Mad Science Features — Page 4 of 4 « Mad Science

News: Bikinis, Handcuff Keys, and Other Awesome Things You Can Make with a 3D Printer

3D printing has been around for a while, but until recently it was used mostly for prototyping and research. Now, with technological advancements, it seems like everyone is using 3D printers, from crime scene investigators to garage hobbyists and hackers. Below are some of the most innovative uses people have come up with so far.

How To: Automate Your Doorbell with Freaking Lasers

Doorbells are a great idea. They let you know when someone who's not a burglar is trying to enter your house, apartment, or squat. They eliminate the need for lots of noisy yelling and startling door pounding.

News: Welcome to Mad Science! Evil Experiments for Scientific Thrill Seekers

Welcome to the Mad Science World! Hold onto your radiation-shielded hard hats—we're going to be posting a ton of great how-to articles and videos every week, showcasing the maddest of the mad science experiments on the web. We hope you will be inspired to try these projects at home, but always remember—safety first!

Galactic Invasion: How to Securely Embed Tracking Electronics into a Rocket

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!

Contest: Potassium Nitrate Crystals

Recreating one of Will's mad science experiments, I made some potassium nitrate crystals. This was definitely the most fun part of my DIY smoke mix. I can't win the contest, but I'm just putting it up here for fun, since I liked the pictures so much.

Red Wine: The Secret to Superconductivity

We've all heard of the power that red wine holds. It can help lower risks of heart disease, boost your brain power, and can even recharge your car battery. But last year, a group of Japanese physicists made headlines when they announced that they could induce superconductivity by soaking metals in red wine. But why red wine?

News: Brain Hacking and Thought-Controlled Quadcopters: The Good and Bad Future of Mind-Reading Devices

Until recently, brainwave-reading devices have pretty much only existed in science fiction. Sure, electroencephalography (EEG), the technology that powers these devices, has been used in medicine and psychiatry since the late 1800s, but diagnosing people's brains and reading their minds are two totally different things. The first EEG headsets available to the public were used mostly in gaming and even in fashion, but in the last few years, they've gotten a little more sophisticated.

News: Freaking DIY Magma! Syracuse University Creates Recyclable Red-Hot Lava Flows

Believe it or not, it's possible to make your very own lava—if you have a furnace capable of heating up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, that is. Bob Wysocki and Jeff Karson started the Syracuse University Lava Project to study basaltic lava and give students a hands-on way (hypothetically, of course) to learn about it. Oh, and they also want to use it for art projects. Sign me up for that class! It all starts with 1.1 billion-year-old basalt gravel, which apparently anyone can buy. They put the gra...

News: This Levitating Light Bulb Defies Gravity (And Ditches Unsightly Power Cords)

Helping to prove that science is way awesome, an 18-year old electrical engineering student has successfully made a light bulb float. His name is Chris Rieger, and he's been working on his "LevLight" project for about six months now, with pretty amazing results. This feat of ingenuity was accomplished by using magnetic levitation, although that over-simplification masks how considerably difficult this undertaking was.

News: Fire Up the Levitating Barbie, It's Time to Cook with Electromagnetic Induction

Michael Faraday was awesome. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis, and he invented the Bunsen burner (before it was the Bunsen burner). Because of his work, we can make suits that can withstand 1,000,000 volts of electricity and cases to protect our gadgets from nuclear attacks.

News: DIY Lab Instruments

Here are three awesome videos on whipping up lab quality instruments in your garage! Science is accessible!

How To: Turn Your iPhone's Glass Back Panel into a Vintage Wet Collodion Photo Plate

Collodion—it's one of those things that you probably never heard of before, but have actually come across many times in life. It's used for all kinds of applications, from photography to special effects, and it even has a few medical uses. So, what exactly is collodion? Photo by Bostick & Sullivan

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.

News: 3D Laser Scanner from Trash

This brilliantly simple tutorial explains how to make a 3D laser line scanner from old junk parts. Follow along and you will be loading objects into your hard drive in no time!

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!

News: You Can Now Pilot Your Own 13-Foot Tall Weaponized Mech (For Just $1.35 Million)

The streets of Tokyo are about to get a lot scarier (or more awesome), after Suidobashi Heavy Industries unveiled their latest project: a 13-foot tall, customizable, piloted robot. It's armed to the teeth with a water bottle rocket launcher and a BB Gatling gun capable of firing 6,000 rounds a minute; all for the very reasonable price tag of around 1.35 million dollars.

News: The @Burnvideos Instagram Account Gives You Exactly That—And It's Mesmerizing

As Alfred monologued in The Dark Knight, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

News: This 1974 Gas-Guzzling Beetle Is Now an Eco-Friendly Electric "Voltswagon"

Want an electric car without the price tag? You could always build your own, or maybe just hack your old gas guzzler into an eco-friendly electric machine... This weekend at Defcon, security consultant David Brown showed off his "Voltswagon" project, a 1974 Beetle named Shocky that he converted to electric for only $6,000. He removed the old combustion engine, radiator, and a few other unneeded parts to make it lighter. Then he loaded it with batteries front and back, ten Interstate DC-29, 12...

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...

A New Breed of Invertebrate: Half-Rat, Half-Silicone Cyborg Jellyfish

A team of scientists might have just put Jellyfish Art out of business with their new cyborg jellyfish. By arranging the heart cells of a normal rat on a piece of silicone, they've successfully created their own Franken-jellies. When in salt water with a fluctuating electrical field, the rat's heart muscles on the rubbery silicone contract the lobes downward and back up, which mimics the pulsing movement of a young moon jellyfish swimming.

News: Winners of Mad Science's Sugru Contest

Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas in last month's Mad Science contest. The question called for your best idea for using Sugru, a temporarily malleable silicone modeling clay that self cures for a soft-touch permanent bond. It's a marvelous product for at-home quick fixes and for even making some cool DIY bumpers and grips for your electronics. William scoured through all of the comments and chose the two winners he felt best deserved a pack of Sugru.

News: Arduino Shot Machine Pours a Drink Every Time the US Wins an Olympic Medal

Drinking games just got a little more sophisticated (kind of). Startup SmartThings built this awesome Arduino-based machine that automatically pours a shot whenever the US wins a medal in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Goldschläger for gold, Cuervo for silver, and Jack Daniels for bronze.

News: Let yourself In with this Hacked Morse Code Door Buzzer!

What happens when you add a few wires and a microcontroller to your door buzzer? You can let yourself into your building from the outside!

Contest: Spud Gun

Well here it is, this is an older pic but it still works, the only change from this pic and the current cannon is that I have put some duct tape around the PVC bonds and am planing on spray painting it. The compression chamber is over a foot and a half long at 2" diameter PVC to push the spud or what ever you can out the cannon. The barrel is a little more than a foot long. This was originaly a prototype with all 1" PVC pipe but I cut it all off and attached a few PVC sizers and made the barr...

News: Slothborg Selling Lucid Dream Goggle Kits!

The rad people over at Slothborg Technologies have started selling kits based on our lucid dreaming goggles! If you have been dying to make your own lucid dream goggles but didn't know where to get all the parts from, this is your lucky day.

News: Congratulations, Cerek! You've Won Mad Science's Lucid Dreaming Goggles Kit!

Thank you to everyone who entered the photo contest for a chance to win a cool lucid dreaming goggles kit from Mad Science. This month's winner was Cerek, who submitted this great camera shutter release project photo:

News: Pet Feeder Entered in Instructables 3D Printer Contest

Mad Science has entered the automatic pet feeder project as an instructable in the Make It Real challenge. Nine of the winners will receive their own 3D printer! If you are now imagining all the cool stuff we could do for Mad Science with a 3D printer, please share your ideas and vote for the entry here.

News: Solar Bag Lets You Fashionably Purify Water On-the-Go Using UV Rays

Water purifiers are already portable, but not as portable as this crazy invention. Created by Marcus Triest and Ryan Lynch, the Solar Bag can be worn like a shoulder bag and holds up to 2.5 gallons of water. In a feat of ingenuity, the bag is designed to use sunlight to purify the stored water, allowing you to filter drinking water on the go. The bag is made from two layers of polyethylene—a clear, high-clarity layer on the outside and a black layer on the inside. The top layer allows the max...

News: Glove-based touch screen from a CRT monitor

Here’s a bulky old CRT monitor used as a touch-screen without any alterations. It doesn’t use an overlay, but instead detects position using phototransistors in the fingertips of a glove.

Top 10: Tips for the Amateur Chemist

Super useful run down of home chemistry tips and tricks.

News: A Theory of Holographic Music Synthesis

Are you ready for crazy, next-level music technology? I just completed a pretty fun introductory write-up on my new instrument called the Dub Cadet over at instructables.com. This is the first installment of a 3-Part series to explain how to build your own Dub Cadet or personally amalgamated hybrid.