DIY science is the perfect way to use your creative skills and learn something new. With the right supplies, some determination, and a curious mind, you can create amazing experiments that open up a whole world of possibilities. At home-made laboratories or tech workshops, makers from all backgrounds can explore new ideas by finding ways to study their environment in novel ways – allowing them to make breathtaking discoveries!
One of the great treats of my chemistry education at UT-Austin was having the original gaseous diffusion process for enriching uranium explained to me by a man who worked on the Manhattan Project to implement it, the late great Dr. Norman Hackerman. Bill treats it just as well, and goes on to cover the details of the more modern gas centrifuge process.
Learn how easy it is to make your own solder flux at home.
Here is the fifth video in Engineer Guy Series #4. The element of the week is cesium, as in “cesium fountain atomic clock.” Watching it, my jaw was on the floor by 0:20, as Bill opens by showing off the Symmetricom CSAC, which is the world’s first fully functional chip-scale atomic clock. It’s about the size of a quarter.
It’s absolutely incredible that the most accurate atomic clocks lose only about 1 second over 138 million years. But how exactly do they work? Bill Hammack, The Engineer Guy, explains the science behind these time-keeping marvels in his latest video.
Playing around with mathematics using the ubiquitous hula hoop.
A finger rubbed in superhydrophobic aerogels and submerged in water takes on a decidedly T-1000-esque appearance. And a droplet of water on a piece of paper treated with the same substance behaves more like a drop of mercury on a piece of glass. Definitely worth a click and a few eyeball-seconds.
