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!

Make: Projects – 15-minute ice cream with a dry ice bath

Make: Projects – 15-minute ice cream with a dry ice bath

Making ice cream with cryogens stronger than water ice is a fairly common chemistry demonstration stunt. The ideal way to do it, as Theo Gray does in his book Mad Science<, is with liquid nitrogen, which is poured directly into the ice cream mixture, with stirring, and causes it to set up in about 10 minutes. Liquid nitrogen, however, can be rather difficult to get your hands on. Most major cities will have a supplier that will sell it to you, but very often they have large minimum orders and/or require that you own an expensive dewar flask into which they may safely dispense the liquid nitrogen. At -196 C, liquid nitrogen is also fairly dangerous to handle.

Alt.CES: I can haz hydrogen?

Alt.CES: I can haz hydrogen?

On the assumption that hydrogen-powered cars (jet packs?) will be commonplace some day, H-hawker Horizon introduced a consumer gadget at CES that converts water into hydrogen and stores it safely in solid form. The small desktop device simply plugs into the AC, a solar panel or a small wind turbine, automatically extracts hydrogen from its […]