Science Experiment Physics

Creating awesomely messy slops of DIY slime and curdled fake blood isn't something new—we even have guides on making Dr. Seuss-friendly Oobleck and the radioactive green ooze that created my childhood favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (minus the radioactive part, of course ...more

Sure it's been done before, but it never gets old. There's something magical about dry ice, bubbles, and especially the result you see when they're combined! Video: . For this experiment, I filled a bowl about half full with warm water, and placed a few chunks of dry ice insid ...more

Don't panic the next time you pull an empty tub of butter from the fridge. If you have some heavy whipping cream, save yourself a trip to the grocery store and just make your own. When heavy cream is shaken violently for a long enough duration, it turns to butter—and if you're ...more

Have you ever seen water freeze instantly? This "Quick Clip" shows some of my personal experiences with making instant ice using a bottle of water supercooled in a freezer. Video: . To get this "instant ice" effect, I put unopened bottles of water in the freezer for anywhere b ...more

We all know that DNA is pretty amazing, but it's not something that most of us get much hands-on experience with. Even though it's in every living thing around us, we never see it, so we rarely think about it either. A strawberry is one of the easiest things to extract DNA fr ...more

Michael Faraday was awesome. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis, and he invented the Bunsen burner (before it was the Bunsen burner). Because of his work, we can make suits that can withstand 1,000,000 volts of electricity and cases to prote ...more

While it's easy to make fun of water with "electrolytes," there's actually some science behind it. Despite the name, electrolyte-enhanced water isn't all that high-tech, it mostly means that it's been infused with vitamins and minerals such as potassium and sodium, which are v ...more

Need a way to prove your strength? Only superheroes have the power to tear metal, right? Wrong! Even the weakest nerds can shred metal with science on their side. Ripping through metal is easier than it sounds.  We have yet to discover a HowTo on getting your muscles into su ...more

Just like in the Spy Kids 3D movie, US soldiers may soon upgrade their mission planning from 2D to 3D. Welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, US Army. Natick, Massachusetts is home to the Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC), who ...more

Unity 5.6 was just released on March 31, and it will be the last entry in the Unity 5 cycle. With all of the new features, it looks like Unity 5 is going out with a bang. We already covered some updates that were added to 5.6 during the beta, especially things pertaining to m ...more

White rice is cheap, filling, and tasty. No wonder so many countries in the world rely on it as a mealtime staple, including most of East and Southeast Asia. Alas, because of its relative lack of nutrition and its high calorie count, consuming lots of white rice regularly also ...more

Using a technology we like to call "Hive Computing," several Android apps allow you to contribute idle processing power to help further scientific research. This basically means that when you're not using your phone or tablet, it can join forces with other idle devices to form ...more

Legendary drum-and-bass artist Squarepusher, the Warp records labelmate of fellow electronic music legend Aphex Twin, is back with his fifteenth album called Be Up a Hello, which is set to drop on Feb. 1. To kick off the launch, the artist has just released an amazing new mus ...more

Research group OpenAI, a research institute co-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, says it is possible to trick driverless cars' neural networks into mistaking images for something else. In a blog post published on OpenAI's website, Anish Athalye, an undergraduate studying comput ...more

When Chan Mei Zhi Alcine chose her senior project, she thought outside the box by thinking inside the bottle. Along with a research team at her university, she found a way to combine health and enjoyment, while meeting a challenge not so definitively met before in alcoholic be ...more

German tech store Saturn is experimenting with an AR alien called Paula to push their products ... That's a sentence I never thought I'd write. The retailer is testing their augmented reality salesperson with customers in 20 select stores via a Microsoft HoloLens. 'Paula' wil ...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

Natural remedies used through the ages abound, especially in Asian medicine. The willow-leaved justicia plant, found throughout Southeast Asia, has traditionally been used to treat arthritis, but scientists have just discovered it contains an anti-HIVcompound more potent than ...more

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were 212 million cases of malaria across the world in 2015, and 429,000 of those people died — mostly children living in Africa. Preventing and treating those infections has been a challenging world priority. ...more

Bioluminescence — the ability of an organism to produce and emit light — is nature's light show. Plants, insects, fish, and bacteria do it, and scientists understand how. Until now, though, we didn't know how fungi glow. Now, thanks to research led by Zinaida Kaskova in the I ...more

Fighting fire with fire, scientists are harnessing the adaptability of helpful microbes to challenge the adaptability of deadly microbes. What are we talking about? Hunting with phages — viruses that attack and kill bacteria. Bacteriophages are small, skeletal viruses that at ...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

Lightform might just be the thing to have at your next party. The San Francisco-based company just created the first computer ever able to connect to a projector and instantly scan 3D scenes to mix reality with projected light. Not only that, but Lightform just raised $2.6 mi ...more

We usually associate Salmonella bacteria with a dangerous type of food poisoning, but they actually are pretty good at seeking out tumors. That trait made the bacteria a great candidate to deliver a protein that would help knock tumors out. Jin Hai Zheng, from Chonnam Nationa ...more

The limitless applications of 3D data visualization will enable a more efficient approach to many of life's problems. Each day, developers exploring this technology are finding new ways to solve these problems in mixed reality; 3D modeling, easier house management, spinal surg ...more

The mention of Zika can strike fear in the hearts of pregnant women. With infections increasing around the world, including in the US, researchers are fighting the clock to figure out how the virus can have such horrific effects in some people. Don't Miss: A Zika Outbreak Pr ...more

We've explained the differences between mixed, virtual, and augmented reality through old-fashioned text and infographics, but in a rapidly-changing environment that leads to even more terms, it's best to think of all these realities in one simple way—as a continuum. Video: . ...more

Pickling isn't rocket science. In fact, anyone can make their own speciality pickles using just about any fruit or vegetable. For example, I've pickled everything from lemons, watermelon rinds, and apples to red onions, carrots, radishes, and cucumbers. Don't Miss: DIY Pickle ...more

The standard way to make pasta requires a lot of water, and it takes a long time for that big pot of water to actually start boiling. For these reasons, as well as my hatred for washing large pots, I don't cook pasta at home very often—at least not the traditional way. Believ ...more

Like many others, I like a good cocktail every now and then, and I've always been impressed when my cocktail enthusiast friends would come up with a new drink or even just remember how to concoct a Clover Club (FYI, it's made with gin, raspberry syrup, lemon, and egg white). T ...more

While you may look ridiculous doing the potty dance and crossing your legs back and forth, holding it in can be worth the discomfort when you've got an important decision to make. While it's well known that we make more impulsive decisions when under visceral states, such as ...more

True story: a friend of mine regularly started a fight with her boyfriend everyday at 4 p.m. Every day. This went on for years until he finally got the bright idea of shoving a granola bar at her the minute she came home from work. Shazam! The fights were a thing of the past. ...more

Until recently, brainwave-reading devices have pretty much only existed in science fiction. Sure, electroencephalography (EEG), the technology that powers these devices, has been used in medicine and psychiatry since the late 1800s, but diagnosing people's brains and reading t ...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

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

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

Last week, we rolled out a major site-wide update on WonderHowTo, making it even easier to follow the subjects you're passionate about—and easier to share your creations with people who'll give you the kudos you deserve! Like any major update, there will be some bugs and ques ...more

Apps went from a novelty to the main way we control the functionality of our phones and tablets in what felt like an instant. Apps are ubiquitous, and you can find one for virtually every need. However, what's right for someone else isn't always right for you, and what's right ...more

The landscape of the augmented reality space is broad, diverse, and constantly shifting, perhaps more so than any other vertical in technology. At the same time, major players are attempting to standardize various hardware designs and delivery methods, while still others are r ...more

The future of smartglasses for consumers seems ever dependent on Apple's entry into the market. Coincidentally, the exit of Apple's long-time design chief Jony Ive has shed some light on that eventual entrance. Meanwhile, as the enterprise sector of AR continues to expand, on ...more

The year in augmented reality 2019 started with the kind of doom and gloom that usually signals the end of something. Driven in large part by the story we broke in January about the fall of Meta, along with similar flameouts by ODG and Blippar, the virtual shrapnel of AR ventu ...more

Cancer cells do a pretty good job of flying under the radar of our immune system. They don't raise the alarm bells signaling they are a foreign invader the way viruses do. That might be something scientists can change, though. A team of researchers has built non-infectious ar ...more

Colorectal cancer — cancer of the colon or rectum — is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US. To reduce the chances of a diagnosis we are all urged to stop smoking, keep our weight down, decrease our intake of alcohol and red meat, keep active, and get screened fo ...more

A vulnerability in the design of LiDAR components in driverless cars is far worse than anything we've seen yet outside of the CAN bus sphere — with a potentially deadly consequence if exploited. The hack is also going to be hard to fix, researchers Hocheol Shin, Dohyun Kim, Y ...more

A new study casts real suspicion on the possibility of life on Mars. Why? It seems the surface of the planet may be downright uninhabitable for microbial life as we know it. Over the years, and with research into life on other worlds, visions of extra-terrestrials and "little ...more

Drug-resistant bacteria have made curing some infections challenging, if not nearly impossible. By 2050, it's estimated that 10 million people will be dying annually from infections with antibiotic-resistant organisms. Scientists have responded to the challenge with novel str ...more

If you're a developer in the augmented and mixed reality space, there's a high probability that you're intimately familiar with the 3D application and game engine Unity. In May, at VisionSummit 2017, Microsoft announced that 91% of all HoloLens applications have been made with ...more

While at work, you notice your gloves changing color, and you know immediately that you've come in contact with dangerous chemicals. Bandages on a patient signal the presence of unseen, drug-resistant microbes. These are ideas that might have once seemed futuristic but are bec ...more

In the ongoing search to find better ways to use antibiotics, an extract made from maple syrup has some surprisingly important medical benefits. As bacteria continue to outmaneuver antibiotics, our options for treating infections narrow. Plus, slimy bacterial communities call ...more

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers explained how microbes inside the gu ...more

Although their effectiveness is waning, antibiotics remain a front-line defense against many infections. However, new science reveals using the wrong antibiotic for an infection could makes things much worse. It is common knowledge that overuse of antibiotics has led to the g ...more

Seaweed isn't just for rolling sushi anymore. The food science world is introducing chefs and home cooks to dulse (rhymes with pulse), kale's wacky seaweed cousin that tastes surprisingly like bacon and may even be the next big superfood. Bacon and dulse seaweed have three ve ...more

It goes without saying that a pizza stone is one of the keys to making a perfect pizza. The science behind pizza stones is relatively simple: the stone conducts and holds heat, which keeps the oven temperature steady even when a cold ingredient (such as an uncooked pizza) is i ...more

We are living in a golden age of craft beers. Originally invented by the ancient Egyptians, every culture now has its own tastes regarding beer. The process of making beer is so multi-faceted, it's a miracle that any gets made at all. However, there are lots of steps along th ...more

The point of ice in your cocktail is to make it cold, right? Yes and no. Obviously, ice does lower the temperature of your cocktail, but it also does other things: enhances certain flavors while masking others (handy if you're drinking less than stellar booze or wine). As Sim ...more

Food is a necessity, sure, but every now and then it's so satisfying to eat something because it is fun and delicious. While eating a whole tub of homemade ice cream might satisfy your need for gluttony, there's a way to take it even further—make your dinnerware edible. The B ...more

Glow sticks, a popular favor at parties and outdoor events, and a must-have on Halloween, can be traced back to the United States Navy in the mid-1960s. The military desired improved visibility during night operations, and glow sticks, with their small-size portability and lac ...more

McDonald's is probably the most recognizable fast food chain in the entire world, with over 34,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries. In may not be the healthiest place to get a meal, but like millions of kids in America, I grew up on McDonald's unquestionably delicious p ...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

Thought I would cross-post a piece I did a while ago. So here is a piece I made a while back. I found this brass and glass bottle at the thrift store. At the time of purchase it had a broken music box on the bottom. I actually was able to fix the music box and it plays "How D ...more