SCIENCE HOBBYIST | AWARDS | GOOD STUFF | NEW STUFF | SEARCH SCIENCE HOBBYIST: new articles & updates New stuff, scroll down. Also try: Files listed by popularity Site Map RECOMMENDED CDROM: "The Amateur Scientist," from Scientific American magazine. All 810 columns by C.L.Stong, Jearle Walker, Shawn Carlson. ~1000 amateur projects, pp2100. $28 Mar/2026 MOVIE I'D ENTIRELY MISSED A crackpot inventor takes his novel device and moves his family to El Salvadore, to avoid the coming American civil war. Then he tries to convince the natives to adopt a high-tech lifestyle, and he builds his device in the jungle (two stories tall. Spoiler, it blows up.) Harrison Ford, River Phoenix, "The Mosquito Coast" 1996 2hr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODpG7iN0BCk also The Trailer [ad] Oct/2018 ANTIGRAVITY DEVICE Everyone needs to be building a flying-saucer engine in their garage. Here's mine. Well, this is only the power supply, not the actual device (in our corporate startup, remains proprietary.) The intense fields from the resonant torus act as the driver for the main device not shown. (But did it work? Dunno. Brief activation did attract multiple UFO events. I guess it broadcasts a "signature.") Feb 2026 ROMAN DODECAHEDRON an engineer's speculations Every detail is functional. The little spheres have a purpose, as do the scribed circles, the variety of hole-sizes, the tiny holes versus the cm-wide holes. But of course it might eventually have been harnessed for other than its original function. Beat your glove-weavers into fidget-spinners. FIGURING IT OUT. Looking at the infamous dodecahedron. Hmm, this could be a challenge for my unconscious savant-skills at "idea-having." I saw the dodecahedron long ago, and guessed ...a tool for mass production. Ah, it must be for making huge numbers of arrow-shafts. I can almost see a Roman slave running wooden shafts through the device ...even spears. But the experts guessed and dismissed the same idea early on, rejected because the inner edges are round and polished. It can't shave wood. Also, the tool is mysteriously only found in cold climates, upper Gaul, northern Roman towns and garrisons, but never down south in actual Rome. Yet they'd need arrows and spears everywhere, not just up north, so that's a big downvote. (I then abandoned it all, ...then returned a couple of times. Nope, nuthin' occurs. The superpowers fail.) I just came back now (watching the Fran Feb 21 entry on the Dodecahedron,) and find a huge pile of concepts in my head waiting for me. Explains the scribed rings, and the little spheres, and the non-Rome distribution, and also the tiny-holes icosahedron version. Boom, done! (heh.) To start, ignore the dodecahedron. Instead, the secret key is the tiny-holes icosahedron. I can almost see someone running freshly-waxed string through those tiny holes. They're making candlewicks. Simply dipping the yarn instead, that's producing candles full of bubbles, which sputter and flare, and won't have a uniform coating. So, the device is like a wire-pulling die, except for yarn, probably for candlewicks. The icosahedron could be for mass-producing good, bubble-free candlewicks, and might be a secret method for making non-sputtering candles. (Experts say that these cannot be tools, since there is no wear. WEAR? On bronze? From candle wax? I'd predict none. But maybe the interior of the tiny-holes device will have some microscopic scoring, if the yarn for the wick had traces of abrasive dirt. Go look for micro-scratches.) And, if we put down the device while still wet with wax, the flat face makes a mess on the table, as well as promptly gluing itself to the surface. The little spheres are an obvious fix to prevent this. Wet wax-dripping tools need tiny legs. Heh, put six metal spheres on the bottom rim of all our coffee cups, to end the curse of ring stains on wooden tabletops. Invented by ancient Rome! MORE: get inside their heads, and go live like a Roman. Light bulbs and air conditioners don't exist. What would life be like if our "light bulbs" only lasted one night? How many lightbulb shops would then exist? Wouldn't lightbulbs be an enormous part of daily life? However, down south in the city of Rome we use oil lamps. Room-temp is above 70F, so candles (meaning hogfat or sheep-grease tallow) will just slump and melt, turning into oil. All oil-lamps all the time. It's a tool. A quite expensive tool for mass production of some common product. The little spheres are legs, so the flat face doesn't glue itself down when the wet liquid hardens. (We should find traces of the hardened liquid.) The rings provide air-gaps on the surface around the hole, so the stripped coating lifts off, rather than sliding along and adhering to the flat face, causing unwanted buildup. (We don't want the workers constantly stopping in order to manually scrape off that buildup. With rings-and-slots, it easily flakes off.) The tiny holes are like orifice-plates for wire-drawing ...but instead used for yarn and twine, for adding a uniform coating (mass production of candlewicks wo/bubbles. Or, for putting a known amount of resin or wax on strands being wound into thick twine.) If true, then the inner surface of the tiny holes should have micro-scratches from dirty yarn passing through the holes. First pass three strands through three holes, and twist it to make a 3-strand twine. Then later, pass that through the center, but with three more strands in the small holes, to make 6-strand twine. Then repeat (using the larger holes.) Maybe it's a spinning wheel,a hollow weight from back before spinning wheels were invented. Or, it's a rope- maker's tool? Tiny rope, twine, make hundreds of feet of very uniform candle-wicks? Or it's only for the cold northern candleworks, for on-demand all sizes of candlewicks, hence the scribed rings for wax-ejection and the little sphere-legs for avoiding mess from tallow-wetted tool.) More: if dedicated for candlewick-twine, then we can make twenty-strand string (or 19, actually,) using hemp strands fed through the holes. Also, dunk your twenty thread-spools in boiling fat, threaded through the icosahedron, and all submerged in a bucket. When it's about jelled, start pulling and twisting to create thick candlewicks. The hard tallow keeps it from un-twisting. Hey, why not spin the whole bucket (on a foot-operated potters' wheel.) Give a long run for coolign, then roll it up on a big spool. Send it over to the tallow-dipping squad. If the tiny-holes icosahedron is found in a candleworks, then probably the dodecahedron was made for related purpose. First someone invents the icosahedron, with a purely functional shape, then later the dodecahedron version is merely a stylistic choice, to continue the original theme. If the dodecahedron is useful to the public, but the tiny-holes candlewick-makers' tool is not, then the icosahedron would be relatively rare. If the dodecahedron holes are for tallow candles, then there should be zero wear, and even microscratches very rare. Wax is softer than bronze, and had no sharp dirt-grains. If icosahedron is just for twine, then it should be found everywhere. But if only used in candleworks, then, no candles in Rome itself (where tallow is called grease, hogfat, lamp-oil. Tallow will slump at above 70F degrees.) It takes a chilly environment to support a candleworks using tallow-dipping. In cold northern climate, lamp oil (hogfat) doesn't work well, instead freezing into a waxy chunk. Remember: in high-mountains Nepal/Tibet, yak-butter is a solid, hard like a bar of soap, and butter-carvings become a thing. Taper tallow candles are similar ...being only a chilled-climate product, where "room temp" means 60F degrees and below. (Beeswax candles can work in hot-climate Rome, but they're for the wealthy, same rarity and price as honey. We wouldn't burn honey for fuel, and also not burn many hundreds of beeswax candles. In cold conditions, pure animal grease gives candles. Sure, the extremely wealthy could use extremely expensive beeswax. But that's a rare commodity, same price as honeycombs, honey, etc. We don't usually burn it for fuel. Olive oil or molten hog-tallow will fuel our lights in southern Italy. In warm climates, tallow remains a liquid. Now go up north. Olive oil is rare, tallow becomes "wax," and all our oil-lamps solidifiy and won't work in cool climates. But in wintery regions we can mass-produce tallow-candles by dipping. The icosahedron tool (w/tiny holes) is for mass-production of uniform bubble-free wicks; a scraper of wet wicks to produce a uniform product, or perhaps fill the tool with melted wax to run a spool of pre-waxed yarn through it? That removes bubbles, also thickens the candlewicks. (There might be an icosohedron with larger holes, for adding wax to coated strings.) But usually the yarn goes the other way, where the scribed circles cause the scraped wax to depart from the tool-face. If the metal facets were flat, then the wax would adhere. The circles add notches, where hardening wax instead lifts off and falls away. The circles are like the "chip breaker" notches on a modern lathe tool. Now finally the dodecahedron. If it's not for mass producing thousands of arrow shafts, then it's a tool for mass production in the candleworks. It's constructed on the same lines as the icosahedral candlewick-tool. But the pentagon faces instead give large-diameter holes for tallow candles. Same little metal balls, to keep the thing from sticking to the table with hardened wax. Same inscribed notches, to cause wax-shavings to fall away and not adhere. But what's the purpose? Not a candle-holder. It could be used for carving the ends of over-large candles so all will fit a known candle-holder. If true, find these in every northern candle-shop. For standard candleholders, we have standard holes in the dodecahedron. Jam an inch of fresh-made candle into one of twelve holes as appropriate for the big outgoing order of holders. Now do it hundreds of times, also for your outgoing order of hundreds of identical candles. Teh Roman precision. It's the last stage of candle-assembly line for banks of slaves doing a production-run at the candle-works. Another one ...if we don't want to waste time with dipping tallow (making classy expensive candles,) we can cheat. Make hand-rolled candles from soft tallow. Then, heat up your dodecahedron and pass all your crude sloppy candles through, to simulate dipped candles. It scrapes off all the fingerprints and divots! Then, give it one final dip, perhaps in hot beeswax ...and dishonestly sell it as a dipped candle! Sneaky! The dodecahedron then is an "extruder" for turning crude hand-formed candles into expensive-appearing faux dipped-tapers. (And, householders could use the tool to do it themselves, no candleworks needed. This would explain the presences in wealthy, appearance-conscious neighborhoods. It also explains the many dodecahedra versus the relatively rare tiny-holes tools.) Another thought ...were Romans big on timer-candles? Calibrarted candles, which burn for X hours? These X-hour candles could time the guard changes, or be an employees' time-clock in any company working [redacted] If so, then we need to calibrate all our dipped candles. Run them through one of six standard "extrusion plates" to cylinder-ize our tapers. (Hmm, Roman bureaucracy ...which demands standardized candles, even if not being used as timers. The spec-sheet for a half-ton order of candles will give exact dimensions. So, dip your tallow tapers, then pass them through the dodecahedral extruder, to make them all cylindrical and uniform, and match the spec for when the government inspector decides whether to accept the incoming order, or send it back. Heh, for rejected orders, don't melt 'em all down, just re-extrude to make them all be a mm smaller.) One final possiblity. With a villa where many evening candles are burning, at sunrise you'd send the help to gather all the remaining candles. Run them all through the tool, to remove wax buildup. You'd end up with some short, new-looking candles. Aha, or even better, mash several long candle-stubs in series, with candlewicks touching, and maybe add some warm mashed tallow. Then run it through a warm dodecahedron, and suddenly you have a full-sized candle, indistinguishable from a new one. If the top woman of the household became the "light-bringer," her expensive bronze tool might also be seen as a symbol of this, and so be common as grave-goods. Up in northern climate, home candle-processing might be a daily chore ...as well as using a heated dodecahedron to modify the incoming load of candles, so their bases fit your holders. (Not too hot. This is not mid-1800 wax, not paraffin. Just warm the dodecahedron in hot water, to zip a tallow-based candle through a hole.) Oh noes! Smart Romans start using the candle-tools for other purposes! They're expensive, but dodecahedrons might become popular outside the candleworks. Everyone would need to shave candles, but only the wealthy would have a dedicated tool in their home. Then at the same time, the tiny-holes icosahedrons would only be useful for wick-coating, and so expected to be dug from the ground only rarely. (And, the tiny-holes tool probably would never become grave-goods.) 9/2024 SSE CONFERENCE LECTURE Sept 2024 My long boring half-hour talk about Nikola Tesla secrets actually revealed! Honest! Actually these particular three are now in wide use under other names, the Earthquake Machine, Teleforce, and the Radiant Energy detector. (But still no BL Ball Lightning or broadcast power, waaa! ) This is from last year's 2024 conference. Also I'm now in their quarterly peer-reviewed journal (as a 2024 invited editorial about maverick scientists' methods for avoiding rejection by peer-reviewed journals [PDF 700K].) Other tricks of the pros: get your own ORCID number, also post a personal profile page on Researchgate and Goog Scholar and IMDB. INVENTORS: All die in the workhouse. Somebody else profits by their genius: it isn t fair. ENGINEERING: The finest career for a young man. An engineer knows all the sciences. - from Dictionary of Received Ideas Flaubert 1913 5/20/2022 VINYL KARAOKE MACHINE On an old Crosley or Victrola turntable, just swap two leads on the cartridge, so one channel is inverted. Then sum them to mono, which cancels out the lead singer, leaving the instruments alone (mostly.) That's how the first 1980s Karaoke machines did it. Send the mono signal to a PA amp/speaker, and you've got VINYL KARAOKE. Be warned ...once heard, CANNOT UN-HEAR! Yeesh. Careful, don't blind yourself with that INTENSE BROWN LASER! You'll end up seeing blotchy after-images. Colored mauve, probably. 3/22/2022 New addition to Childhood Brain: the Mosquito Aria, and trying to hit double high-C by humming very softly. See also https://youtu.be/JnrLEZ7OHc4 Find cheap HV supplies, -10KVDC variable, just buy Emco E10628 on eBay. Normally $500 from Digikey, I've seen them for $25 surplus. These are actually Emco CB101N (find the datasheet,) with 100uA output, with a Vctl pin (0 to 5v) that adjusts the output voltage. They need 12 to 15 volt supply, at 220mA max. Eight pins on the bottom, like this... ------------------------- | (1) (2) (3) (4) | | | | (8) (7) (6) (5) | | (trimmer) | | | | | | | To enable it, connect pins 4 and 5. The 12V supply goes btween pin-1 pos, to pin-2 common. Pin-8 is the HV common pin (positive.) Pin-4 is Vctl input, and pin-5 is a convenient +5V supply, which can power a 10K pot for setting the volts. Connect your HV output between the thick pink wire (neg) and pin 8 (pos.) The case/shell goes to pin-3, and should go to your own chassis-ground. The output looks like a 0.0025uF capacitor with 1.15G ohms across, so suddenly setting output to zero will be slow (decay constant of about three seconds.) Speed it up with a 1-watt 100M pull-down resistor. Or better, use 1-watt 50M pulldown for twice the speed, then never drive it higher than 7,070VDC. Or keep it below 5KV for half-watt 50M resistor. That gives a Tc of one eighth sec. (The smaller your HVDC peak output, the faster the maximum AC output, if we drive pin-4 with a triangle wave.) ANOTHER: Emco C80-N. Very similar to the above, but only -8KV output. ------------------------- | (5) | 1. +15 | | 2. com | (2) (1) | 3. Vctl (5v) | (3) | 4. HV rtn. | (trmr) | 5. case | (4) | Pink - 8KV out | | | | 8/10/2020 I hear that I'm now on your tee vee! The episode of Strange Evidence must have finally seen the light. About " levitating fishing line," apparently it's not that uncommon. It means you're about to die by lightning strike. 9/2020 New page on Weird Sci. experiments: Show Me Yer WEIRD SENSORS 6/18/2020 New electricity rants! Why do people say "We don't really know what electricity is." ? How did Tesla conceive the Induction Motor? What caused Tesla's financial problems? WHY WAS TESLA DOOMED?! 4/8/2020 If you don't like the year 2020 so much, then try a little bit'o the ol' 1976... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcnJ68g4h8 Also, there's an entire Abba concert, by S. Mann on the Jardin Smith organ, in Manchester at the English Martyrs. "Full Metal Jacket" gives me Flashbacks to 1969 jungle, with synestesia. It's that creepy metal screech in the soundtrack. Inside the sound I smell burning garbage, mildew, hot rust. Pieces of quonset hut corrugated iron, rusted-out 55gal drums rolling slightly. That was my childhood, Guam, town of Merizo where every house had a burning 55gal trashcan full of garbage, and pieces of corrugated iron roof blowing in the wind. Swordgrass fields. No snipers. But every single heavy-loaded B-52 was flying low over our 1965 house up in Northwest Field, on their way to Cambodia. Or perhaps Laos. 11/11/2019 No new articles here? Try How do batteries determine their voltage? also How can I become as big a genius as N. Tesla?, or roughly eight hundred other new wbeaty articles posted over on the Q&A site Quora.com. Some recommended books: Conceptual Physics, by Paul Hewitt Electrical Engineering 101: should have learned but didn't The Feynman Lectures Vol 1-3 ppbk red books. Also, it's online for free! The Experimenter 1924-1926 science experiments gernsback Electrical Experimenter all issues 1913-1920 Popular Electronics/Hands-on 1954-2003 all issues PDF, w/index page 7/12/2018 Heh, years ago I heard that fans created a "Bill Beaty" page on Wikipedia. Now trolls have deleted it again. I am nemo. BIFILAR COILS need not be so weird. Yet at the same time weird. * For example, a UHF "hairpin resonator," just a long U-shape rod, is a bifilar coil (and Nikola Tesla was driving these, getting weird overtone arcs.) If we pulse one end of the hairpin, it should launch high-power microwaves from its far end ...and if the hairpin is twisted, then we have the infamous "Smith Coil" which supposedly launches aether vortices. * Besides spiralled hairpin antennas, another "Bifilar" is the toroid coil if wound in two directions, to prevent any single-turn from existing around its equator. In other words, wind a toroid coil as usual ...then keep going as before, but advance each turn backwards, until you've wound an equal number of turns. The toroid will now have a "spiral hairpin" winding, with strong b-field in the core. Unlike normal toroid windings, there will be exactly zero magnetic field outside, since without the unwanted single turn around the axis, the coil is almost perfectly self-shielding. (The unwanted single turn goes around the equator, then goes back again to the beginning, for zero average current around the donut's equator.) But there is still A-field (and ac volts) in the space outside the coil. 6/11/2018 RAY-DEE-ATION! FINALLY measured my dose from flying in a plane. Normally my 70's-era dosimeters reliably accumulate 35mR per year. On two 2.5hr trips (Vegas,) one of these accumulated 2mR total. Five hours in the air, but maybe only ~4.5h total t… truncated (180,106 more characters in archive)
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