Projects

this is just a bit of fun for anyone that wishes to play. the challenge and the rules are simple you have to make your own battery(s), enough to keep a simple 4mm red LED lit for as long as possible. it must be a stand alone device with no other power input (so a rechargable battery is out of the question), and weigh no more than 250 grams. the timer starts as soon as the LED is lit, and stops as soon as it can longer be seen as lit in a dark room, the object is see who`s LED stays lit the longest honesty is essential obviously. please post your results here along with methods used, and Good Luck

here`s my next Challenge to all you Experimenteers out there, Summer time is comming up shortly and so I give you all fair notice! your challenge is to make a solar cooker, it`s to be made from scrap material or regular household materials. your job is to cook AND EAT! a hotdog sausage using only the power of direct sunlight. vegetarians may ellect a meat eating friend or use the Veggy equivalent (Quorn or Soya based hot dogs). the winner will be the one with the most original and functional design that works the best. IF! you wish to go further or better you need not limit this to a hotdog sausage, by all means, if you can do a Pizza, then do a Pizza ) Pi…

as in time honored tradition, and to accompany such challenges as the: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2863 and: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3907 Now it`s time turn your thinking towards Lightbulbs! The Challenge is make your own Light bulb, it must be powerful enough to read by in a totally dark room, and be powered Electrically (so No flasks of Luminol, or Isotopes or Magnesium Flares!). it must last (giving off book readable light), for a Min of 10 minutes also. you can use whatever Voltage/Current you like AC or DC. Obviously the Less Power and Brighter the Light for that power the Better! Picture (as…

A project is not the same as an experiment. In a project, you work towards a pre-defined goal. Any project in any science is welcome here. If you have built a nice device, have written a nice piece of software, or have achieved a nice result after a thorough investigation, please let us know about it. In this section we do not want oneliners like "I have built a rocket, look how awesome it is". Threads on projects should give detailed descriptions on how you proceeded, such that others can benefit from the info. Discussions on how to achieve a certain goal also are very helpful. Helping each other with projects adds even more fun to working on them. I also want to…

This survey is in response to another thread which has discussed the banning of pit bulls in many areas. The argument has been made that, since pit bulls harm more people than do other breeds that they are inherently dangerous and should be banned. Others have discussed the importance of conditioning, and how only dogs which have been raised improperly or with malicious intent will cause harm to humans, suggesting this behavior is not breed specific. This poll seeks to identify two things. First, how many distinct pit bull dogs you have encountered in your life time. Second, how many times you have been attacked by different pit bulls. If yo…

I don't know if this is the right forum but as I am an amateur physicist this one seems appropriate. My threads, much to my frustration usually get shut down and I don't think it's very much in the spirit of science, especially because it addresses a very serious subject. I may be an amateur but that doesn't stop me from understanding and solving problems within physics. I don't have the math but I do have a simple abstraction that explains numerous things about the laws of the universe. At present, our current models just assume the laws of the universe kick in at the big bang, there is no explanation for why this happens, it just magically does. You might as well s…

Hello, I have found me a new useless project: making heavy water. Q:Why? A:I dont know. Q:What are you going to do with it? A:Posess it, or I will get the D of it. Well, I have some questions about it, are there other ways than Electrolysis of Water? They told me: try distillation, but isn't it cheaper just to let water vapourise and safe the last bits of water and vapourise that again and again and again? I don't mean to heat the wather, just let it stand there till there is only 1/10 left. will it work?

Vacuum balloon Yes, my partner and I tried to build one. It was a competition grade balsa and polyethylene construction measuring 4’ x 8’ containing 128 cubic feet of air. At sea level, that’s about 10 pounds of air and the construct weighed 1.25 pounds. We needed to pump 1.3 pounds of air out of the device for it to float. It nearly floated after vacuuming air from it to lower the internal pressure and thus weight, prior to the frame collapsing. What I really needed was a CAD and physics simulation program to design the thing and test it without spending days gluing balsa. It was fun anyway. It nearly flew for a historical first! Cheers,

First of all, sorry for my bad English, I am from Austria, so it's not my mother tongue. I know that an ordinary superconductor could not levitate in Earth's magnetic field because its weight is higher than the force that Earth's magnetic field can carry. But the simple solution is to use superconductors that are hollow inside. This would drastically reduce their weight without reducing their lifting capacity. Even smarter would be to cover a light and solid material with a thin layer or foil of some superconducting material. To increase the stability of the object even more, you can choose a stable structure like a sphere and use struts in an optimized way. This wou…

Let's start this simple and I will fill in details as needed.

i want to send something to space or to moon and i need help with this. how to build a rocket, and more... animations flash: http://aviv.tomluz.net/step2.swf http://aviv.tomluz.net/earth.swf

Hello, I was doing some google searching regarding sending something into space / to the moon and I came across a now-closed thread on these boards. I know it's a far-fetched idea but I'm interested to know what you all think it would take to send something to the moon. Here are just a few questions I have: - How hot would the object become exiting our atmosphere? - How cold would the object become once in space? - How would you calculate the trajectory of the object to reach the moon? - How long would such a journey take? - How much power would you need in order to reach the moon? - Would you need constant power or could you tap into gravity…

i reccently did a school project on Liquid Nitrogen and i also did a few expirements with it such as making ice cream and freezing a balloon here are some pics (in the pic is my lab partner Jake and Dr. Warron from GU) the first one is ice cream [ATTACH]1793[/ATTACH] the second is freezing a balloon [ATTACH]1794[/ATTACH] and this last one is jus LN2 being poured [ATTACH]1795[/ATTACH] but what im wonder is i heard of a decompression sickness called the Benz so any info on that would be great!! also any personal experiences with LN2 or comments or info would be very beneficial!! thanx again

Well, I have learned that I am trying to make a overly simplified venturi vacuum pump. The problem is--can you create enough air pressure by using the ram air going down the road? The second question--can it be made simple enough? Today is Sunday so my beginning will be Monday. I have really enjoyed the Solar cookers- my second project. I have already begun installing a grid solar system. The first thing I bought was my converter ( capable of grid or independent) hoping to disconnect from the grid eventually. Every 6 months I buy a pair of new panels.

I need advice, I have to make a on scale model of a structure from the time of the european explorers with a writeup that explains all of the angles in it, help me please - your friendly neighborhood nerd, YOLO ALSO HAS TO BE MADE OF NATURAL MATERIALS FROM THAT TIME

It's pretty basic really just dig a trench 50 feet or so long and bury a 4 inch diameter O-pipe in the bottom with 1 end leading into the house and 1 end at ground level. Of course cover the outside end in screen and build a Cupola type shelter above it. On the end inside the house you then use a high velocity fan to pump the cold air into your plenum on your furnace and just set the fan on the furnace to run. Sounds good in theory right? but will the ground around the O-pipe eventually warm? This is why I chose a trench rather than digging a hole and coiling the O-pipe so there would be more surface area and a longer run of cold earth. I was going to do this at my o…

I have to make a working model to demonstrate Roget's Spiral experiment. The apparatus originally used included mercury. But since it applies to all electrolytes ,I would just pour common salt in water and use it. Would it produce spark or not?

Well, I really got myself into a mess here... I got this odd compulsion to crunch up some rare earth magnets into a powder to see if my neodymium dust would do anything interesting. I was hoping they would, for example, align themselves to form something stable on their own (it turns out you need to give it something to form on, and then you just end up with some funky graphite-looking stuff). It ended up attacking my skin. My question is this: Do I need to take precautions about neodymium toxicity or anything? Also, does anyone have any ideas about how to use ground-up rare earth magnet stuff? I was unable to find any good information about the toxicity …

I'm hoping to get some input, ideas and views on my ongoing projects. I'm also hoping that some of this might inspire some similar threads in this area. If more than one of these becomes a talking point I'll (or I'll ask another mod so I'm not involved) to split the topics. Project 1 - the parking sensor (On mobile so no diagrams I'm afraid) The idea was to use a set of ultrasonic distance sensors to perfectly park my car in my garage every time. My car only just fitted. The plan was to have a forward facing sensor, and angled sensor just inside the door to ensure initial line up. Then sideways pointed sensors every few inches to maintain distance fr…

I heard the Nazis where trying to implement a mile wide mirror located in outerspace to direct heat to a certain area causing severe climate change. Is this even possible? How would you test this?

I was working on a wood working project, while listening to a pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, when I got a splinter from a piece of birch plywood I was working on. Looking at the edge, I found that I had sanded it quite sharp, although it wasn't anywhere near sharp enough to cut anything beyond cheese. So the idea struck me, how hard would it be to make a wooden sword? I tried birch plywood, and that got a semi decent edge. I just now tried MDF, and that didn't sharpen at all (despite me attempting to fire harden it). The point just disintegrated to sawdust. I think there might be some wood out there that is dense and hard enough to hold a good edge. …

I want to try this for fun, and possibly to trick my friends a little... Thought I'd turn to some people who knew what they were doing first as the video looks a little sketchy and I don't want to electrocute myself. Thanks!

Im trying to build an engine which runs off of water using compounded solar energy to heat/transfer energy. This will be used to create enough continuous energy to run an engine. This would mean that we can use the sun as energy to fuel a fossil-free engine . Yes we have used sun before for solar panels and etc…. However I believe I have found a method of compounding sunlight in order to generate a level of energy which is high enough to create an effective propulsion system. However, I need funds to generate this, Ive created diagrams which I have mailed to myself and saved. If anyone would like to team up to create this I believe we can!

I had a great idea one day when i was sick after watching Wall-e 4 times that it might be possible to build a robotic flower but im not sure where to order a kit from and i have no clue how to build it from scratch! I am fairly new to robotics and have attempted in the past to program a robot at the WSU robotics lab and...total failure! It went backwards three inches hit a wall and fell apart! But aside from just building this robotic wonder i am not to sure on what it's function might be? So any helpful websites or insights on this sticky situation would be great... thanks ever so much!

I'm thinking about making a railgun but apparantly they can kill me so I'm probably going to make a pistol-like coilgun. I need to know what kind of wire I need for the coils. Oh and how do the coils in a multi-stage gun go turn on and off by themselves? and how do I release the stored energy in a cap? What kind of capacitor would you recommend and how many? What kind of battery? I've never made anything like this before so tell me how bad the shocks can be too.