Homemade Gas Gun

Metal is a great material to work with. It's rigid, tough, malleable and conductive, but sometimes the part we need doesn't exist in any store. In order to create custom pieces, you need to either melt the metal and cast it in a mold, or heat it until it's soft enough to shape ...more

There is nothing more annoying than a greedy roommate. It's absolutely infuriating to wake up and find the cookies your mother just made for you gone without a trace. Your favorite drink is empty and the homemade meal you worked so hard on the night before is nowhere to be fou ...more

Welcome to Microwave Energy—the next part of my Making Electromagnetic Weapons series. For the Electromagnetic Pulse Generator, check out the last three articles (One, Two and Three). I'm sure almost all of you have used a microwave at some point in your lives. As a child, I ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. This week has been an exciting one. The com ...more

WonderHowTo is made up niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. This week: A nostalgia-themed cell phone photo ...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

Step aside, ginger ale; ginger beer is here, and it's delicious. Ginger beer is made by fermenting a combination of ginger simple syrup, yeast, and water, which gives it its robust flavor and sparkling quality. It's extremely simple to make, but you do have to wait a bit for ...more

Kylo Ren, conflicted villain of the new Star Wars trilogy, will surely be a major presence again this Halloween, with The Last Jedi fast approaching. His costume, all black and layered, complete with dark-side helmet and crossguard lightsaber, seems quite perfect for Oct. 31 — ...more

If you've ever turned on an episode of Iron Chef or Top Chef, chances are you've seen a contestant in gloves and goggles, yielding a canister that looks far more fit for a chemistry lab than for a kitchen. Wonder what's in the canister? Liquid nitrogen, the go-to tool/ingredie ...more

Mixing water and electricity is extremely risky and potentially lethal, yet that's exactly what I did with the Scariac. In its simplest form, the Scariac is just a glorified version of two wires in a bucket of water, but it's actually one of the cheapest power controllers you ...more

Via Jeff's Arduino Blog, the Princess and the Pea Alarm Clock: "No ordinary alarm clock: the Princess and the Pea Alarm Clock ('PPAC') leaves no room for snoozing, inflating a green 'pea' between the mattress and box spring, making it impossible to stay in bed. In the tin can ...more

Rosemarie Fiore is badass. She makes art with pyrotechnics, amusement park rides, Atari, guns, and pinball machines. Though all of her work is cool, I have to say my favorite piece is Fiore's larger than life spirograph, made from an amusement park ride, entitled "Good Time Mi ...more

It's that time of year where you need to break out the grill and cook food over red-hot coals, whether it's the beginning, middle, or end of summer. Even if you're not a grill master extraordinaire, you can use these hacks to fool your friends and family into thinking that you ...more

You can do a lot with liquid nitrogen, including freeze and shatter gummy bears, make homemade Dippin' Dots, and scare the crap out of your friends by dipping your hand in it! If you can't get your hands on any, you can even make it yourself. Or, if you want to try something a ...more

Common knowledge is a funny thing: it represents a majority's opinion on a particular subject and somehow makes that opinion fact. If that 'fact' goes unopposed and unchallenged, then it is passed on and preserved from one generation to the next—regardless of whether it is tru ...more

We see Steampunk props all the time and wonder where the maker found all their pieces. In fact, for some people it's almost like a game to examine each prop and see if they can name all of the original parts. However, for a newcomer (or a novice at prop-making), it may be rea ...more

A spectrometer is a device that splits light into all of the different colors it's composed of that can't be seen with the naked eye. It does this by using a prism to refract or bend the light. Jeffrey Warren over at Public Labs created a tutorial showing how you can make your ...more

We've featured Temporary Services before, but we thought they deserved a full spread. In this post, we've included some of their How-To drawings and examples of recreated prison art. Temporary Services is: "... a project in collaboration with Angelo, an incarcerated artist. ...more

This homemade hairspray-powered PVC rocket takes less than an hour to construct and only costs about 20 dollars to make. Check out my video below for the step-by-step instructions on building your own backyard rocket, and follow the written guide below for reference. Video: . ...more

Salad greens are a staple in my house and for good reason: they're cheap, nutritious, and work as a base or an accompaniment for almost all meals. However, it's all too easy to forget about them and then pull out a bag filled with sludgy dark goo or yellow, inedible leaves. T ...more

Ever wondered what the inside of a burning rocket looks like? Well, thanks to Valve engineer Ben Krasnow, now we know. He built a homemade hybrid rocket engine that's see-through so you can actually watch how it works. And even though it's probably a really bad idea to try thi ...more

Onions add essential flavor to almost any dish, whether it's a sauce, main dish, or salad. They are one of the humblest "superfoods," full of vitamins and nutrients but generally inexpensive, which is why they're also one of the most widely eaten ingredients in the world. Her ...more

Jerky is one of the tastiest snacks in existence. It's packed with richness, saltiness, and spiciness, and it's one of those things that you can't stop eating once you start. It's also fairly expensive, unless you're opting for the gas station variety which is… er… jerky in th ...more

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Now, and more so in the future, wars will be fought hacker v. hacker. The number of soldiers, guns, tanks, and ships will be less important in your success in warfare than the number of well-trained hackers you have. Every nation and every ...more

Having someone send you flowers will almost always lift your spirits. Wilting, dying flowers, on the other hand, aren't so great to look at and smell even worse. While there are time-honored tricks to keep flowers alive longer (change the water regularly, put a penny in the bo ...more

A trip to any grocery store's produce section will quickly reveal that bananas are often picked from the tree well before their prime—which is necessary for them to arrive at our local store without going bad. In fact, bananas are refrigerated en route to our supermarkets in o ...more

You're in the middle of cooking and a car alarm, cute kitten, or neighborhood brawl made you step away from the stove for a few minutes longer that you should have. It happens to almost every home cook. Most of the time, nothing dramatic happens, but every now and then, you en ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the commu ...more

Let's face It ... Pennywise is going to be the Halloween costume to beat this year. It's terrifying, simple enough to pull off, and with the original movie's gargantuan box office gross and the hit status of the sequel, released in September, everyone and their pet dog will ge ...more

Tonic water, seltzer water, club soda, and mineral water: these 4 types of "bubbly water" are often, erroneously, used interchangeably. But the truth is that each possesses unique qualities and uses that set them apart from each other. Most experts can tell types of bubbly wat ...more

Here's how to make dry-ice at home, or wherever you feel like it! All you need is a pillow case, and a CO2 fire extinguisher. Video: . WARNING: Dry Ice is extremely cold! (-78C/-109F) and can cause instant frost-bite to exposed skin. This project should not be attempted withou ...more

Fight me all you want, but it ain't a party without alcohol—whether it's a Halloween party, Christmas party, dinner party, or even a damn wedding. (If you think that people will stick around after dinner for a dry wedding, then you're sorely mistaken.) And while we'd all love ...more

Most of us lead busy, work-filled lives, often clocking in a 9-to-5 five days a week. And when that clock signifies the hour to leave, the last thing on anyone's mind is: "Time to go to the grocery store to pick up more fresh produce!" (Well, to be fair... maybe more people ar ...more

The origins of vodka are shrouded in mystery, with both Russia and Poland laying claim to its invention. Some say Genovese merchants brought vodka (then known as aqua vitae, or the water of life) in the late fourteenth century to Russia. For many years, vodka wasn't just an al ...more

Aluminum foil is one of those things that every cook, experienced or just starting out, has in their kitchen. And while we may think we know how useful this handy material can be, there are hundreds of ways we could be utilizing tinfoil to make our lives a whole lot easier. 1 ...more

Hello, all. In this article, I will be showing you how to make one of the most useful products known to man. I am talking, of course, about charcoal. You might be surprised at just how many uses this stuff has. You can use it to purify your drinking water, replace your aquari ...more

Just because a problem is small or superficial doesn't mean it can't annoy the living crap out of you. Others may think you're overreacting, or even have the audacity to roll their eyes, but you're in your own personal hell. First-world problems, white whines—call it whatever ...more

Most of us have conducted an investigatory science project without even knowing it, or at least without knowing that's what it was called. Most science experiments performed, from elementary to high school students and all the way up to professional scientists, are investigato ...more

Will the predicted apocalyptic date—December 21st, 2012—really be the end of the world? In this ongoing five-part series, we examine what would happen if zombies, nuclear weapons, cyber wars, earthquakes, or aliens actually destroyed our planet—and how you might survive. End ...more

I know, "Steamdown" conjures images of a hoedown, but "Steampunk prop breakdown" is a bit of a mouthful, I thought. Anyway, I'm going to show you how I made my very first Steampunk prop! It doesn't require any tools at all, just some glue and some parts from the hardware stor ...more