Have you ever been curious how a glow stick works or how they achieve all those wonderful colors? In this video from NurdRage you’ll learn what it takes to generate the chemical energy needed and how to harness it to create various colors in the spectrum.
When I was a teen, I was fascinated by alchemy — not so much the whole turning lead into gold part or trying to play God and create tiny little humans in a jar. I was really attracted to the labware, the furnaces, the study of the physical and natural world and its processes — […]
We’re excited to bring to you the second episode in our special summer kids video miniseries, Sylvia’s Super Awesome Mini Maker Show! Subscribe to the MAKE Podcast in iTunes, download the m4v video directly, or watch it on YouTube, Blip.tv, and Vimeo. By James (TechNinja) and Sylvia Did you know that you can have fun […]
More beautiful CC-licensed element photography from Wikipedia user alchemist-hp. Since I last wrote about his work, alchemist-hp has updated his (German) Wikipedia page with a clickable periodic table chronicling his ongoing quest to photograph each of the 94 naturally-occurring chemical elements. Right now he’s at 36.
This clever hack from Nederlander Ruud Setteur is only available in Dutch, but the pictures are worth many thousands of words.
Speaking broadly, non-Newtonian fluids are of two types: Either they get thinner under shear, or they get thicker. Shear-thickening fluids, like the common corn flour-water mixture sometimes called “oobleck,” obviously, get thicker when a force is applied. This new and highly secretive non-Newtonian fluid formulation by British defense giant BAE is like oobleck to the power of ten, and can, reportedly, be very effectively combined with Kevlar to improve human body armor performance against bullets. [via Fast Company]
When 17 year old Hayden Parker says he’s a backyard scientist, he means it literally. He’s converted the family backyard BBQ area into an outdoor chemistry lab where he shoots videos of his experiments. It’s a little harrowing watching him do some of these procedures, such as synthesizing nitric acid, and making some critical mistakes […]
