burning

Gray Matter

Bacon: the Other White Heat

You know bacon is delicious, but did you know it contains enough energy to melt metal?

I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and melt the pan using seven beef sticks and a cucumber.

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Gray Matter

Burning Metal

Send steel up in flames—as long as it's in wool form

by Mike Walker: Hot Steel: Set a steel-wool pad ablaze using an ordinary match.  Mike Walker
I was 10 years old, but I'll never forget that day: The smell of bread in the oven. The crunchy grit of steel wool in my fingers. The fact that my mom still left matches out where I could find them. That's when I learned that, yes, you can light steel with a match.

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The Robotic Giraffe

It walks, it blinks, it seats six, and it blasts Kraftwerk: Meet one man's 17-foot-tall pet project

How It Works

Cost: $15,000
Time: 10 Months

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November 2009: Astronaut 3.0

Inside NASA's astronaut bootcamp and the grueling new training regimen for deep space. Plus, ten young geniuses shaking up science today, one writer's quest to analyze every man-made chemical in her body and more.

Check out the issue's full contents online here

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