projects

Every group of friends has that one person to go to for tech advice: what kind of TV to buy, the right HTML tags to pimp out a MySpace page, and so on. Believe me, I would know. But although I consider myself fairly willing to share the tech wealth, my powers pale in comparison with the sage wisdom dispersed in the "Ask a Geek" feature found in each issue of Popular Science.

Maybe we saw The Andromeda Strain a few too many times in our formative years, but we can´t help shivering when we hear about microbiologists reanimating long-dormant lethal viruses. And those biologists working to make human limbs grow back: Haven´t we seen that film? Don´t the guys in lab coats all die in the first reel?

They may sound cinematic, but the incredible research projects on the following pages are not imaginary. They´re real, funded ventures by respected scientists. They have perfectly rational goals. They also happen to creep us out.

Build a Battery

Cost: $20
Time: 3
Hours
Safe | | | | |
Crazy

1. Pour copper sulfate (the blue granules) over a copper electrode in a glass.

The Bubbling Cauldron

Want a real witches´ brew? Mix soap-bubble solution with dry ice, or use liquid nitrogen for bubbles that release fog when they pop. In the following video, PopSci´s contributing mad scientist, Theodore Gray, uses the help of a few young assistants to create cauldrons of toil and trouble.

Here´s how it´s done:

There are great things to come in the future, jet cars and all that. But the past held a few wonders too-for example, jars of mercury available at the corner apothecary. Just 50 years ago, people treated the shiny
liquid metal like a toy. Sadly, I´ll never experience the strange sensation of sticking my entire arm into a barrel of mercury, as kids once did during factory tours. Today mercury is considered a horrific poison, so bad that schools are evacuated for
a broken thermometer.

Make CO2 Ice Cream

Cost: $150
Time: 15 Minutes

Safe | | | | |
Risky

For an illustrated photo how-to, launch the gallery.

Want some real home theater bragging rights? Instead of buying a projector capable of casting a 14-foot image at 1080p (progressive) resolution-the highest high-definition there is-build one yourself. After all, the front projector´s innards are simple: an LCD lit by a superbright lamp, and a few lenses to magnify and sharpen the image. Retail models start at around $800 and use proprietary $400 lamps that burn out every few years. But cheaper lamps work equally well, and none of the other parts are very expensive. Why not put one together yourself?

Home movies don´t have to be long and boring. Now that even the cheapest digital cameras can capture movies and nearly all computers come with free editing software, today´s homemade flick can be just a few minutes-ideal for filming
Johnny´s first basket or making a hilarious short that´ll turn you into a Web celebrity.

How It Works

Cost: $15,000
Time: 10 Months

My mom loves seeing my digital photos, whether they´re of far-off places or my latest culinary creations, so I´ve long thought about building her a digital-photo frame that would show a new shot every time she walked by. But instead of loading 1,000 images onto a hard drive, I wanted to be able to update the library remotely, adding new pics as I shot them, so she could always see what I´d whipped up that night or where I´d traveled that weekend. I also wanted the whole project to be cheap, because, well, I´m cheap.