Make: Online: Chemistry Archives

Archive: Chemistry

October 19, 2009

Bubble fogger with black light bubble liquid

More awesomeness from Terra of Halloween Forum. The UV-reactive bubble juice is from Tekno Bubbles.

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Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

October 16, 2009

Litmus candy

Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories noticed that the "Blueberry Blast" candies he picked up contained red cabbage extract, which, as every evil mad scientist knows, is a classic homebrew pH indicator. So he dunked three samples in baking soda solution, neutral water, and vinegar. Sure enough, visible color changes.

October 15, 2009

Suspended animation with hydrogen sulfide?

It may smell like rotten eggs, but it turns out H₂S may be able to slow down the chain of chemical degradation that causes death in cells that are deprived of oxygen. Biologist Mark Roth can supposedly take a lab rat, stop its heart with a dose of hydrogen sulfide, and bring it back to life an hour later just by turning off the gas. Quoting now from this article at CNN.com:

Scientists are starting to understand that death isn't caused by oxygen deprivation itself, but by a chain of damaging chemical reactions that are triggered by sharply dropping oxygen levels. The thing is, those reactions require the presence of some oxygen. Hydrogen sulfide takes the place of oxygen, preventing those reactions from taking place. No chain reaction, no cell death.

Roth has won a MacArthur grant for this work, so there's a better-than-average chance that it's more than just hype.

October 14, 2009

Very small hollow metal spheres

Tiny metal spheres are needed for tiny ball valves and tiny ball bearings, which are needed for all kinds of miniaturized machines. Hollow spheres are lighter, and thus have less inertia, and thus can be made to move faster in these very small applications, where response time is often critical. But how do you make a hollow metal sphere 2mm across? Turns out you can do it with one of the lost foam processes I'm always going on about. Tiny styrofoam beads are first coated with fine metal powder and a binder, then heat-treated to evaporate both binder and bead, leaving only a fragile hollow metal powder shell, which is then sintered into a continuous shell at higher temperature. Read more over at Science Daily.

October 9, 2009

Cash awards for amateur scientific apparatus designs

In an effort to advance the cause of citizen science, Michael Wood is offering a total of $400 in prize money to anyone who can produce reliable, low-cost (<$100US) DIY scientific apparatus capable of meeting one of four design objectives:

First, we require a device capable of producing liquid nitrogen at the rate of at least 100mL an hour.
Secondly, we require a vacuum system capable of pumping down a volume of at least 10cm x 10cm x 10cm to, and holding a vacuum at, 0.01 atm (with pressure measurement).
Thirdly, we require the ability to view objects of small scale with up to 1000x magnification.
Finally, we require a functioning oscilloscope, capable of measuring at least two signals at once, and with multimeter capability, accurate in all measurements to within 1%.

Read all the details at Michael's website.

Make: Projects - Pages of a forbidden tome

They could be from The Necronomicon, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, or simply Poe's "quaint and curious volume," but everybody needs at least a few tattered leaves of ancient mind-blasting arcanum lying around to impress guests. Especially around Halloween.

This tutorial presents an easy method for producing weathered "antiqued" paper with burned edges. The trick of soaking white paper in coffee or tea to give it an old, yellowed look is very familiar, but the process for selectively burning the edges of the paper is something I discovered on my own. A simple and safe chemical treatment is used to selectively char the page, only where it has been applied, upon mild heat treatment.

Read full story

October 7, 2009

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 - "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"

Pt 2224
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 - "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome"...

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 awards studies of one of life's core processes: the ribosome's translation of DNA information into life. Ribosomes produce proteins, which in turn control the chemistry in all living organisms. As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major target for new antibiotics.
This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

Inside every cell in all organisms, there are DNA molecules. They contain the blueprints for how a human being, a plant or a bacterium, looks and functions. But the DNA molecule is passive. If there was nothing else, there would be no life.

The blueprints become transformed into living matter through the work of ribosomes. Based upon the information in DNA, ribosomes make proteins: oxygen-transporting haemoglobin, antibodies of the immune system, hormones such as insulin, the collagen of the skin, or enzymes that break down sugar. There are tens of thousands of proteins in the body and they all have different forms and functions. They build and control life at the chemical level.

An understanding of the ribosome's innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life. This knowledge can be put to a practical and immediate use; many of today's antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes. Without functional ribosomes, bacteria cannot survive. This is why ribosomes are such an important target for new antibiotics.
This year's three Laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering.

October 5, 2009

"Fiction science" theory of Superman's powers

Ben Tippet A Unified Theory of Supermans Powers Figure 3.jpg

Back in 2005, I wrote a fictional scientific paper (.pdf) postulating that zombiism is in fact caused by a prion, rather than a virus, as is commonly hypothesized. I also wrote a short essay about the idea of "fiction science" at the time. Now Ben Tippet, at the behest of Dinosaur Comics' Ryan North, has written a similarly fictional scientific paper (.pdf) presenting "A Unified Theory of Superman's Powers" from a physicist's perspective. I'd be interested in hearing of other examples of people co-opting the serious literary forms of science for fictional purposes. If you know of one, please drop me a comment. [via Neatorama]

October 2, 2009

Novel edge-collecting solar panels

This is a solar panel. Really. If you've observed that it looks a lot like a piece of live-edge fluorescent acrylic, you're more than halfway to understanding how it works. Light entering the panel from the sides is absorbed by dyes and converted, by some fancy top-secret nano-metal whatnot ingredients, into a kind of internal re-radiation that is collected by conventional silicon applied only at the edges. Fair warning: Full science-hype disclosure rules apply here. The responsible party is Israel's GreenSun, and they do not have a product at market yet. But The Economist seems to be buying in, and their ethos is good for a click or two, in my book.

October 1, 2009

Maker Shed Science Room Grand Opening Sale

The paint has dried, the floor's been swept of construction debris, and all the merchandise is now in place in the Maker Shed's new Science Room section, their companion to our new Make: Science Room. To celebrate this accomplishment (think: ordering, receiving, warehousing, and merchandising hundreds of chemicals and lots of things made out of glass!), they're holding a massive Grand Opening Sale. Almost all of the items in the Shed's Science Room section are on sale, some items as much as 60%. Even the impressive line of microscopes they're selling are on deep discount! They'll be running this sale through the month of October. So, if you've been thinking of putting together a home science lab, now would be a good time to order your gear.

And I don't know about you, but with all of that amazing labware available -- beakers, test tubes, Erlenmeyer and distilling flasks -- at such low prices, I'm definitely seeing a bubbling mad scientist's lab inside my front door this Halloween!

This way to the Shed's Science Room >>

September 29, 2009

Lots of new content in the Science Room!

We've just added a bunch of new content to the Make: Science Room. In "General," we added Bob's brief on how to set up and keep a proper lab notebook, in "Chemistry," we added Section 12 on the fine art of studying reaction rates in chemical processes, called "chemical kinetics," and in "Forensics," we take a look, a VERY close look, at hair and fiber, the bane of violent perps everywhere.

You learn a lot of interesting stuff working with these labs (ah... or editing them). For instance, did you know the different classifications for the types of hair found on a dog? Me neither:

Animal hairs are more differentiated by somatic region and purpose than human hair. Animal hairs are classified as members of four broad types:

* Guard hairs form the outer coat of the animal, shed water, and protect the inner hair and skin
* Fur or wool hairs form the inner coat and provide insulation
* Tactile hairs, also called whiskers, are found on the head (the snout or ears), where they provide sensory functions
* Special-purpose hairs, such as tail hairs and mane hairs, whose morphology may differ substantially from the main body hairs of the animal.

[From: Laboratory 6.4: Study the Morphology of Animal Hair]

And did you know that human and animal hair have different "scale patterns" that can be used in identifying the source head/body?

Figure 6-7 shows the three major types of scale patterns. The imbricate scale pattern is a flattened wavy pattern that is commonly found on human hair and many types of animal hair. The coronal scale pattern is a crown-like pattern that resembles a stack of paper cups, and is normally found only on very fine hair. Coronal scales are found on many types of animal hair and are very rarely present on human hair. The spinous scale pattern is a petal-like pattern made up of triangular scales that protrude from the cuticle. Spinous scales are found in the proximal (root) region of the fur hair of some animals, including bobcat, chinchilla, fox, lynx, mink, mouse, otter, raccoon, rat, sable, sable, seal, and sea lion. Spinous scales are never found in human hair.

[From: Laboratory 6.3: Make Scale Casts of Hair Specimens]

My favorite excerpt from the new Forensics labs (from Laboratory 6.1: Collect Hair Specimens):

Real Life
The three example lines at the top of Table 6-1 are real data, from Robert's stocking cap. The short gray hairs are his. The long black hairs are almost certainly either from one or both of our Border Collies or from Barbara, whose hair is naturally black. Barbara asked Robert who the blond hair belongs to. Uh-oh.

Make: Science Room: fomenting marital strife since 2009.

Make: Science Room >>

More:
Introducing the Make: Science Room
Building the Make: Science Room: A Personal Perspective

In the Maker Shed:

Don't forget, there are TONS of new DIY science-related products in the Maker Shed! They have everything you need to set up a fairly sophisticated home science lab. Check out their impressive Science Room section.

September 26, 2009

Uranium ore for sale on Amazon.com

Two used units, anyway. You need to move quickly if you want the cheap one for $23.99:

Cracked casing. Has caused dog to grow third pair of legs. Still adorable. Good product.

Because after that one's gone, the price jumps up to $2500:

Found this in some old abandoned village while on vacation. Older, Russian model (PU239)? Please inquire about shipping. Not responsible for damage due to radiation or explosions.

Or you could just visit the manufacturer's website and buy it there.
And no, it's not a joke, but you wouldn't know it from reading the reviews on Amazon. The 168 reviews are, in fact, the best reason to check out the listing. Highlights include:

So glad I don't have to buy this from Libyans in parking lots at the mall anymore. I bought this to power a home-made submarine that I use to look for prehistoric-era life forms in land-locked lakes around my home town in Alaska. At first I wasn't sure if this item would (or could) arrive via mail, but I was glad to see it showed up with no problems. Well, almost no problems.

Great Product, Poor Packaging I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, it was half empty.

I bought it for my cat I bought this for my cat and put it with a flask containing poison, in a sealed box. Do you think he likes it ? I've not opened the box yet.

September 25, 2009

3D printing in glass

The Solheim Rapid Prototyping Lab at the University of Washington was in the news last March for developing a new 3D printing process that uses ceramic powder as an inexpensive alternative to the pricier substrates that are currently the de facto standard for powder-bed processes. Well they've done it again, this time with glass powder, which is formed into an object by layerwise application of a liquid binder. When the part is complete, it can be sintered in a kiln to produce a continuous glass object. The official UW online press release includes a telling quote from lab co-director Mark Ganter: "It became clear that if we could get a material into powder form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything."

September 23, 2009

$2 Egg-beater centrifuge may save lives

Harvard's George M. Whitesides has the highest Hirsch index of any living chemist, which makes him arguably the most significant in the world. The Hirsch or h-index is a kind of weighted score based on a numerical analysis of a scientist's published work which factors in both the number of papers and the number of citations those papers receive by other authors.

Back in October of 2008, Whitesides, et. al. published a paper in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal Lab on a Chip that describes a technique for separating blood plasma for use in various immunoassays using a piece of plastic tubing taped to an eggbeater. The method can replace a $400 bench centrifuge for many purposes.

The Belonio stove

Alexis Belonio is an associate professor in agricultural engineering at the Central Philippine University of Iloilo City. In 2008 he received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for a rice-husk-burning stove he designed. Belonio's stove is not complicated, either mechanically or conceptually: A columnar metal burner with the addition of a small intake fan at the base to tip the stoichiometry of combustion towards oxidation, giving a blue, clean, efficient flame that leaves little or no residue. Traditional rice husk burners, by contrast, do not have this forced-air feature and produce a yellow, dirty, inefficient flame that leaves tar behind. The upshot is more efficient use of rice husk biomass and greatly reduced pollution from the many rice-husk burners in use today.

September 22, 2009

Bling for your bricks

There's almost nothing that makes me as happy as a little Lego entrepreneurship. Remember BrickArms? Well, now there's ChromeBricks, which will custom electroplate Lego elements of your choice, in your choice of gold, chrome, or copper. [via The Brothers Brick]

September 21, 2009

Thermite pumpkin

And you thought those kids were mean to your pumpkin last year.

September 18, 2009

Sandcast aluminum Decepticon symbol

Vrogy, whose cosplay work we featured recently, poured this Decepticon logo in aluminum from his home foundry. He's also done an Autubot logo. I wonder where he got that idea? :)

How-To: Cure colorblindness in an adult primate

OK, OK, this is probably something you shouldn't try on yourself, a loved one, or even a close friend. Still, it's pretty flippin' amazing: a full-grown animal, permanently (apparently) cured of a genetic defect by a few injections. Can X-people be that far behind?

(That's a rhetorical question, BTW; those of you who know the real answer to that question is "yes," just chill and give me my moment.)

Here is the original abstract at Nature.

September 16, 2009

Gorgeous bismuth crystal

Check out this amazing photograph of a chunk of lightly oxidized bismuth metal. Wikimedia Commons identifies the author as Alchemist-hp, who has produced some other really cool element sample photos.