DIY

Dept: Maxed Out

Tech: Treo 600 PDA/phone

Base cost: $600

Total cost: $1,040

STEAL | | | | | SPLURGE

Dept: Void Your Warranty

Tech: TiVo drive upgrade

Cost: $210

Time: 3 hours

DABBLER | | | | | MASTER

Dept: Geek Guide
Tech: Anti-spam tools and software
Cost: Freeâ€$40
BETA | | | | | FINAL

Dept: Gray Matter

Element: Carbon (in graphite form)

Time: 5 hours

Cost: $30 for 24 pencils

DABBLER | | | | | MASTER

Does it Work? Perfectly, but the GPS unit is still too big to forget you’re wearing it.

Cost: $300; timex.com

If you’ve ever tried to float one magnet over another (and who hasn’t?), you know that the stupid thing just keeps flipping over—an irritation formalized in 1842 when the Rev. Samuel Earnshaw published his famous theorem establishing mathematically that such magnetic levitation just can’t be done. From that point on, any experimenter caught playing with magnets courted the derision of his colleagues: "Ha, ha, look at Fred over there trying to balance magnets! I guess he never heard of Earnshaw’s theorem!" Physicists can be so cruel on the playground.

Hydrogen is going to be big!

I remember driving past a fraternity house when I was a teenager and wondering why I could tell instantly that someone was playing the drums live, not on a stereo. Live drums, I realized, have a sharper attack than any electronic reproduction, and the distinction is obvious to the drums in our ears. But shouldn't it be possible to hit a speaker cone with a magnetic field just as hard as you can hit a drum with a stick?

There is an entire subculture of people who derive pleasure from putting strange things in microwave ovens, things that microwave oven manufacturers would most strenuously suggest should not be put there. In the hands of these people, table grapes produce glowing plasmas, soap bars mutate into abominable soap monsters, and compact discs incandesce. As a scientist, I'm enthralled by such phenomena (particularly the grapes), but somehow I've always found the subject a bit unsatisfying: Cool, but what is it really good for?

The great corn breeder John Laughnan used to say that the soil and climate of Champaign County, Illinois, were the best in the world for growing corn, but that they were not ideal. That is, given a chance, he could design a plot of land and a climate that would grow corn even better.

Liquid nitrogen is cold. Very cold. So cold that if a drop falls on your hand, it feels like fire. So cold that it can turn a fresh flower into a thousand shards of broken glass. So cold that it can make half a gallon of ice cream in 30 seconds flat.


I first heard about liquid nitrogen ice cream from my friend Tryggvi, an Icelandic chemist working in the Midwest (these things happen). He suggested we make it for dessert at a dinner party I was planning. Yes, he said, he had a recipe, something he'd seen in Chemical and Engineering News.