For newbies to astronomy, expensive equipment is an understandable deterrent. But with some thorough Google searching, you can find plenty of How-To's for making your own tools for less. Below are a few sites with several cool projects to offer. Sky & Telescope Sky & Telesco ...more
Understandably, the tragedy in Japan has substantially risen the level of worldwide radiation-related hysteria. So much so, as an alternative to stampeding health food stores for iodine tablets, crafty individuals and organizations are hacking together personal radiation detec ...more
So says the Original Scraper Bike Team, founded by Tyrone Stevenson (aka Baybe Champ, the Scraper Bike King). The Oakland, California based team is quite an amazing collective. The group achieves a great deal with cheap materials, an abundance of style, and most importantly: ...more
Pranks are fun, but finding a way to maximize the affect of a prank can be tricky. Toilet papering the whole campus or repainting all of the parking spaces slightly smaller can take a long time and a lot of resources. A better plan of attack is to booby trap the choke points w ...more
Today's fancy cars come with all sorts of options, from power mirrors to working seat belts. Some of us condemned to live in the reality of capitalist recession have no car, or perhaps a very modest one. But your modest car can still have some cutting edge technology wedged in ...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
As a kid, my favorite thing to do at the Natural History museum was a midday stop, when my family strolled past an antiquated looking vending machine in the museum's musty basement. The Mold-A-Rama machine was oddly shaped, George Jetson-esque, and spewed out made-to-order, br ...more
You're walking down the street, minding your own business. Then you see it—a large, bright fireball in the near distance. A tremendous heat wave speeds towards you at one thousand miles an hour, and before you can think, before you can even blink, the extremely heated wind pus ...more
PopSci's Gray Matter explains how to "hack light", a simple project that calls for glow sticks, diagonal cutters and Drano. Here's the science behind it: "When you bend a light stick, you break open a glass ampule inside. Diphenyl oxalate in the ampule reacts with hydrogen pe ...more
How do you top a movie like Avatar? James Cameron's recent release pioneered in 3D technology, and was the first film to gross more than $2 billion, as well as being the highest grossing 3D movie of all time. What do you do after wrapping up a project like that? Well, Cameron' ...more
Nancy Stone, a Parenting Coach, shares some Excellent ideas for helping children express themselves and learn new things through doing simple crafts. Finger painting is the best thing for toddlers because they love to get messy and they love to make art, but they aren’t able ...more
Soap suds aren't just for dishwashing! Blow away your family and friends with this cool science experiment. For this experiment, you'll need the following materials: dish soap water corn syrup wire string straws measuring cup large bowl The steps for completing the science ...more
Soldering copper pipes is a basic plumbing skill that once mastered will enable you to tackle many DIY home repair and home improvement projects - for instance, replacing copper water lines or installing a new spigot. It can be as much an art as it is a science, thus the more ...more
This video series will show you detailed instructions on how to create your own homemade ocean in a bottle as a fun and cool science experiment using everyday items in your home. It will show you exactly what supplies you will need to build it and how to assemble and demonstra ...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
Smartphones are crazy awesome. You can do your banking, track your children, find directions, and even pretend to have a mustache. The only thing that these personal supercomputers are missing is physical interaction with the environment. I wanted to be able to call my house ...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
Microcontrollers are great. You can do anything from water your garden to catch wildlife trash diggers in the act—and on the cheap. I prefer to use the Arduino microcontroller because of the large and helpful community built around the website. Though it is my favorite, there ...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: Create a redstone calculator in Min ...more
LIFE magazine has posted a gallery of bizarrely wonderful old school scientific models. Don't miss the giant fetus or massive colon (double ew). Behold, science education before computers ruled our world. A girl scout leans in to take a closer look at an enclosed model of the ...more
Innovative or downright frightening? Popsci examines five of the world's scariest science experiments-in-progress. Suitcase Nukes "Scientists are trying to develop pure-fusion reactions—bursts that don’t require uranium or plutonium to ignite—for clean energy. But they could ...more
Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process ...more
You walk over to your laptop, wiggle your mouse to wake up the screen, then fire up your browser to come visit Null Byte. Catching the article about Anonymous and how they presumably will not take down the Internet, you find yourself wondering... how would someone take down th ...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
The agents of empire do not always arrive with warning. When you are besieged, surrounded, and infiltrated, imagination is often your best weapon against the oppressors. If all you have at hand is some duct tape and a disposable camera, fear not, you have the makings of a powe ...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 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
Now, I know what you're thinking... "I need an extra sexy coffee table that is like no other." OK, Maybe not. Maybe you're thinking, "I need a conversation starter that doesn't have to do with economic injustice, Left/Right political paradigms or health insurance. I need it ...more
Since the invention of the mechanical clock, enclosure of the commons, and proletarianization of labor, the alarm clock has been the bane of our existence. While not actually evil, it does represent the constant and uncompromising glare of our owners shaking a patronizing fing ...more
Bikes are a great form of transportation. They use human energy more efficiently than any other machine. You can keep it in your closet or hallway. You can even take it on the train in a pinch. However, this portability is also the bike's biggest draw back. If you own a bike i ...more
Science-fiction writer Jules Verne predicted many scientific breakthroughs, including the moon landing, tasers, and nuclear submarines. In his 1874 book The Mysterious Island, Verne writes: I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which ...more
Everyone dreams of having super powers. Flying, invisibility, and x-ray vision are popular, but my favorite is fire power! I've always wanted to be Wheeler from the Captain Planet kids show, and now I can with these handheld fireballs of awesomeness. The fireballs burn at a lo ...more
The DIY industry is booming, despite the desperate blackmailing of society by finance capitalists. Companies like Adafruit and Makerbot are grossing well over a million dollars a year, and Evil Mad Science Laboratories just recently dedicated themselves to running a full-time ...more
Making your own circuit boards can be a daunting challenge. You have to design a schematic, test it on a breadboard, design the board layout, and then after all of that, you still have to print and etch a board! Luckily, we have Fritzing. Fritzing is a free open-source PCB d ...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
Are you finding that the Google+ features you've been waiting for are still not rolling out quickly enough for you? Although we've provided many solutions to Google+ issues with different Chrome extensions, it still seems like it's not enough. Now that we've been using Google+ ...more
noob - Short for "newbie." Someone with little to no experience or skill. In some gaming communities, there is fierce debate over the distinction between "noob" and "newb"—one being derogatory while the other simply indicates being a novice. While some may argue the semantic d ...more
By Ethical Traveler As the world becomes ever more interconnected, being an ethical traveler becomes both easier and more urgent. Travelers today have access to far more information than we did even 10 years ago. We can observe–almost in real time–the impact that smart or sel ...more
If you're like me, you were disappointed when NASA cut their human space flight program. No longer could children and adults in dead-end jobs dream of someday walking on the surface of the Moon or drinking floating globules of water through a straw. Homo sapiens as a species a ...more
Like theme music, I always feel that I need more fog in my life. Fog can be useful for many reasons—warding off smaller siblings from your bedroom, keeping curious hands out of your cupboard, and tricking your friends into thinking there's something horribly wrong with their v ...more
Are you interested in making a periodic table science presentation? Learn how to make a great science fair project from our science presentation expert in this free video clip series. Part 1 of 14 - How to Make a periodic table science presentation. Make a periodic table scien ...more
Want to build a fire extinguisher using things you can find around the house? Science shows you how to properly apply technology to kitchen safety! Your main supplies for this project are a mayonnaise jar, some vinegar and baking soda.
Check out this Mad Science Experiment with Jason Young and Sean McMains on how to build a hovercraft and send unsuspecting children hurtling down the street on it. To make this cheap and amazing hovercraft, you'll need some wood, plastic sheeting and a leaf blower. This makes ...more
This video tutorial will show you how to make glowing water. You can use as an ingredient to make other science projects glow in the dark, such as crystals and slime. All you need is a highlighter pen and some water. Check out this how-to video and go make some glowing water.
Use a motor to make a fan and a speaker. People often take for granted the common items and devices they use in everyday life. Looks can be deceiving. It's not what things appear to be, it's what they can become. Milk can be turned into plastic; with the twist of a screw any ...more
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more
First off—Happy Independence Day! Since it's the 4th of July, let's make this week's roundup short and sweet, so you can all get back to your holiday festivities. Things to Do on WonderHowTo WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with top ...more
It's fitting that students at the University of Washington can catch a glimpse of the new, 135,000 square-foot computer science building in augmented reality before construction is completed. The university's contractor for the project, Mortenson Construction, has built a mob ...more
A new technological movement without the technology itself is just an idea sitting and waiting. Once the technology is present in the equation, movement forward can begin. This is how many of us see the head-mounted displays (HMDs) and smartglasses that have recently entered t ...more
Over the past decade, Marvel Studios has been a dominant force at the box office, raking in more than $21 billion dollars. Averaged out over that span of time, the yearly earnings of those movies outweigh the gross domestic product of some countries. And while those films hav ...more
While the world is only recently becoming aware of its existence, augmented reality has been around in some form or another since the '90s. In the last decade, with the advancement and miniaturization of computer technology — specifically smartphones and tablets — AR has becom ...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
Rumors that Apple is honing its automated car technology have skyrocketed. Thanks, now, in no small part to some enterprising members of the media who leaked the names of Apple's self-driving car team to the public. Driverless previously reported that Apple received a permit ...more
Vintage Projects offers 100+ free plans for building all sorts of fun DIY projects spanning musical instruments, archery, boats, motorbikes, go carts, science experiments, telescopes, tractors, radios, and more. Instructions include a homemade paddle boat (more like a bicycle ...more
The latest installment in the Alien movie franchise, Alien: Covenant, came out many months ago, and the fan day dedicated to the franchise, Alien Day, April 26, is long past. But for many Alien fans, Alien Day is every day. For those loyal members of the xenomorph-worshipping ...more
While augmented reality is a means for presenting news to their audiences to some media outlets, Bloomberg is interested in how the technology can improve the way journalists work. The Bloomberg AR Fellows, a program hosted by the NYU Media Lab in partnership with Bloomberg a ...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
Believe it or not, it's possible to make your very own lava—if you have a furnace capable of heating up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, that is. Bob Wysocki and Jeff Karson started the Syracuse University Lava Project to study basaltic lava and give students a hands-on way (hypothet ...more
The final chapter of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is here, The Dark Knight Rises, and if you're anything like me, it made you want to immediately don a cowl of your own and run around punching criminals. Don't forget though, one of the most awesome aspects of Batman is h ...more
Helping to prove that science is way awesome, an 18-year old electrical engineering student has successfully made a light bulb float. His name is Chris Rieger, and he's been working on his "LevLight" project for about six months now, with pretty amazing results. This feat of i ...more