Solar Diy

Solar panels are an amazing invention. Catching energy from the Sun before it even enters Earth's food chain, photovoltaics are like an all-natural nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the constituted parts of a solar panel are rare, valuable, and subject to the coercive forces ...more

If a solar-powered air conditioner that requires no electricity or moving parts sounds to good to be true, well, then you're not as ambitious as this clever high school student. Instructables user Fozzy13 put together an awesome DIY tutorial on how he built his own air conditi ...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

Omniscience is not required to make some really cool shit happen. Yes, it took a while, but we can make fuel from the Sun! Solar panels are basically our answer to God. And now that we can make solar electricity, finding the most efficient way to harvest it is tricky. Some so ...more

One of the most annoying things about summer is mowing the lawn. Depending on how big your yard is, it can mean spending hours out in the hot sun while you could be doing something a lot more fun like watching the Olympics or making giant soap bubbles. Reclaim your summer with ...more

A smartphone is pretty much useless with a dead battery. When you're out and about, it can be hard to find a place to plug in (if you remembered your charger, that is). But this DIY solar panel backpack made by electrical engineer Theodore Protasiewicz will help you use the sc ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

Artist Michael Jones McKean has harnessed nature with his DIY rainbow machine, a mechanism that uses reclaimed rainwater and solar power to shoot man-made rainbows across the sky at whim. High powered jets and fountain nozzles shoot a heavy wall of rainwater into the air, crea ...more

It’s called Urophagia—the art of consuming urine. There could be any number of reasons for having the desire to drink your own urine (or somebody else’s). There’s the so-called term “urine therapy,” which uses human urine as an alternative medicine. In urine therapy, or uropat ...more

In this article, I'll show you how to make an awesome "Death Ray" using the large magnifying lens from an old projection TV. The lens is called a Fresnel lens; a device that employs several ridges to focus light, rather than a complete curve. When sunlight passes through the ...more

Just a couple Saturday's ago, we were blessed with the Supermoon, where the moon was at perigee with our planet, creating a larger than usual Moon for us here on Earth. Now, we've got another spectacular show in the skies coming up, only this one isn't at night. There will be ...more

Let's say today is your birthday. You've just put those boisterous, vicenarian times behind you, reaching the first big step to your upcoming midlife crisis—30 years old. Maybe this is your midlife crisis. After all, if you're not where you want to be in life when you join the ...more

You can do a lot more with playing cards than you'd think, like turn them into gift boxes, fling them like throwing stars, and make them levitate or disappear. You can even make them recharge your batteries. Instructables user Shawn Frayne was sick of having a bunch of dead ba ...more

As discussed earlier, there are many ways to view the upcoming solar eclipse, whether it be with actual eclipse glasses, welder's lenses, eclipse-approved filters, or a solar telescope. If you can't get your hands on any of those, the safest way to view the solar eclipse this ...more

Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night. To begin, you'll need a water bottle, of course, some string, and optionally, a little bleach. You ...more

Harnessing the power of the sun is something that Captain Planet made cool before it was the go-to for renewable energy. Solar-powered energy is quick and cheap, and can make for some really cool DIY projects. And for those of you wondering what you should do with your old sat ...more

What's the first thing you would do once you realized you were lost in, say, a desert? If you're like me, you would immediately pull out your cell phone and start dialing every number. But what if you have no service? What if your battery is dead? If you make this survival so ...more

No matter if you've used one or not, you've got to admit that 3D printers are pretty darn awesome, especially the self-replicating ones that extrude molten plastic and the shoebox-sized versions that use mesmerizing stereolithography to build tiny objects layer by layer. But w ...more

In this video, I show you a technique for hacking a four foot mega magnifying lens out of your old projection TV. Not only are these TVs everywhere, they can be found easily—for FREE! Video: . Don't throw away that old TV! ... ... Hack it! Into a free energy device! A 4 food m ...more

It's hot this summer, but it's not that easy to cool down when you're on the go. You can't take an air conditioner with you, and a handheld fan will just tire you out, so you'll need to find more creative ways to cool down when you're on the go. One of these ways is a DIY sola ...more

I hate being cold. That's why I live in Los Angeles. But, there are plenty of folks who are experiencing some pretty chilly temperatures this year, despite global warming, and one of the worst places affected is the garage. C'mon, who has a freakin' heater in their garage? St ...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

The annular solar eclipse was amazing. It was so much fun watching the sun transform from a thin crescent to a ring and then to a thin crescent going the other direction. I'll be posting up the pictures used to make this video in various resolutions on my photography website o ...more

There is going to be an annular solar eclipse on May 20th that will be visible in a narrow pathway that covers part of Eastern Asia and the Western United States. The eclipse will be seen as a partial eclipse over a much greater region of the World. I live in Redding, Californ ...more

NASA reports that the sun erupted late last night with a large solar flare—an M8.7 class flare. The classification is calculated according to the peak flux of 100 to 800 picometer x-rays near Earth measured from the GEOS weather satellite. There are 5 letter classifications fo ...more

André Broessel of rawlemon has developed a solar energy generator that can use both sun and moonlight to create usable power. Oh... and it's gorgeous. The device is essentially a huge glass sphere filled with water that uses a ball lens to refract light in a way that increases ...more

Browsing and displaying your music library on the iPad is a cinch with Apple's iPod app. But by no means would it be considered exciting. Thankfully, there's another option for sorting and playing your iTunes library. It's a unique iPad-only application for those of us who wan ...more

Living in Los Angeles so long has perhaps spoiled me a bit. The only time I check my weather apps is to send screenshots of my 70 degree Decembers to my friends in Chicago and New York. So for these bragging occasions, I like to have a good looking app. I've already covered t ...more

Eric Jacqmain is one smart cookie. Borrowing from the same principles of Archimedes’ mythological death ray, the Indiana teenager used an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish and about 5,800 3/8" mirror tiles to create a solar weapon with the intensity of 5000x normal daylight. ...more

Here is how you can build a frame for your MEGA SOLAR SCORCHER in under an hour, and for less than $8!! This is effectively a 4 foot magnifying lens that concentrates insane amounts of heat from the sun. What would you do with all this free solar power? My design for this cust ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

There's nothing worse than when you come up with a brilliant idea while you're busy with other things and then promptly forget it. Whether it's the perfect ending for your novel or a comeback you should've said during that argument with your roommate last week, it's always ann ...more