Nikola Tesla. He was the man behind some of the greatest inventions of all time, including radio and alternating current. But perhaps his most visually fascinating invention is the Tesla coil. While maintaining a low current, it can produce dangerous high frequencies and volta ...more
A deck of cards may be a magician's best way to demonstrate his or her's sleight of hand, but for the prankster, it's the perfect way to deliver a shocking 300 volts of electricity! And that's exactly what I'm going to show you how to do today. Stuart Edge used it in his "Elec ...more
Want an electric car without the price tag? You could always build your own, or maybe just hack your old gas guzzler into an eco-friendly electric machine... This weekend at Defcon, security consultant David Brown showed off his "Voltswagon" project, a 1974 Beetle named Shocky ...more
Sputnik, Apollo and the Space Race. If you watched the State of the Union address last night, you probably heard President Barack Obama mention those three things. The Space Race was an informal bout between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) over the ascenda ...more
This video demonstrates the relationship between electricity and magnetism and shows how to construct an electromagnet using a 4 inch iron nail, 5 meters of copper wire and a 1.5 volt AA battery. Electromagnetism was discovered by the Danish scientist Oersted. Electromagnetism ...more
For great looking fog, you no longer need to go to the local film prop store or Halloween store (which is almost always closed 11 months of the year). You can make your own homemade version of a fog machine. Okay, it's not as strong as a electric-powered fog machine, but if y ...more
This small but very powerful electrolyzer produces gas that increases the fuel mileage of your car. The elctrolyzer runs on baking soda (4 volts/cell) and produces hydrogen. Electrolyzers in general are machines that uses a direct electric current to drive a chemical reaction ...more
Garden of Imagination demonstrates how to make a real working miniature chandelier light for a doll house. We need some cord wires, beads, an electric bulb of 12 volt and plugs. Take the cord connected to a plug and remove the metal tips and remove the plugs. There will be tw ...more
Wish you could make the shift to electric or hybrid, but you can't afford it? If you've got more than a few free weekends on your hands, you may want to consider undertaking Benjamin Nelson's ambitious (to say the very least) car conversion project. First, Nelson outlines in ...more
Around the world, X-People (yes... there are X-Women, too) are under attack from an intolerant sapiencentric ruling class. Integration without equality is a farce. Autonomy is denied outright. Human prejudice cannot abide a mutant state. Human fear, born to hate, imposes itsel ...more
Congrats to WonderHowTo Jackass 3D prank contest winner Grayson Robison! His winning idea: Connect Knoxville to a real life Operation game with shocking devices. Every time a player screws up and the buzzer goes off, the "patient" gets a burning shock to the correlating body ...more
If you can make yourself a cup of tea just by turning on your faucet, you need to lower your water heater. You’ll help the planet and save money on your heating bills. You Will Need: * A meat thermometer * A water heater blanket * And a water heater timer Step 1: Check the t ...more
Tesla coils are totally insane, yet undeniably captivating. And they can be used for many things, from electric painting to dueling musical battles. But one trigger happy fellow has a different use for Tesla's lightning shooting coil. A weapon. After being inspired by the ste ...more
Looking to be the world's best violinist or fastest banjo player? If you didn't start practicing when you were a kid, learning a new stringed instrument is extremely challenging. But an upcoming device may change all of that, if you don't mind being shocked by 28 different ele ...more
...his easy laugh and southern charm. Pull this trigger...it is just so electric. Not just the spark, but the 50,000 volts cursing through the tumid chamber, filled with liquid soluble polydimethalsiloxane. Okay. Okay. Maybe it did not go exactly like that. Maybe all the ...more
This video demonstrates how to make cotton candy using the Gold Medal X-15 machine. Plug in the three-prong chord in its own independent jack. Use a heavy duty three-prong extension cord if needed. Remove the clips from the net and spread the net around the inside of the pan, ...more
Chemical engineers at Cornell have created a small device that may one day turn troops into real life spider-men. The device would cradle in the palm of the hand, allowing troops to scale walls. It uses an adhesive inspired by the Floridian leaf beetle, an insect that "can adh ...more
As some of you Mad Science readers will remember, we recently covered the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. Passing a current through water can rend it apart, but we can also recombine that oxygen and hydrogen to make electricity! This is the pri ...more
R/C car manufacturer Losi just recently released the LOSI 1/10 TEN-T TRUGGY RTR, which is apparently the world's most advanced radio controlled car. The Ten-T is 18 inches long and 6.2 pounds, and operates like a real race car (but at 1/10 of the size). Check out these specs ...more
I love making beeps and bloops with the Arduino pitches library, but sometimes archaic 8-bit tunes just don't cut it. Whether you want your robot to terrify your enemies with a demonic synthetic voice, you just need a pocket boom box on the go, or you want to a miniature guita ...more
Fans of Doctor Who know that the sonic screwdriver is the ultimate tool. It can unlock doors, turn on lights, detect life forms, solder wires, and sabotage weapons. Presumably, the sonic screwdriver creates sonic vibrations to achieve whatever the doctor wants by vibrating th ...more
I have an absolutely wonderful time making projects and writing articles for all of you mad scientists! Today, I will bring you behind the scenes for a look at the workbench, tools, and software that make the Mad Science World possible. Above is my beautiful workbench! My who ...more
Video: . I made this Tesla Coil using the myRIO and LabVIEW. It uses electricity to play the music, which can be Star Wars, Harry Potter or even Hunger Games! The music is played by the spark heating the surrounding air (causing it to expand) then the spark turning off (causin ...more
One of the roles our government has taken on is to provide us with information to be used in making decisions. For example, the EPA stickers on the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt state that these electric cars can travel 93 and 99 miles per equivalent gallon. Unfortunately, the ...more
Got a screw loose? Don't worry. We all do. This handy tutorial will keep any screw secured to any screwdriver. This method of magnetization uses a copper wire and a car battery. This is much more effective than simply rubbing a screwdriver with a magnet. It also holds the ma ...more
The unrestrained joy of How-To cleverness. This subversive video shows you how to transform that old CRT monitor into a 30,000 volt fence. I apologize. This screen grab gives away the understated punchline to this otherwise sober minded tutorial. Notwithstanding, this little ...more
Eating flowers is a time-honored culinary tradition, from nibbling on nasturtiums to grazing on candied violets. And why not? They look beautiful and lend a unique floral flavors to salads, desserts, and anything in between. Don't Miss: Weird Ingredient Wednesday—Zucchini Blo ...more
A lot of my hacks use salvaged parts from an old microwave, with the microwave oven transformer (MOT) being the most useful component. In this "Quick Clip," I'll be using a MOT again (a dual MOT stack) to make deadly flame-looking electricity jumping around midair. This scien ...more
It's September 1st, 1859, and the Earth looks more or less like something out of an apocalyptic movie or Sci-Fi novel. All communications have failed, it's so bright outside at midnight that people are getting up and making breakfast, and people all over the world are seeing a ...more
Every step in the evolution of computing brings an in-kind leap forward in user input technology. The personal computer had the mouse, touchscreens made smartphones mainstream consumer devices, and AR headsets like the HoloLens and the Magic Leap One have leveraged gesture rec ...more