Pac Man themed pumpkins are so cute, you're definitely going to want to preserve them as long as you can!
PopSci's Gray Matter demonstrates again and again what the layman should absolutely Not Try at Home. Which is precisely what makes Gray's experiments so fun. Remember when the mad scientist fully submerged his hand in liquid nitrogen? Today's demonstration also plays with what is (quite reasonably) assumed to be extremely dangerous and painful: torching the human hand.
Fashion designer Manel Torres has teamed up with scientists at Imperial College London and designers at the Royal College of Art to invent spray-on clothing, an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric-in-a-can.
Stick a bottle rocket in your butt hole, also three in your mouth, and tie one around your dick with a string, and light all 4 of them at once.
Get rockets put them on the bottom of shopping carts and race them through the aisles in a store while you are in the shopping cart pulling shit of the shelves to slow each other down.
How would you like to live like Tarzan, except in a sustainable, organic treehouse? Check out TED Fellow and urban designer Mitchell Joachim and his plan for homes of the future. Read the full article here.
What's harder than returning Nadal's serve, hitting a Clemens fastball or tossing a Manning bros. level touchdown pass?
55-year-old Peruvian inventor, Eduardo Gold, was one of 26 winners of the "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition of 2009. His winning plan? To whitewash a mountain in order to restore it to a glacier.
Upon first glance, one may think Mark Suppes is just another thirty-something-year-old dude living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. However, the Gucci web designer by day has a significant (to say the least) project-in-progress by night. The amateur scientist bicycles to a non-descript building in Brooklyn to chip away at his homemade nuclear fusion reactor. BBC reports:
Researchers Hiroto Tanaka and Isao Shimoyama (of Harvard University and University of Tokyo) have constructed a tiny replica of the swallowtail butterfly. The crudely made model uses just balsa wood, rubber bands, and a steel wire crank. The goal is to better understand the biomechanics of butterfly flight. Via Wired,
How do you top a movie like Avatar? James Cameron's recent release pioneered in 3D technology, and was the first film to gross more than $2 billion, as well as being the highest grossing 3D movie of all time. What do you do after wrapping up a project like that? Well, Cameron's current plans truly place him at the crossroads of science and art. Cameron has paired up with NASA to shoot Mars in 3D.
IEEE Spectrum examines the practice of cryonically freezing the dead, with the intent to "reboot" when medical advances are prepared to undo their death.
At Germany's 2010 ceBIT Technology Fair, a company called Berlin Brain-Computer Interface demoed technology for mind controlled pinball. The game is controlled solely with brain impulses.
Felix Baumgartner plans to leap a record 120,000 feet, breaking four world records. If all goes well, Baumgartner will set records for highest altitude freefall, longest distance freefall, highest manned balloon fight, and fastest speed freefall (he will actually break the sound of speed!).
New serious results appeared regarding the early puberty "precocious puberty" and its impact on the health of young girls. New studies in Cambridge university regarding the shows that early puberty is associated with increased risk for diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and endometrial cancer.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that motivates us to engage in rewarding activities such as eating and sex. Animals without dopamine stop eating and starve to death.
Who uses Yahoo! Image Search, you ask? Scientists apparently.
Most DIY freaks do-it-themselves because they love it. Because they're curious, creative, and like to take the long road (or figure out an ingenious short cut).
MAKE Magazine recently opened the Make: Science Room, a "DIY science classroom, virtual laboratory, and a place to share your projects, hacks, and laboratory tips with other amateur scientists."
Gather all Mad Scientists. Science doesn't have to be all about hitting the books and memorizing formulas. Sometimes it's closer to Frankenstein or Dr.Jekyll than you can imagine. It's time to turn tomatoes into glow in the dark orbs.
I have an absolutely wonderful time making projects and writing articles for all of you mad scientists! Today, I will bring you behind the scenes for a look at the workbench, tools, and software that make the Mad Science World possible.
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!
Introduction to the Basics of Off-Camera Flash
We don't often get super excited about upcoming flicks over at thesubstream.com, especially during the long, hot & more-often-than-not disappointing stretch of cinematic cruelty that summer has become. We've been hurt before. We've been buoyed up on cresting glorious waves of hype and what-ifs and heady nostalgia only to be sent hurling like a fat guy from Ohio on vacation down onto the cruel, razor sharp Jar-Jar Binks reef.
A hay wagon with some hay bales on it is rigged with several of same type of rocket Johnny Knoxville rode in JA2. The entire cast is onboard the wagon when the rockets are ignited, sending the wagon flying down a grass field.A second option is everyone ride a haywagon that is pulled by one of 2 completely opposite vehicles: 1. A Chevy Geo Metro, or 2. A fully loaded NASCAR stock race car, possibly driven by a woman, pulling the haywagon all around a grass field.A third option would be to have...
