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…

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?

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…

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,

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 …

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…

For the past two months my brother-in-law and I have been working on a scratch built high-powered rocket. (By scratch built I mean it was not built from a kit.) It is 100% designed and constructed by us. I did purchase a few pre-fabricated parts: the nosecone, body tubes, the altimeter, and electronics bay. The motor was designed by us, though we initially started by experimenting with some designs on the internet and modified it with trial and error. The rocket fuel is homemade as well. It will have a dual-deployment recovery system (i.e. a drogue chute will deploy at apogee, and a main will deploy at a preset altitude) as well as an onboard video camera. Target alt…

Hey guys, I am just a simple high school student in a one-year physics course who wants to improve his ability in applied science and using physics to create new things (my dream is to be an inventor) I always had this idea of a Maglev (electromagnetic) hover car where it uses the messier effect and superconductivity for magnetic levitation and Faraday’s electromagnetic induction principal to generate electricity give it the ability to recharge its motor if it runs on newly built magnetic roads. I am a high school junior, a first-year physics high school student, so I don’t know if my physics reasoning is good enough and if I am actually typing in wrong physics…

I was searching the web when I came across this site: http://www.bigclive.com/stunner.htm. Basically it is a description of the "guts" of a stun-gun. I would like to build something similar as a high-voltage supply, possibly with self-wound transformers to get the optimum set-up. I have virtually no knowledge of electronics and am having problems in the two following areas; a) identifying what values to select for the components and b) I have no idea of the internal components of what is simply described as an 'oscillator', or how it steps up the voltage. My understanding of an oscillator is a component that turns a continuous DC output to one pulsed at a certain fre…

Hey i'm 16 and i've recenty finished this manga called Air Gear and in it were the coolest things ever. They are called air treks and they are a sort of presure controlled powered skates with two large wheels on each feet. So lean forward speed up, lean back slow down. Most of the wirings are in these large wheels. I've read through loads of forums which have all shown lots of progress but eventualy they died down and I hope this one doesn't. I'm about to sart A-level Electronics so i'm hoping to have more ideas to make it real so for now, if there are people who have read this same manga or have seen the anime or just want to see this amazing idea come to life pls join t…

I am trying to build a coilgun for a school project. Its purpose will be to accelerate a ~1cm steel ball as it travels down a ~2.5cm semicircular styrofoam track running through the coilgun. The coilgun itself will consist of several turns of magnet wire around a PVC pipe fitting over the track. I have created a preliminary design, though I have several concerns about it: The switch on the battery-capacitor circuit controls the battery's connection the the capacitor, and the LED indicates when charging is complete. The gray slip just in front of the ball is aluminum foil, the gun should fire when the steel ball rolls over the foil on the bottom and brushes an identical…

This is going to seem quite silly and trivial, but I really want to get some good advice here. I'm considering making some of my own knee inserts for my paintball pants, along with adding some openable pockets made out of canvas or heavy gauge cotton, using velcro. The main reason I'm opting to make my own knee inserts instead of buying commercially available knee guards or inserts is simply because of area coverage; while the ready made pads/inserts probably work very well, I want something that covers a much bigger area on/around my knee/upper shin (i.e. the issue is less to do with robust protection, and more to do with area coverage). Ideally, I would like to…

Hi there guys, i just want to ask if it is possible to extract the ink in magazines, newspaper, or anything that have an ink on it? for recycling that ink so it can be reuse again and again , ahmm for example: i have a magazine here at home, and i want to print something but i don't have enough ink to print it. Can i use the magazine's ink and extract it in the printer's Carthage? or just simply extract the ink in the magazines to be able to use that ink in other purposes? thanks in advanced sorry if i've posted this in the wrong section, i'm not sure though. thanks anyway Cheers

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?

for a science fair project I was wondering if there is a better (more violent) solution for a kids volcano. It still has to be safe of course but we want it to shoot up instead of just foam over top.

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.

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

Can anyone help me in how I make an electric fence, run by ordinary batteries , to stop my mischievous house cats destroying my Lemon Tree ( which needs to come in the house for the winter). And ,yes I know I can buy one , but hey, who wants to pay all that for a little tickle

Since high school (about 25 years ago) I have always wanted to make a CRT from a Vacuum Filtration Flask. After viewing Nyle Steiners project, I was inspired to give it a try. Below is a photo of the project and the link is to my youtube video of the same project. Over the next several weeks, I plan on making a new electron gun with a more focused beam. Furthermore, the copper anode in the one pictured has caused a messy sputtering issue. Aluminum or stainless will be employed in the newer version. Once done, the new video will have both deflection coils activated with a signal generator. Mark

I'm trying to build a miniature smoke machine as a part of my halloween costume, a steampunk imagining of The Joker. The end result I'm looking for is to emulate the acid spraying flower as seen in the 1989 Batman movie, where it is a brief puff of nefarious looking vapours*. some parameters: must be non toxic must not be a blatant fire hazard dc powered wearable I have been experimenting with heating a 20/80 glycol/H2O mixture. My first trials used a small copper tube wrapped with the heating element from a toaster, wired directly to a 12v lantern battery, which seemed to ALMOST work, it would sputter a small amount of fog while at rest, but if I forced any …

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…

here`s how: you`ll need an empty Pringles tube, clear out the little bits you missed when you were eating them, and then cut a 1x1cm hole in the middle of the metal based (I used a Dremel). then you need a can of Matt Black spray paint to paint the inside of the tube (it prevents unwanted internal reflections later). while this is drying ( a good 12+ hours is best) you need to get some brass shim stock about 1 inch square and Flat, if you can`t get any of this then CAREFULLY cut the side out of an Aluminium soda/beer Can, this will work just as well. next you need a sewing needle, I used one that was .5mm wide at it`s widest, although for the 23cm length of the tub…