Hot Mad Science Posts
How To: Make a Hydrogen Fireball from Aluminum Foil and Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Balloons are fun, but the helium ones are always more entertaining. So today, we're going to learn how to make hydrogen gas by combining toilet bowl cleaner with aluminum foil. With hydrogen, you get the same lighter-than-air properties of helium, plus it will explode! Historically, this has proven disastrous, but for our tiny-scale experiments, it will be safe and fun!
DIY Hydrogen Fuel Cell: How to Create the Fuel of the Future at Home
As some of you Mad Science readers will remember, we recently covered the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. Passing a current through water can rend it apart, but we can also recombine that oxygen and hydrogen to make electricity! This is the principle behind those vehicles run by hydrogen fuel cell engines.
How To: Create a PCB Etchant That Automatically Improves After Each Use
Etching your own circuit boards is tons of fun, but etching requires strong chemicals to dissolve the copper plating on blank circuit boards. The normal ferric chloride solution works well, but can be expensive and leaves permanent stains. Luckily, we can whip up our own etchant at home with everyday chemicals! Better yet, our new etchant will turn an eerie green color rather than the dull brown of ferric chloride.
How To: Build a Bomb-Defusing Robot Tank for the Revolution
War leaves a lot of stuff behind. Torn families, delegitimized institutions, mass graves, and unexploded ordinances litter the post occupation landscape. Whether or not you have driven the imperialist out, or are still in the phase of armed resistance, you will need the ability to safely diffuse bombs. My bomb defusing Silvia-bot can do it all. She can catch grasshoppers, cut wires, collect samples, tase enemies and even play chess! Materials
How To: Make These Sonic Distance Sensors for the Bad Driver in Your Life
Today's fancy cars come with all sorts of options, from power mirrors to working seat belts. Some of us condemned to live in the reality of capitalist recession have no car, or perhaps a very modest one. But your modest car can still have some cutting edge technology wedged into the trunk and dashboard if you know what you want and where to look for parts. Today, we make a parking sensor using a sonic range finder, just like in the vehicles our owners drive!
DIY Lab Equipment: Make a Magnetically Controlled Cigar Box Stir Plate
If you've ever been inside of a real laboratory, you probably noticed how expensive the equipment is. You'd never be able to afford even just one of those ultra high-tech machines required to splice genes or split atoms. Even the lesser machines can be prohibitively costly, including a stir plate.
How To: Turn Water into Fuel by Building This DIY Oxyhydrogen Generator
Here's how to build a sexy looking water-fuel generator that will convert your tap water into an extremely powerful, clean burning gas!
How To: DIY Rocket Propellant! How to Cook Solid Rocket Fuels Using Common Household Ingredients
Cooking isn't something that interests me much, unless it results in a fast burning fuel and a successful rocket launch!
How To: Turn a Microwave Oven Transformer into a High Amperage Metal Melter!
In this project, you'll learn step by step how to modify a microwave oven transformer into a high-current device that can pump out 800 amps of electrical current, which is enough amperage to melt metal. If you liked the Metal Melter you saw in my previous project, here's how you can make your own!
Spice Rack Explosives: How to Make Gunpowder with Salt and Sugar
The best chemistry experiments are those you can perform with items already laying around your house. With only some sugar, salt substitute and an instant cold pack, you can make your very own gunpowder! Being able to make homemade gunpowder without a trip to the store can be a lifesaver, no matter if it's just for testing out a Civil War-era musket, blowing up stubborn tree stumps, or preparing for battle when imperialists overrun your country.
DIY Blacksmithing: Forge Your Own Steel at Home!
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.
How To: Build Your Own Mini Altoids Guitar Amp for About $5
I love making beeps and bloops with the Arduino pitches library, but sometimes archaic 8-bit tunes just don't cut it. Whether you want your robot to terrify your enemies with a demonic synthetic voice, you just need a pocket boom box on the go, or you want to a miniature guitar amp, a simple LM386 amplifier can crank up those signals loud enough to play through any speaker.
Supercool Science Trick: How to Turn Water into Ice on Command
This is an awesome little science trick that has to be seen to be believed. Simply by emptying a bottle of "supercooled" water into a glass, you can watch it turn into ice right as your pour! It's no magic trick or chemical craziness—it's normal water and you can try it yourself right in your own home.
How To: 10 Things to Do at a Birthday Party with Liquid Nitrogen
If you've got a birthday party to plan for a young budding scientist coming up, a little nitrogen should do the trick. In this project, I'll show you 10 "super cool" tricks with liquid nitrogen that you could try, but probably shouldn't!
DIY Polygraph Machine: Detect Lies with Tin Foil, Wire and Arduino
Lying is awesome. From a very young age, children learn that flat out denying the truth gets you out of trouble and helps keep you calm in the face of horror. But what happens when you just have to know if someone, say, used your toothbrush? You could ask them to take an expensive and arduous polygraph test.
Bat Science: How Realistic Are Batman's Gadgets in Dark Knight Rises?
One of the best things about Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is how realistic he makes the caped crusader feel. Unlike the Joel Schumacher or even the Tim Burton versions, Nolan's world seems grounded in some level of scientific fact. But just how close is science to actually being able to replicate some of the Dark Knight's gadgetry?
How To: Make Slow Burning Fuses from Yarn, Sugar, & Potassium Nitrate
Here's how to make a simple form of a slow burning fuse from materials around the house. WARNING: Ignition of an incendiary or explosive material may not be legal in your area, so check local laws before attempting. Use of this video content is at your own risk.
How To: Find Hidden Blood Splatter Stains on Your Walls with This Infrared Photography Hack
I'm sorry to say, but Dexter Morgan hasn't thought of everything. Just because he's the best blood splatter analyst in the Miami metro area, doesn't mean he can't be taught a thing or two about blood. In fact, I'm sure this is something he'd be glad to know. Spotting a bloodstain is pretty easy at a crime scene, especially when there was no attempt to cover it up. When the scene has been wiped clean, there are still ways for forensic investigators to detect washed away blood, like using a rea...
How To: Make Super Fizzy Carbonated Beverages at Home with Dry Ice
Want to make your own soda or maybe just bring a dull one back to life? Homemade sodas don't always live up to the store bought ones because they can taste flat by comparison. This quick and easy method makes super fizzy drinks with only four ingredients. Because putting dry ice in a sealed bottle would effectively turn it into a bomb, you'll need to make a safety valve for the bottle.
How To: Trigger Anything from Anywhere with Just a Phone Call
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.
Create Tomorrow's Fuel Today: Split Hydrogen and Oxygen from Water with Pencils and a Battery
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:
How To: Melt Metal with a Modified Microwave Oven Transformer
In a previous project, I showed how to build an electrical Jacob's ladder using an old microwave oven transformer (MOT). In this project, I modified the secondary coil on the MOT, which converts it from a high voltage/low current device into a low voltage/high current metal melter!
How To: Make Solid Rocket Fuel at Home with Old Newspapers
Old newspapers come in handy for many different uses around the house, from birdcage liners to shipping cushioning and even a little fish cooking. But for backyard rocket scientists like Markus Bindhammer, they're more suitable as an ingredient for rocket propellant.
How To: Forget Keys—Use a Secret Knock to Open Your Locked Boxes
There is something special about a secret knock. It gets you into secret super villain meetings and is a surefire way to test for rotating bookcase passages. Secret knocks usually work with an intimidating drug lord and for policeman listening at the door for the correct pattern of raps.
Improvised Handheld Fireworks: How to Make Homemade Sparklers
The big fireworks day is almost here, but most of you are limited in what you can do when it comes to celebrating the Fourth of July with a bang. Unless you live in a dry area prone to wildfires, one type of fireworks you can probably still legally buy are sparklers.
How To: Weapons for the Urban Guerrilla: Make a Taser from a Disposable Camera
The agents of empire do not always arrive with warning. When you are besieged, surrounded, and infiltrated, imagination is often your best weapon against the oppressors. If all you have at hand is some duct tape and a disposable camera, fear not, you have the makings of a powerful taser!
Elementary Sputnik Satellites: How to Make Trash Bag Hot Air Balloons
Sputnik was the very first man-made object to be sent into space. Though it was a truly epic accomplishment, all this Soviet sky surfer actually did was transmit a constant beeping noise back to the surface.
Make a Physical Computer Virus: Plant a Parasite to Prank Your Peeps
Computer viruses are terrifying. They are undetectable, dangerous, and operate constantly right under your nose. For the average computer user, there are only a few repair options. You could buy expensive antivirus software that causes more problems than it fixes, you can wipe your hard drive clean and lose all of your important data, or if all else fails—just switch to Linux.
Fire Texting: How to Write Secret Messages with Fire
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.
How To: Make "Fight Club" Soap Out of Bacon & Drain Cleaner
To make soap, you need fat, and if you've seen Fight Club, you're probably well aware of where soapmaker Tyler Durden got his fat from. Liposuction clinics. If you're not willing to go that far for a perfect bar of homemade soap, you can just use some drain cleaner and America's favorite food instead—bacon!
How To: Create a Smart Sprinkler System to Water Your Garden When the Soil Dries Up
Spring has sprung, which means it's time to plant all those delicious vegetables and lucrative cash crops. If you are like me, every year you meticulously plan every aspect of your garden before dutifully neglecting it all summer. I decided enough was enough and built this simple automatic watering system.
How To: Make a Mini Flamethrower, Exploding Fireball, & Flint Bomb Sparkler with Disposable Lighters
Whether you've got an itch for a mini-flamethrower, a shower of burning sparks, or a exploding ball of flames, these little fireworks-producing lighters may be the answer to your pyrotechnic cravings!
How To: Launch Tiny Test Tube Rockets in Your Backyard with Just Baking Soda and Vinegar
Nothing to do this summer? Then spark things up with a little baking soda and some vinegar and make a tiny, working rocket. Best of all—you probably already have most of the materials and ingredients lying around the house. What You'll Need
How To: Make a Digital "Magic Mirror" That You Can Control from Your Phone
Fool your friends, scare your cat, play a game while also admiring your physique! This "magic" mirror lets you do all that and more by letting you display words, pictures, videos, and even some games—all controllable through a mobile phone.
Backwards Geocaching: How to Make a Reverse Geocache Box
If you've never heard of geocaching, it's kind of a grown-up treasure hunt you play everywhere in the world. GPS coordinates are given as clues and the players must find the cache box. There is usually a log book to write your name and a small toy or present to collect.
News: Super Cap USB Flashlight!
This awesome how to explains the construction of a DIY USB-charged flashlight! The coolest part is that there are no batteries! Two super capacitors hold the charge from the USB and release it to the LED light at the touch of a button!
How To: Create Practically Anything, Part 2: 3D Models in SketchUp
Creating any object you want is as simple as point and click if you have a 3D printer at home. If you don't have one handy, there are a few companies that offer printing services online. But to help services realize your design in extruded plastic, you have to make a 3D computer model for the printing machine. For beginners, the free Google SketchUp application is the best choice of software. Using only a few tool bar buttons and a scroll wheel computer mouse, you can model literally any obje...
News: This Wooden DIY Cell Phone Is Way Cooler Than Any Shiny Smartphone
There's no denying the coolness of an iPhone. But what if you pulled a homemade wooden cell phone out of your pocket instead? You'd probably be the talk of the town. If you like that idea, then make it a reality by building your own cell phone!
How To: See-Through DIY Rocket Engine Lets You Watch Fuel Combustion in Action
Ever wondered what the inside of a burning rocket looks like? Well, thanks to Valve engineer Ben Krasnow, now we know. He built a homemade hybrid rocket engine that's see-through so you can actually watch how it works. And even though it's probably a really bad idea to try this at home, he made a video so you can build one, too. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
How To: Build a Frame for the Mega Solar Scorcher
Here is how you can build a frame for your MEGA SOLAR SCORCHER in under an hour, and for less than $8!! This is effectively a 4 foot magnifying lens that concentrates insane amounts of heat from the sun. What would you do with all this free solar power? My design for this custom "Scorcher Frame" is easy to use, and incredibly cheap to make, as you can see in this step-by-step video.
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