The removal of lawn darts from public availability was kind of understandable. And it’s not like there’s an Olympic event that’s suffering from a dearth of talent because of it. But the taming down of chemistry sets has arguably had a negative effect when it comes to getting kids excited about a career in the sciences. Baking soda and vinegar volcanoes aren’t really that inspiring. So I’m kind of surprised to see this Chem C3000 set from Thames & Kosmos which appears to have slipped past the fun censors unscathed.
It includes all the fun stuff you’ll need like apparatus and chemicals to complete 360 different experiments. And while they vary in complexity and entertainment value, there appear to be a few gems like making your own hydrochloric acid, which I’m going to assume ends up safely diluted. The Thames & Kosmos website lists all the fun stuff the kit comes with, and I’d encourage you to look at the $249.95 price tag as an investment in your kids’ futures.
The holidays are a special time of year, but for some people it doesn’t necessarily hold the same religious meaning. This is certainly not the place to preach about what to believe about this or that, but instead, I thought I’d share something for you science lovers out there. Here we have the Heroes Of Science: Non-Denominational Festive Ornaments. Yes, that is quite a mouthful.
So what exactly are these ornaments, you say? Why they are laser-engraved wooden ornaments. And if using lasers to create them wasn’t geeky enough for you, they depict one of twenty different important science figures. Each one measures roughly 3 3/4 inches tall and 2 1/2 inches wide and comes with 16 inches of satin ribbon in your choice of three colors. Hit the jump for a list of scientists you can choose from.
As a kid you might have been mesmerized by the amazing properties of Silly Putty, but a few high school chemistry classes later and you realize it’s just science doing its thing. But this Magnetic Thinking Putty, available from Vat19 for just $13.50, is a whole new world of mystery. Ok probably not, unless you didn’t take any physics classes in high school since it’s basically regular Silly Putty infused with “millions of tiny micron-sized magnets.” But it’s those tiny magnets that breathe new life into those globs of silicone rubber.
Each tin of Magnetic Thinking Putty also includes a super-strong neodymium iron boron magnet that lets you start playing with your new ‘toy’ as soon as you take it out of the packaging. Now given the highly viscous nature of the putty you’ll need a bit of patience to truly enjoy its properties, but if you’ve got a camera with time-lapse capabilities you can create somewhat unsettling videos like this one. Oddly enough the magnet was never seen or heard from again…
And since I can’t get enough of them, and assume there’s at least one or two of you out there who feel the same, I’ve included a couple more videos of Magnetic Thinking Putty in action after the jump.
Popular Science has an interesting article on Fire Pistons, which use nothing but compressed air to produce a flame, making them seem like the perfect fire starter to bring along the next time you’re camping. The model pictured above ($49.95), with its heavy aluminum rod inside a clear acrylic tube, is actually designed to be used for science demonstrations so you can see the materials inside igniting under pressure. You just quickly push down on the plunger, and the rapid increase of air pressure inside the tube produces more than enough heat to create a visible flame.
Air gets very hot when compressed under high pressure. If you have ever pumped up a bicycle tire, you have noticed the heat generated. The Unit has a “compression ratio” of approx. 18:1 (the volume of cylinder is 9ml and reduces to .5 ml when the plunger is compressed).
When the air in the Fire Piston Demo Unit is compressed, it is done so fast and efficiently that it results in a temperature increase to well over 210°C (378°F), the “flash ignition temperature” of cotton. In fact it can reach instantaneous temperature of over 260°C (500°F) inside the cylinder!
But if you’re actually thinking of replacing your Zippo with a Fire Piston, there are considerably smaller versions available for roughly the same price made of wood, aluminum, plastic and other materials that use something called Char Cloth to produce a glowing ember that can be used to ignite whatever fire starting material you have on hand.
Well this is rather fascinating. PepsiCo (who owns Frito-Lay, who makes Lay’s chips) researchers have developed a proprietary, and of course patent-pending technology, that allows them to reduce the amount of sodium in their chips by about 25 percent “with no impact on taste.” Research shows that standard cube-shaped salt crystals only dissolve about 20 percent of the way in your mouth, leaving the rest of the cube to be swallowed and dissolved later on in your digestive tract, where you can’t taste it.
But working with scientists from all over the globe, PepsiCo’s research team have found a way to restructure the standard salt crystal, making it dissolve more quickly in your mouth where it’s actually tasted. So you’ll need less of the stuff to produce the same salty flavor we all know and love. Apparently since the restructured salt crystals are still made of good ol’ sodium chloride, once they’re dissolved they’re no different than regular salt, so FDA approval isn’t needed. However, it will still be at least a year before the new salt starts being used in the company’s products.
Even though squinting through the eyepiece of a telescope feels like the more traditional way to view the stars, I’m sure if Galileo were given the option to study Venus or Jupiter’s moons on a computer monitor, he would have jumped at the chance. Unfortunately such a technological convenience wasn’t available to him, but it is to you for a mere ~$50. (Plus the cost of a computer and a telescope.)
Chinavasion’s selling this rather simple looking digital eyepiece, known as the G227, which comes with a set of adapter rings allowing it to be attached to the eyepiece of most telescopes. A 1/2 inch 1.3 megapixel CMOS sensor captures the night sky, but you’ll need to have the eyepiece connected to your PC via USB in order see or record images and video. Now I can’t vouch for the quality of the included DVR and capture software, but hopefully this device shows up as a standard camera accessory allowing you to use whatever app you’d like.
It may not look like much, but physicists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have invented the “perfect” coffee cup. Why “perfect?” It’s all about the temperature: this coffee cup is capable of maintaining your coffee (or any other beverage) at an ideal temperature for a full 20 – 30 minutes. The ideal temperature for coffee, incidentally, is 58 degrees Celsius, but personally I prefer to drink tea (not coffee, tea, thank you) at something closer to 59… Yeah, I like living dangerously.
The cup is constructed of a swirly looking aluminum frame covered with a ceramic material. The spaces around the frame are filled with a PCM, or phase changing material. PCM is super neat stuff that is only happy at a very specific temperature. When you add heat to a PCM, it absorbs it and turns into a liquid, kinda like wax. If things start to cool down, the PCM turns back into a solid, releasing the heat as it does so, doing its best to keep itself (and its surroundings) as close to that happy temperature as possible. So when it comes to coffee, the PCM will first cool the liquid down to the ideal temperature by absorbing heat, and then keep it at that temperature as it releases that heat. Best part is, it’s totally free, in that it’s “powered” by absorbing heat from something that’s too hot. And hey, did I mention that it also works in reverse? A different type of PCM can be used to stabilize cold liquids, too.
The only catch to this technology is that PCMs are temperature specific. So, you’d need a hot PCM cup for hot beverages and a cold PCM cup for cold beverages. And they’re not likely to be cheap:
In the meantime, it won’t be long before the IBP’s new table products arrive in stores. Their steep price tags should easily give them away. “We don’t know how expensive they’ll be yet,” Sedlbauer says. “We are already talking with different companies. If we can find a partner to work together with, the first mugs could already be on sale by the end of the year.”
I’d imagine that a steep price tag wouldn’t dissuade that many people from a coffee cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature… I mean, you only really need one, right? And if you drink coffee (or tea, which is way better) every day, it’ll easily pay for itself in convenience. As long as they dress it up a little bit first, of course.
It’s nice to see when innovations in science and technology trickle down to the grade school level where they can directly benefit students. No longer will hoodlums have to settle for Kleenex-based spit balls since they can now take advantage of advanced polymers to rain down terror on their fellow classmates. Available from Edmund Scientific for $4.95 a pack, these Spit Balls will grow to 200x their original size and according to the packaging will “Slip, Slide, Bounce & Explode” which are essential qualities when it comes to spit ball engineering.
Thanks to the likes of Brando and other companies, USB microscopes are plentiful and easy to find these days. But being tethered to your PC with a USB cable limits where they can go. Not this wireless model though, the only limit of where you can use it is your imagination… and possibly good taste.
It uses a 2.4GHz wireless signal with a switch on the cradle/wireless receiver for choosing one of 4 channels, and the optics are able to magnify whatever it is you’re looking at from 10-200x. It’s also got a ring of 8 white LEDs around the ‘lens’ for added illumination, a built-in Li-ion battery that charges when placed in the cradle, and is available from ThinkGeek for $139.99.
Related Tags: Educational, Science
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