I like lemonade. I like it a lot, in fact. But if there’s one thing that lemonade absolutely sucks at, it’s telling you what time it is. So next time you find yourself with some spare lemons, chop them up and stick them onto the Citrus Clock. The clock is made with two spikes of copper and zinc to impale the lemons on, and will run for a week using the juice contained in one lemon thanks to black magicelectrolysis. It doesn’t have to be a lemon, either… Anything acidic will do. Like limes. Or potatoes. Or a battery.
The Citrus Clock doesn’t seem to be commercially available, but hey, you can make one at home! Or better yet, just go to any middle school science fair and steal one.
If you’re not familiar with some of the theories related to quantum mechanics, this alternate universe kit by Jonathan Keats’ might not make much sense to you. But take my word for it, there is some logic here. Way back in 1957, a physicist by the name of Hugh Everett came up with what is known as the ‘many-worlds interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, where the universe continually spawns off alternate universes whenever a “subatomic system consisting of a superposition of two likely states reduces to just one.” In a very crude way of thinking about it, if in your universe you decided to order pizza, another universe is created where you ordered Chinese instead. So based on Hugh’s theory, Jonathan Keats created these alternate universe kits, and here’s how they work according to him:
Everett’s theory addressed the question of how a subatomic particle can exist in a quantum superposition – for example being in two places at once – until someone observes it, at which point the observer finds it to be in only one place at a time. The explanation Everett gave is that the particle remains in both places when it’s observed, but the observer’s entire universe splits as the measurement is made, so that from that moment forward there are two separate observers living in separate universes, both identical except for the observed location of that single subatomic particle.
The kit uses a quarter-inch sphere of uranium-doped glass to provide a steady supply of subatomic particles, placed in close proximity to a sliver of scintillating crystal which measures the radioactive decay, effectively observing a quantum process – and splitting the universe.
The DIY kits are available for just $20, but you can only get them from the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. And if Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation theory has piqued your curiosity, I recommend checking out an episode of NOVA that ran a couple of months ago called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives where musician Mark Everett (Hugh’s son) goes on a quest to learn more about his father and his multiple universe theory.
Do you guys remember that comic strip where Calvin saved up a snowball all summer, just so he could throw it at Susie? Well unfortunately saving up a snowball for any length of time is a difficult task. I believe my one attempt as a child was quickly foiled by my parents, as they knew exactly what I was up to. Though I haven’t had to worry about my parents going through my freezer for some time, I haven’t tried saving back a snowball again. Thankfully, modern science allows us to have snow whenever we want it, even without some large machine.
iSnow is a non-toxic polymer material which can be used to create artificial snow. Just add a bit of water, and you’ll be ready for a (very small) snowball fight in no time. The material is reusable, so you can create snowballs over and over again, provided you scoop up the remains and keep them safe. Just $4 gets you a set of five iSnow kits.
Yes, I know, you’ve made blue roses before by sticking a white rose in some blue food coloring and waiting a day or two. Bully for you. But up until now, naturally blue roses have been an impossibility, for the simple reason that rose petals lack the enzyme necessary to produce the color blue. Naturally blue roses may still be an impossibility, but a little bit of clever genetic engineering has enabled researchers in Japan to stick some blue petunia enzymes into some naturally purple roses to end up with something actually blue.
Or, blue-ish.
It’s got some blue in it, anyway.
In the same way that yellow roses signify friendship and red roses signify love, blue roses signify the impossible, and I kinda think that still holds true, ’cause they look rather purple to me. You should be able to buy a more or less blue rose for that certain impossible someone early next year.
Have you ever been to a science center or museum and watched someone’s hair stand on end while they were touching that giant metal sphere contraption? Well that device is known as a Van de Graaff generator, and this wand from ThinkGeek is basically a handheld version of that, but with considerable less ‘oomph.’ However, it can build up enough static charge to make a set of included 3D mylar shapes appear to levitate and move about at your command. Here’s a video of it in action from ThinkGeek:
While that guy might not be Hogwart’s material, the wand does look like you could easily blow the minds of a group of 5 year olds. And that’s $26.99 well spent.
The sun is totally, like, hot, you know? And if you get enough bits of sunlight together in the same spot, you can do some pretty spectacular things with the resulting 2,400 degrees (Fahrenheit, I assume) of heat. Like melting a tidy little hole through a solid steel plate in mere seconds. If they’d just hook up a Stirling Engine to this thing, our energy problems would be solved. And if not, well… It’d make a pretty badass death ray.
This “Si” is the smallest “Si” ever. The dots in this image are individual silicon atoms, and an atomic force microscope has stuck them one by one (over a period of an hour and a half these two letters) onto a surface of tin atoms. The letters measure about 2 nanometers across, meaning that you’d have to write “Si” over 125,000 times just to make it around one human hair.
As a researcher involved in the project says, “it’s not possible to write any smaller than this.” Not just impossible right now, but impossible ever, since atoms are the absolute smallest things stable enough to let us push them around. Yep, this is it, folks. You’re looking at it. End of the line, smallest “Si” ever, in the entire universe, until the end of time. Mission accomplished.
I have no idea who comes up with this stuff, but researchers at UCLA have apparently constructed a machine that takes X-rays images using a roll of Scotch tape being peeled up as a radiation source. Seriously, that’s all there is to it: put a roll of tape in a vacuum, slowly unpeel it, and if you stick your finger on the thing with some film behind it, you’ll give yourself an honest-to-goodness x-ray.
What seems to happen is that as the tape unsticks itself, electrons jump from the roll to the sticky side of the tape that is being pulled away. When they hit the tape, they slow down a bunch, and release their excess energy in the form of X-rays powerful enough to justify lead underpants. It only works in a vacuum, though, so unless you’re an astronaut, you probably don’t have to worry about developing superpowers after a day of arts ‘n crafts.
Even in Star Trek, erasing specific memories is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Seems like Star Trek was being a little pessimistic about the future, though, since scientists announced yesterday that they have been able to selectively target and erase a specific memory in the brain of a genetically modified mouse, without altering any other memories or harming the mouse at all.
Researchers at the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine stimulated a protein critical to communication between brain cells just as the mouse was trying to remember something specific, and over-expressing that particular protein caused the one single memory that the mouse was remembering to disappear. For example, researchers gave a mouse a toy, then zapped its memory while the mouse was thinking about the toy. Then they gave the mouse the same toy, and the mouse was like, “hey, new toy!”
The idea is that eventually, this procedure could be used to remove incapacitating and traumatic memories from people. That would be pretty awesome, but can’t you just imagine the possibilities? Buy a video game, play it through, zap yourself, rinse, repeat. Movies with plot-twists. Ex-girlfriends. The US election. Sooo much potential here.
Human testing probably won’t happen any time soon, but researchers are already envisioning drugs that mimic this protein over-expression technique, for humans to take whenever we have an especially bad day.
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By Evan Ackerman
