Homemade Definition and 136 Threads

Here's a video of my homemade electron accelerator, named the Aurora Accelerator. To the best of my knowledge it is the largest homemade accelerator ever built. Check it out, and comment! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dc7STQht08&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I've been having thoughts of building a home-made miniature blimp roughly the size of a coffee table or a small room. I haven't quite thought out the specifications of lift, or weather to use helium or hydrogen (or weather hydrogen is safe/legal for this kinda thing.) or the dimensions of the...

I'm not a science student. So, please keep your reply simple and straightforward. Thank you. In India many people die from drinking homemade wine yearly. What can be the reason(s) for this apart from outside factors such as delibrately introduing a posionous herb etc? I don't know if it's...

Hey so i wanted to build a cyclotron but i have a few questions about them first... First is do the magnetic "D's" have to be one solid magnet or can they be multiple magnets uniformly spaced out. Also what can i use as a detector if say i want to accelerate a proton to like 75% the...

I want to make a simple home made battery. I am just starting to do experiments at home and I have read you can make a simple battery from coins like pennies and nickles. In between the coins would be a wet paper towel soaked in salt water which acts as the electrolyte between the two coins...

Homemade pizza I cooked Check it out: http://www3.picturepush.com/photo/a/3075346/640/3075346.jpg http://www5.picturepush.com/photo/a/3075348/640/3075348.jpg Homemade dough from scratch: check Homemade pizza sauce from fresh tomatoes (no canned stuff): check Buffalo milk mozz: check...

First of all, I'm not an electrician, I'm a medical student who occasionally grab a soldering iron for some fun. So if I'm asking something really stupid, I'm sorry. I found scheme forIR transciever on http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/86/2 and I'm plannig to build it. I was wondering is...

Hello. This is my first time posting here, so bare with me. I am from Denmark and I am at my final year of what corresponds to Senior High School. I am currently working on a project about "optical instruments" in physics (I was told that our A level corresponded to your applied physics level)...

I am planing to make some X-Aerogel out of Sodium Silicate (aka Water glass) and polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) this combo will produce an Aerogel that is both cheap and can be ambiently dried with hexan without the need for Supercritically drying. Hexane is pretty cheap its one of the main...

Hi guys. I'm interested in building a dyno to test modifications to small engines (lawnmower engines). I've found this old topic: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=117800 But I'm having some trouble picturing the design. I like the idea of using an electric motor and an...

Homework Statement We have to make a speaker with 4 rare Earth magnets, and whatever materials we can buy or find . How to make the coil? What should we use for the cone of the speaker? Our ideas are to create a 5.1 or 2.3 surround sound speaker system with excellent mid-range sound...

I don't know if I posted on the right forum but I know I'm on the right site. I'm planning to create my first homemade rocket that can fly maybe hundreds of feet or less then it will parachute down after peacefully. I'm not an engineer but if you willing to help me, I would feel how to...

Hi I need help deciding how to design my DC motor. I know about series wound and shunt wound motors. I want to design a motor for the highest speed at no load. The limitations are 12V and 1A. I can only use copper wire (0.315mm, 0.2212 Ohm/meter) and shimstock for the electromagnet...

The attached photo and youtube link is my current progress regarding the engineering and building of the 1971 Scientific American plans of a particle accelerator. My design will differ in several ways specific to vacuum tube, drift tube and equipotential ring design. However, the basic concept...

Hello all! I just registered on physics forums and already have many questions! First of all (lets start with just one) my friend and i are attempting to build a homemade railgun. We are tying to make it completely by ourselves - nothing bought besides the materials needed. Since massive...

In this project, by means of two mirrors (which can be tilted about two perpendicular axis) we deflect the laser beam so as to scan a rectangular screen and modulate the laser source to obtain a colored image on the screen. We don’t make use of sophisticated devices such as MEMS micromirror and...

Newbee here, hope this is the place for this kind of question. I want to fab a cart that will carry about 200 lbs. It will be something I will stand behind, holding like a handlebar at waist height with a throttle. Gearing (chain and sprocket is what I'm thinking) would need to give a top...

Hello Everyone, I'm new to the Forum, Physics has always been a love of mine, I have been fortunate to have associated with people who have worked with some of the greats(Feynman,Gell-Mann, and Gamow) I decided I wanted to make a “toy” for Matthew’s first Christmas, a “toy” with an...

How to calibrate a homemade Scintillation Counter? Greetings, I have recently built a homemade scintillation counter using a surplus photomultiplier tube (PMT) and it seems to work very well in the photon counting mode. Problem is, I would like to get some idea of how efficient the overall...

Has anyone out there built any type of "bench top" helium leak detectors? I am just getting into this, and thought I would start a thread that I could post some information to. The spec seems to reference a flow of no more that 10-7. And of course, I will post the wiki site...

Science Professionals: Master's Education for a Competitive World is a book published by National Academies Press. This particular one is available free in pdf format, but one has to register. I strongly recommend academics take a look at it. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12064...

David Hamel (1924-2007) made a generator, and some people might know it from mythbusters where they made one for the anti-gravity myth. Even though it didn't work for the anti-gravity the generator itself seemed to work. I then read on the internet that it is supposed to run for 100's of years...

Hi, I'm a french (old) amateur scientist developping an homemade TOF mass spectrometer and I'll be pleased to know other amateur realizations in this area. I've found an homemade TEM on the web, and that's all. If someone has already tried to built such a device or know a site where I can...

Hi Eureka I'd like to make a solar powered fan, but don't know how to convert the power from a solar panel to the fan. Perhaps I don't have to do anything, I can just hook it up? Requirement: If the sun is out the fan should be running. At night time the fan should not run. In other...

Ok, so if there is a better place for this, please do move it mods, I just couldn't find a place to post project related stuff so I chose this part of the site. Anyways, I'm working on a homemade liquid rocket engine all based around a CO2 cartridge combustion chamber. This project also has the...

Ok, I heard that you could make a cheap, but good helicopter, that's a 1-2 seater, relatively easy. How could this be done?

Here is picture. Each layer I add reduces capacitance... See pic:

hey all, as you may or may not know, I am playing around with some different engine designs for a project, and I am using small engines, under 5 HP, and I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion about how to get a reading so I could determine what gave me more power vs what could hurt...

Ok I am sure the title caught your attention, but it is not for me, it is for my cat, just kidding. It will actually be for a model rocket I am building. I would like to design a ram-air parachute to control a descending rocket (toggles will be attached to either servos or linear actuators and...

Hi all! All the way from Sweden comes a small question... Planning to build a simple RC helicopter which, in the first stage, only should be able to take off. My idea was to use either a small lawnmover engine, or one from a chainsaw and build the helicopter with two props, turning opposite...

A person is making homemade ice cream. She exerts a force of magnitude 22 N on the free end of the crank handle, and this end moves in a circular path of radius 0.25 m. The force is always applied parallel to the motion of the handle. If the handle is turned once every 2.0 s, what is the...

I have to make a homemade AM radio receiver for a physics course I'm doing, and I'm looking for any suggestions on the best way to make a homemade variable capacitor. I'm not expecting anyone to do my work for me of course, but any suggestions that anyone could offer would be appreciated.

What are the basics of building/desgnin a hovercraft?

If lighting is just a high voltage (not necessarily high current) stream of electrons, would it be possible to make something like that at home? (i.e. 30 volts DC ?) how do I convert my 30 Volt battery into something with more voltage and less current? Will a transistor help, and what kind...

Hi: I was looking for ideas for a homemade telescope for my son and saw this site, http://www.geocities.com/telescope1999/14-5inch.html Paging down some I saw that he made a telescope lens from the bottom of a bottle. It this possible? Did Bernard Schmidt really make such a...

Let's get the new format with a somewhat general question. How many of you have built your own telescope? Give us some details. Did you do anything different or inovative with your design, or pretty much by the book?