Amateur Science

i am constructing a small home-made electrical generator as an experiment. it is very small and so will be low output. what should i use to test it? should i use a voltmeter or an ammeter? and where can i purchase one which will be sensitive enough?

I am performing and electrolysis of iron to form iron(III) Hydroxide; Fe(OH)3. I have a piece of iron as the anode and a carbon rod as the cathode, with an electrolyte of sodium bicarbonate. The power supply I am using is a 12 battery that supplies at least 10 amps but I'm not sure the exact current because my multimeter maxes out at 10 amps. Anyways what I would like to know is: How do I know when the electrolysis is complete? I know I have the iron in excess but I don't know if it will stop bubbling or give some indication when it is complete. Also what specific topic in electrochemistry does this fall into? I would like to read about it and learn how to determine these…

can you purchase ready made solenoid coils for diy purposes? if so where? it needs to be as many turns as possible but i also need to be able to pass a 1cm diameter rod through the middle of it. i just don't like the idea of having to hand wind it!

I came across a paper one day about how one can use algae to make biofuel. I have looked at videos and papers why algae is a good alternative to fossil fuel, but have not come across a detailed source explaining how much algae is required to make a certain amount of oil and where can we possibly obtain these algae? Need help please!

I've just gotten a microscope and adapter to a DSLR to play around, but somehow the pictures come out with a bright light in the middle. When I look through the eyepiece without the camera, that doesn't happen. I heard that it might be because the inside of the adapter is too reflective, so I tried putting a black cardboard paper on the sides of the adapter, but it didn't help. Does anyone know why this is and how I can fix it? Thanks!

Question; is someone on this science forum that is in to amateur satellite archaeology and if so have you ever seen or hear of [ Nazca ] type of lines in the western part of the USA.

Ancestral Dreams & A Dream Walk Some ancestral dreams may be the dreamer’s conception of what their ancestor’s life was about. [A normal dream.] Some ancestral dreams may about a given event that has been talked about and passed throughout the years. [A normal dream.] Some ancestral dreams are about ancestors that the dreamer has never known or even heard about. [A possible a dream walk.] Some ancestral dreams are thought to be brought about by an encoding of DNA of ancestral memories passed on to the dreamer. These dreams are of actual events of history that one of their ancestors went through. “Number four would be a dr…

Hello everyone, My name is Donna Barcus and I live in the United States. I am finding it very difficult to find 3% Hydrogen Peroxide without a stabilizer offline or online. Purchasing Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide is costly for my budget, so with that being said...I am wanting to use 3% Hydrogen Peroxide without a stablizer for the purpose to make my own Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide and then when I have completed the project of making my own Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide I will dilute it to the correct ratio with distilled water so I can use it internally. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciate if someone can tell me where I can find the 3% Hydrogen Peroxide withou…

Does a capacitor only releases energy once it's fully charged up?

Hey all, new user here. I mainly created an account to offer this idea: Is it possible that the earth's magnetic poles could be evidence that the solid inner core, made mostly of iron, spins in a way as to generate magnetism, causing magnetic pull throughout the whole planet, much the same way a refrigerator magnet magnetizes to most any magnetic substance? I mean, I'm in no way a scientist. But to me it sounds possible that all the magnetism on earth is centered around the idea that (atomically) electrons spin in an orbit, causing magnetism. So, what if earth's magnetism is due to it's mostly iron mantle/crust spinning orbitally around the iron core? Like an enor…

Hi, I have a microscope with a 100x oil immersion objective. I don't want to buy costly immersion oil, so I was wondering if there is some sort of alternative you can use? Thanks.

So, i figured i would make my own ethanol to use as fuel. I'm looking into the neccesary alterations that will be made to such things as the carburetor elsewhere, my question for this topic is: what is the expected cost of production? i'll buy sugar at the local store (estimated $0.378 per pound) and use a yeast / water mixture in the absence of air to produce ethanol. then i plan to heat the mixture until the ethanol boils off (78.1 celsius) and i wonder how much ethanol will be produced per pound of sugar.

We need help with a science fair project please. This is an 8th grade project and my son wanted to do garlic versus bacteria. We took 12 petrie dishes, divided and filled each with agar. On one-half was either a clove of garlic, garlic powder or minced garlic with the other side containing no garlic. He then swabbed the toilet, the door handle the TV remote and rubbed the swab in each part of each petrie dish. After 10 days the bacteria has grown wild (doubling) in the sides of the petrie dishes with the garlic. What does this mean? Did we do the experiment incorrectly? Thanks so much for your help with this. In reading over this, maybe I wasn't so c…

Are all I/O Ports ADC? (do all of them have the ability to turn analog signal into digital signal)? If not, how do you know which one can? Also, is there a difference between male header and female header beside the fact that they shape differently? (beside the fact that they allow different peripherals to be connected to it). Thanks!

Is it possible for me to connect a solar to the SRV-1 Blackfin through a breadboard? (http://www.surveyor.com/SRV_info.html). Thanks!

I get fed up by some people who say metal is the only good music and so on.... So I was wondering if there was a scientific explanation as to what caused this?

I'm playing around with separating solid fish waste from water in my backyard aquaponics system. (Fish as livestock, grown for the plate, feeding vegetables via their waste in a closed loop as far as water goes. Inputs are fish feed pellets, air, sunlight, and a bit of water) Normally your fish waste goes into an inert growing media where you plant your veggies, but another method called Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) is one used a lot in hydroponics to grow lettuce etc in plastic gutters with nutrient rich water flowing 1 or 2 mm deep through the tubes. The lettuce grow in holes cut into the top of the tubes and are either suspended bare rooted, or in an inert media l…

Hello all, First time post. Well I am a Numismatist or coin collector/dealer. The problem: Buffalo Nickels. The date on the coin was one of the highest points on the coin, often resulting in the date to be worn off. If I understand the whole minting process correctly, the area around the date is softer, since when the coin was struck, the metal from the "field" gets pushed up in to the design/date. There is an acid that is sold, that when you put one drop on, it draws the date out. The problem is you will go through 100 coins before finding a good one. Well is there any machine out there that will allow you to see the different densities in detai…

I know that expansion slots are for adding additional functions to an embedded system. But my question is, just what kind of things/functions can be added through the expansion slots? Take this one for example: http://surveyor-corporation.stores.yahoo.net/srbaexmo.html ......Is it possible to mount servos on the SRV through the expansion module so that the servos can be controlled by the SRV-1 Blackfin Camera? Thanks in advance.

Okay, so I'm building a replica of the Portal Device from Portal. The thing is, for the lighting in the middle of the gun, I need EL wire. Unfortunately, I understand next to nothing about EL wire. Some questions I have are: Can a 9V or less battery make the wire emit enough visible light? Does the wire need an AC power source to work? Can the wire be hooked up to a simple circuit? Any help is much appreciated.

Hi all, Im new here. i thought u guys may help me to build a remote controlled helicopter. pls say me ur ideas. thankyou in advance

Hi, I'm doing a science fair project and it involves growing bacteria (E. coli) and determining the effectiveness of garlic in fighting bacteria. The link is here: http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/project1098_39_1.html I have a couple questions about this project... 1) How long would it take me to grow the E. coli without an incubator? I have an empty oven that (I think) maintains a constant temperature, and I have a heating pad; would I be able to use any of those as an "incubator?" 2) Why is it necessary to add the E. coli specimen to milk before putting it on the agar petri dish? Also, this is irrelevant, but in case the topic above does not work out…

Hi. Here is amateur science section. I think magic cube is sort of amateur science, coz it includes logic & intelligence. This thread is about my cube collection. The first time i got my first cube is my 15-year-old birthday. Since then, I developed a appetite for rubik cubes. I read many related forums and magazines and lucky enough joined a local cube club. This is my first thread about my hobby. Now let us take a trip to my cube collection. Lol. A full view of my whole collection 2*2*2 rubik's cube. very safe and smooth rotation. I baught it from geartaker.com & here is the link My first cube, which was my 15-year-old bi…

What if I replace the sand in an hourglass with tiny glass spheres (microspheres), then shine light through the falling spheres and onto a screen? Or, if I modify an hourglass so the microspheres form a "curtain" then shine the light through that? At least in the latter case, if full spectrum light is used, I would expect a rainbow effect. I know that microspheres are commonly used in road marking paint as they reflect some incident light back toward the source, making markings more visible at night. But from my (very) limited understanding of optics I would expect light entering a sphere to go in all directions. Will the microspheres in the upper and lower chambers o…

I could just buy some plain jane alka-seltzer tabs, but it would be much more interesting to see if a similar effect(close as possible?) could be obtained from more common store bought/household items. Some of you have probably heard of the object lesson about using time wisely, that involves using a large glass jar and several objects that represent things we spend all of our time on. Various items from large to small are used, and finally water is put into the jar. However, instead of using real small pebbles, I want to have something that will dissolve when the water is poured in. When the larger items are removed from the jar, the pebbles that should have been…