Heat pipes, I am obliged to point out, are awesome. When somebody first explained to me how they work, I was like, “No way. Uh-unh. Don’t believe you.” And yet they persist in existing, and working, in spite of my disbelief. I’m still getting over the pain. Lots of people sell heat pipes to overclockers/PC […]
Have a look at the most perfect spheres ever engineered.
Here’s a nice demonstration of an aluminum-air battery which produces 1.0 V and 100 mA from the oxidation of aluminum foil. Metal-air cells such as this find common application in hearing aid batteries, for instance, which are driven by the oxidation of zinc. More: How-To: Backyard battery The Supercap battery
An alloy of 1.3% copper, 0.3% magnesium, and 0.3% manganese in aluminum, etched with potassium permanganate and lye. So I woke up this morning all pumped up to blog about metallography. If you don’t already know, metallography is a type of scientific microimaging that involves mirror-polishing metal surfaces and then etching them with various reagents […]
Scoochmaroo shares this recipe for basic sunscreen free of the umpteen additives used in commercial varieties. Sunscreen is intended to shield your skin from harmful UVA and UVB rays. These can cause premature aging, and more tragically, skin cancer. But commercial suncreens often involve more nasty chemicals than necessary. By making your own sunscreen, you […]
A former chemistry teacher of mine provided a great definition of “pyrophoric:” [It] means that if you playfully squirt some at your lab mates, they will burst into flame. In other (less amusing) words, a “pyrophoric” substance is one that ignites spontaneously on exposure to air. Pyrophoric iron, however, isn’t as dangerous as that makes […]
Build It Solar has a great collection of solar DIY projects, including stills, cookers, food driers, and water heaters. But the gem of their solar-distillation collection, for my money, is this paper, from 1985, by Horace McCracken and Joel Gordes. It’s unformatted ASCII and black-and-white GIFs, but it provides a better review of the various […]
