Everything Else

How To: Make a Simple Fog Machine to Prank Your Roommates

Like theme music, I always feel that I need more fog in my life. Fog can be useful for many reasons—warding off smaller siblings from your bedroom, keeping curious hands out of your cupboard, and tricking your friends into thinking there's something horribly wrong with their vehicle. So, today we'll be making a very simple fog machine for small scale applications.

How To: Make Surface-Mount Electronics at Home for Smaller, Cheaper DIY Gadgets

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.

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.

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: Make Homemade Smoke Flares with Fuses

Here's a technique I used to whip up a batch of super cheap and easy to make smoke flares! 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: Create Practically Anything, Part 1: Fritzing Circuit Boards

Making your own circuit boards can be a daunting challenge. You have to design a schematic, test it on a breadboard, design the board layout, and then after all of that, you still have to print and etch a board!

How To: This DIY Double-Bladed 'Stun Sword' Shocks and Slices Simultaneously

When it comes to melee combat, two swords can definitely be better than one. Throw a stun gun on top of that and you've got a seriously terrifying weapon. That's exactly what YouTuber jonathanj9969 did with his homemade double-bladed stun sword.

DIY Lab Equipment: How to Etch Your Own Circuit Boards Using a Laser Printer

Homemade circuits are amazing. You can build any kind of circuit on a simple perfboard, as we have seen in previous projects. However, some projects require very tiny circuit boards. We could special order some boards from a printed circuit board (PCB) factory, but that will most likely involve a high price per board and a few thousand miles of delivery service to pay for.

How To: Build a Long Range Laser Spy System for Eavesdropping on Your Neighbors

Eavesdropping from a distance can be tricky because it usually requires some sort of bug or transmitter. It's easy to transmit audio through lasers, but you can also use lasers to build a microphone that picks up audio from a distance. LucidScience built the Laser Spy System for about $20. To make your own, you'll need a cheap laser pointer, an NPN phototransistor, a headphone amp, and a few other small pieces listed below. A light-to-sound circuit is installed in a small plastic box with the...

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: 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!

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: Make Dry Ice at Home Using a CO2 Fire Extinguisher

Here's how to make dry-ice at home, or wherever you feel like it! All you need is a pillow case, and a CO2 fire extinguisher.

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!

DIY Lab Equipment: Make an Etch Tank for Rapid PCB Fabrication

I love making my own printed circuit boards. It really gives a professional look to a finished project, and having all the design files means I can whip up another batch whenever I need to. However, when I need to make, say, three thousand swarmbots or fill an order for a dozen PCBs, the traditional etching process can slow down the operation to a crawl.

How To: Make a Fake, Pirate-Worthy Gold Bar on the Cheap

I loved the Gold Rush unit back in third grade. We went up to the American River and panned for gold, and my panning skills balled above all. I got like three tiny pellets. Of course, it was all fool's gold, aka pyrite, but it was still pretty legit. And this was before wearing gold chains was cool—or not.

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: 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!

How To: Light Up the Night Sky with Your Own Burning 'Cincinnati Fire Kite' That Flies by Itself

Not many people fly kites anymore. Most of us don't have the patience or attention span because, let's face it, we're used to smartphones and other gadgets that have games and apps galore to entertain us. Heck, you can even fly a kite on them if you really want.

How To: Launch 1,500 Ping Pong Balls into the Air with a Homemade Liquid Nitrogen Bomb

You can do a lot with liquid nitrogen, including freeze and shatter gummy bears, make homemade Dippin' Dots, and scare the crap out of your friends by dipping your hand in it! If you can't get your hands on any, you can even make it yourself. Or, if you want to try something a little more destructive, you can use it to make an explosion and send 1,500 ping pong balls flying.

How To: Make Your Art More 'Attractive' with Some DIY Magnetic Ink

Magnetic ink is generally used by the banking industry to allow computers to read information off of a check, but that doesn't mean you can't have some fun with it. The guys over at openMaterials have figured out a great recipe for a DIY magnetic ink that you can use for an interesting art project—or just to mess around.

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: Prank Your Friends with Radioactive-Looking Mutant Plants That Glow Under Black Light

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.

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...

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!

How To: Make a Sound Responsive Led's ?

REQUIREMENTS: LED's,connecting wires,tip 31 transistor,battery,3.5 mm audio jack,soldering machine,soldering wire,soldering paste.

How To: Need a Hot Plate? Use an Iron as a Quick (And Free) DIY Alternative

If you're the kind of person who frequently does science experiments at home, you probably have a hot plate. But if you're more of an occasional amateur scientist (or just don't want to buy one), it's much easier to hack your own.

How To: Send Your Secret Spy Messages Wirelessly Through Light with This DIY Laser Audio Transmitter

Looking to transmit some super-secret audio communications to your other spy buddies? A laser is the perfect tool for getting your sounds heard from a small distance—without anyone intercepting them— even if it's just a cover of your favorite pop song. A laser audio transmitter uses light rather than radio waves to transmit sound. This is a much more secure way to send audio communications because the laser is a focused beam of light, whereas radio waves are not controlled, so they can be pic...

How To: DIY Flanagan Neurophone Lets You 'Hear' Sounds Through Your Skin

In 1958, Patrick Flanagan invented the Neurophone, a device patented in 1962 that allows radio signals to be picked up by the human nervous system. The skin is the organ that receives the signal, converting it into a modulated molecular vibration, which the brain interprets into sound. Basically, it gives one the ability to 'hear' through the skin, making it sound like the audio you're hearing is actually in your head. It's kind of like having headphones in your brain. The only problem was th...

How To: DIY Solar-Powered, RC Lawn Mower: Cut Your Grass Without Ever Leaving the Couch!

One of the most annoying things about summer is mowing the lawn. Depending on how big your yard is, it can mean spending hours out in the hot sun while you could be doing something a lot more fun like watching the Olympics or making giant soap bubbles. Reclaim your summer with this remote control lawn mower that does all the hard work for you.

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.

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:

X-People Power: How to Make a Magneto Glove to Overthrow the Human Bourgeoisie

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.

How To: Make a Mega Dangerous PIE-Rotechnic Thanksgiving Dessert

Why can't Thanksgiving be a celebration of fireworks, too? This year, it can be with an innocent looking pumpkin pie that erupts an insane fountain of flames and fire! In fact, the pie filling is actually a flammable mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, which was made using the same process as my DIY smoke flares with fuses.

How To: Make an Exploding Pumpkin Face (aka Blast-O'-Lantern) for Halloween

Carving pumpkins into creepy looking jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween can actually become fairly boring and tedious if you’re doing the same thing year after year. This time, jump into a whole new realm of Halloween fun with some exploding pumpkin faces! I like to call them blast-o’-lanterns, but can call them whatever you want.

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: Use a Funnel and Butane Torch to Make a Huge Corn-Flour Fireball

One of the coolest things about chemical reactions is that they can be so unexpected. I mean, who would think you can make water explode?

How To: Turn Ordinary Water into Explosive Gas That Goes KABOOM!

Maybe not water per-se, but with this simple technique you can turn one of the most abundant materials on earth into a highly explosive gas.

How To: Want Detailed Flight Data for Your Backyard Rocket? Use Your iPhone

Rockets will always be cool no matter what age you are, and building your own rocket is even better. If you have an iPhone that you aren't afraid to blast off into the sky, then you can try and build your own iPhone Rocket to record and analyze flight data, like Byte Works did. The list of parts is a little hefty, but their blog provides you with all of the information you need to make sure you have everything. The most important thing you need is the sensor tag, so that you can record the am...

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.