A guide to lead-free soldering
Hack-a-day’s new contributor Jason Rollette has a nice overview for the why-and-how on using lead free solder. I certainly learned a thing or two!
Green
HOW TO – Urban Homestead Gardening
Instructables user shellberry made this how to on urban gardening. From the site: We’re turning the concrete jungle backyard of our townhome into an experiment in sustainable urban homesteading. Here’s how you can add some OCD (i.e. easy to maintain) gardening space using an adaption on Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening practices (build up, don’t […]
Hubcap Creatures
These amazing works of art are made entirely from found materials. Here is an excerpt from the artist: Hubcap creatures are made entirely from re-cycled materials. All the hubcaps are found, usually on the side of the road, and therefore bear the scars of their previous lives in the form of scratches and abrasions. I […]
Chia Pet meets the solar cell
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have come up with a way of making solar photovoltaic cells more efficient by making them fuzzy with nanowires. Boosting solar cell efficiency The idea is [to] use nanowires to more efficiently conduct electrons from the collection surface of the solar cell to an electrode. Contemporary thin-film […]
The power of poo
Brothers Kevin and Daryl Maas of Washington State are producing electricity from cow manure. We use a proven, commercialized technology called a manure digester to harvest methane gas from manure. We burn the methane to create electricity, while sending the processed manure back to the farmers as an organic fertilizer now free of pathogens and […]
Backyard beekeeping – splitting a hive
This is my second year as an amateur beekeeper, and this last weekend we split our first hive, creating a second colony which will be relocated to a new home in the suburbs. In nature, bees will swarm to start a new hive. Half the colony wakes up one morning and decides it’s too crowded, […]
Is Gilligan the next Jules Verne?
Tired of steampunk, you say? Maybe it’s time to ditch combustion altogether, kick it really old school, like with pedal-power, home-spun rope, bamboo, and coconuts. Welcome to cocopunk. What ya say, little buddy? It all started with this post by Mark Frauenfelder on D+R: In Praise of the Coconut Shell Although coconut shells do have […]
