Science

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!

Why hot sauce cleans pennies

Why hot sauce cleans pennies

I was thoroughly entertained by this bit of hobby chemical sleuthing from Michael August Pusateri, who observed years ago, while bored on-shift, that the hot sauce at the fast food joint where he was working would clean the oxide off a penny. My immediate assumption–that the effect is due to vinegar or some other acid in the sauce–turns out to be only half right. The right answer, and the process by which Michael arrived at and verified it, make for interesting reading. You might even find a use for it.

DIY Space on Make: Online

DIY Space on Make: Online

The forthcoming issue of MAKE, Volume 24, is the DIY Space issue. It should be making its way to subscribers this week and will be on newsstands by Oct 26. It has all sorts of cool projects and articles related to do-it-yourself and do-it-with-others space exploration, from launching space balloons to building amateur satellites to […]

Kabbalistic spiral periodic table

Kabbalistic spiral periodic table

I love this Helix Chemica scanned from a 1944 edition of Hackh’s Chemical Dictionary. Besides the usual information about atomic structure and periodicity of properties, this variant on the familiar table displays the natural abundance of each element in living organisms, the sun, the sky, the ocean, and terrestrial and extraterrestrial rocks.