Although they could probably use some more exciting branding, Concrete Cloth from the UK’s Concrete Canvas company is a pretty cool idea. The cloth, which is draped over forming members and then set by exposure to water (as, for instance, from rain), has a projected lifespan of 10 years.
Have your elements and eat them, too! This is the only safe way to consume those delicious heavy metals, the cupcake Periodic Table! [via Rachel’s Twitter] MAKE’s bi-annual MASSIVE Periodic Table Roundup: Periodic table Periodic Table Sweater Periodic Table of Videos Crocheted Periodic Table Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Science and Chemistry Periodic Table shower […]
Members of the American Chemical Society show you how a pop-up turkey timer works. The Chemistry of Thanksgiving More: Lots more chemistry on MAKE in the Make: Science Room
Neat idea from students at the University of Edinburgh, who claim to have used Tom Knight’s BioBricks technology to produce a strain of bacteria that are bioluminescent in the presence of explosives or explosives residue. The notion is that liquid cultures of the bugs could be sprayed onto the ground in mined areas and would glow green wherever mines were to be found. I can think of lots of reasons why this might not work as well as one might hope, however, and because no technical details seem to be available, nor any peer-reviewed data, the news should probably be taken with a grain of salt. If anybody has any more info, please link us in the comments. [via Boing Boing]
Last week I wrote about how to construct a simple sheet metal “bridge,” which, in combination with an ice cube bucket and a jelly jar, makes an effective pneumatic trough for collecting gas samples over water. This week I’m going to show you how to use this apparatus to generate and collect pure oxygen, and how to use that oxygen to observe the brilliant blue flame of sulfur oxidation.
Those of you who know me will know I’m slightly biased toward chemistry, the discipline in which I’m trained, and it’s hard for me to resist the natural temptation to focus on gifts that I might like for myself. So if you astronomers, physicists, biologists, geologists, mathematicians, ecologists, computer scientists (and anybody else I may have accidentally left out) have suggestions for those in your own disciplines, please feel free to submit them in the comments!
Among the hairier of my hare-brained schemes involves formulating a safe-to-drink chemiluminescent cocktail. I think the first person to do it will become a very wealthy laughingstock, which, as I understand it, is the very definition of The American Dream.
So I got really excited when I first saw this post over on TheDieline.com, because I thought somebody had pulled it off. Unfortunately, it’s just the labels that are glowing, not the booze itself, but still it’s pretty cool. If you ignore the crass commercialism, the shameless marketing, the horrors of alcoholism, drunk driving, etc., etc. [via Geekologie]
