Silicone Search Results

News: Magnetic Powder Turns Silly Putty into Freakish Magnet-Hungry Blob

It's best known as a children's toy, but kids aren't the only ones who can appreciate the unique and marvelous properties of Silly Putty. It's an incredibly fun silicone polymer that almost seems like a scientific anomaly, thanks to its viscoelastic non-Newtonian flow. This amazing dilatant fluid can be stretched, torn and mashed back together, as well as bounce and shatter into pieces with a forceful blow.

News: Stem Cell Research to Grow Bigger Boobs

A recent Japanese study proposes a simpler, softer, more natural-feeling alternative to silicone breast implants: fat-derived stem cells. The cells are extracted from liposuctioned fat, and then injected into the patient to increase breast circumference. San Diego-based biotech company Cytori Therapeutics is currently waiting on FDA approval to start clinical trials.

News: The N7 Rifle from Mass Effect 3 Replicated in Extreme Detail

There's still about eight months before the final chapter in the Mass Effect series comes out, but some trigger happy fans are already building replica costumes and prop weapons to celebrate the upcoming release. BioWare themselves recently commissioned some of these projects, which were shown at their booth at Comic-Con 2011 a couple weeks ago in San Diego. One of these projects was the armor that turian Garrus Vakarian sports in Mass Effect 3, by Kommissar Props. But even more impressive wa...

Glass Cutters Are for Tools: How to Dissolve Glass Using Sodium Hydroxide

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...

Inventables: A Store for Superheroes & Hackers

Founded by Zach Kaplan, a "serial entrepreneur" with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, Inventables is a futuristic online hardware store based out of Chicago. The company sells innovative materials at much smaller quantities than typically available—largely to artists, inventors, developers, and researchers. If you've got a brilliant idea and cash to spare, careful, you just may go hog wild. My premature "Dear Santa" wishlist-in-progress:

DIY Plastination: Turning Dead Animals Into Science-Jerky

If you found the world renown Body Worlds exhibition gnarly and perverse, perhaps you'll find this latest parade of plastination a little less so—considering we don't share the same DNA as these specimens of jerky-in-the-name-of-science. The Koerperwelten der Tiere—or Animal Body Worlds–doesn't showcase preserved corporal matter, but rather 20 odd plastinated mammals, currently on display at the Cologne Zoo in Cologne, Germany.

Next Page