No Fish Left Behind

For hundreds of years, Icelanders have relied on the ocean for survival. This is perhaps not surprising as it’s an isolated island surrounded by ocean near the Arctic circle. But as the ocean…

The Moment A Bullet Turns Into A Flashlight, Caught On Film

[The Slo Mo Guys] caught something fascinating while filming some firearms at 82,000 frames per second: a visible emission of light immediately preceding a bullet impact. The moment it occurs is pi…

That Ultra-White Paint That Helps Cool Surfaces? Make Your Own!

It started with [KB9ENS] looking into paints or coatings for passive or radiative cooling, and in the process he decided to DIY his own. Not only is it perfectly accessible to a home experimenter, …

Lighting Up With Chemistry, 1823-Style

With our mass-produced butane lighters and matches made in the billions, fire is never more than a flick of the finger away these days. But starting a fire 200 years ago? That’s a different s…

Conductive Gel Has Potential

There are some technologies first imagined in the Star Trek universe have already come to exist in the modern day. Communicators, tablet computers, and computer voice recognition are nearly as good…

High School Student Builds Inexpensive Centrifuge

Having a chemistry lab fully stocked with all necessary equipment is the dream of students, teachers, and professors alike, but a lot of that equipment can be prohibitively expensive. Even in unive…

Stirring Up 3D-Printed Lab Equipment

Magnetic stirrers are a core part of many chemistry labs. They offer many advantages for ensuring the effective mixing of solutions compared to other methods of stirring, including consistency, pre…

Cooling Paint You Can Actually Make

[NightHawkInLight] has been working on radiative sky paint. (Video, embedded below.) That’s a coating that radiates heat in the infrared spectrum at a wavelength that isn’t readily abso…

Get Your Leafy Meats

Some of us jokingly refer to our hobbies as “mad science,” but [Justin] from The Thought Emporium could be one Igor away from living up to the jibe. The latest project to come out of th…

Forgotten Chemical Photography

Much to the chagrin of Eastman Kodak, the world has moved on from chemical photography into the realm of digital, thanks to the ease of use and high quality of modern digital cameras. There are a f…

The Primordial Soup’s On With This Modified Miller-Urey Experiment

It’s a pretty sure bet that anyone who survived high school biology has heard about the Miller-Urey experiment that supported the hypothesis that the chemistry of life could arise from Earth&…

These 3D Printed Biocatalytic Fibers Scrub Carbon Dioxide

On today’s episode of “What If?” — what if the Apollo 13 astronauts had a 3D printer? Well, for one thing, they may have been able to avoid all the futzing with duct tape an…

Easter’s Over, But You Can Still Dye Keycaps

While it’s true that keycap colorways abound these days, one can’t always find exactly what one is looking for. And once found, the set is often either prohibitively expensive, or it do…

Who Needs Gasoline When You’ve Got Sodium?

YouTuber and serial debunker [Thunderf00t] was thinking about the use of sodium to counteract global warming. The theory is that sodium can be used as a fuel when combusted with air, producing a cl…

3D Printing With Rice Might Be Nice

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization recently pointed out a possible replacement for petrochemical-based polymers: rice resin. A Japanese company makes the material from inedible …

Researchers Find “Inert” Components In Batteries Lead To Cell Self-Discharge

When it comes to portable power, lithium-ion batteries are where it’s at. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of work being done to better understand how to maximize battery life and usable c…

Old Ham Wisdom Leads To Better Aluminum Painting

When [bdk6] tried painting aluminum for electronic projects, he found it didn’t tend to stay painted. It would easily scratch off or, eventually, even flake off. The problem is the paint does…

Making The One Ring By Electroplating Gold On A 3D Print

Electroplating is a great way to add strength or shine to a 3D print. However, we don’t see too many people trying it with gold. [HEN3DRIK] isn’t afraid to experiment, though, and pulle…

Wipe On, Wipe Off: Make Your Own Rain Repellent

Once upon a time, we drove an old six-volt VW Beetle. One sad day, the wiper motor went out, and as this happened before the Internet heyday, there were no readily-available parts around that we we…

Raspberry Pi And PpLOGGER Make A Low-Cost Chemiluminescence Detector

[Laena] and her colleagues at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science in Melbourne, Australia used a Raspberry Pi to make a low-cost electrochemiluminescence (ECL) detector to measure inflamma…