It’s a dorky chemistry joke and it’s a pun and it’s an egg. It’s like it was made just for me. Pictured is diethyl ether, which is what most folks are talking about when they say “ether.” But the C-O-C bond is really what makes an ether, and there are infinitely many possible ether eggs if this one does not satisfy your need for them. I am personally holding out for fluoromethyl hexafluoroisopropyl ether eggs. Thank you, Thingiverse user linuxwrangler.
Brad Lyuster of Louisville’s LVL1 hackerspace wrote an excellent guide to etching your own PCBs. A few months ago, the spoiled electrical engineer that I am, I never would have considered making my own PCBs. Any project worth taking off the breadboard was worth sending to China to get made “right.” Of course, there isn’t […]
In point of fact, I have some empathy for the makers of this Chemistry 60 educational laboratory kit. They are, after all, just responding to the demands of the market, and we at MAKE actually have some first-hand experience of how hard it is, these days, to manufacture, market, and/or distribute chemistry sets that don’t, for lack of a better word, suck. So I post this not so much in the spirit of “shame on such-and-so” for creating this astounding oxymoron of a product, but rather to lament the general state of affairs we have come to thanks to litigiousness, chemophobia, and flagging scientific literacy. There has got to be a way back. [via C&E News]
If you want an extension cord, power cord, or other plastic-insulated cable in an unusual color, and you can find one in white, there’s a good chance you can dye it to suit your preference using this technique.
Turns out many cables are sheathed with PVC, and will take the same oil-based stains as PVC pipe. If you want a purple cord, for instance, you can just treat a white PVC cord with purple primer. If you want some other color, it is easy to prepare your own custom stains from clear PVC cleaner and concentrated solvent dyes.
Here’s a skill I always wanted to learn. The chemistry program at my alma mater still actually includes glassblowing classes, but they are pretty perfunctory. Doing it right takes considerable practice, in my experience. And if you want to make apparatus, as I recall, you need access to an annealing oven. Etsy created this video portrait of their seller Kiva Ford, who makes both scientific and art glassware. [via Boing Boing]
This simple instructables from seniorhigh shows you how to create a simple battery from a few basic ingredients including pennies, a paper towel, and lemon juice.
Make: Online readers who are secret agents—or secret agent wannabes—will love this project, which comes to us from MAKE Volume 16. By replacing the ink in a color inkjet cartridge with concentrated lemon juice, you can print with invisible ink. The secret message is revealed by spraying or wiping the paper with iodine tincture. Here’s […]
