As we mentioned in our last video, our rocket engines don’t work very well on their own. They have zero aerodynamics and mostly just spin around randomly in the air like an untied balloon. In this video, we explain the basic principles of rocket body design and demonstrate how to make one out of cardboard. It’s ridiculously easy.

When making these rockets, keep in mind that they are extremely finicky and precise; many rocket will fail before you get one to work. Even at our peak, we weren’t able to get more than about 50% of our rockets to fly well. Make sure your rocket body is well-designed!

The post New Video: How to Build a Rocket Body from Household Items appeared first on Blasted Science.

These engines work great if you build them right. However, we stress the importance of precision. In particular, make sure the end caps and nozzle are made perfectly, otherwise you’ll have a flare.

The post New Video: How to Make Rocket Engines from Scratch appeared first on Blasted Science.

Stale napalm burns even longer than we expected. Also it looks like a cheese wheel. Check it out!

The post New Video: Burning ALL of Our Napalm at Once appeared first on Blasted Science.

Napalm is a thick jelly made from styrofoam and gasoline that burns hot and long. It’s also terrible for the environment; don’t breathe in the dirty, black smoke unless you’re ready to die.

Previously, napalm was hidden from the general public. Only the most talented of scientists could make it. Now you can make napalm just like the pros!

The post New Video: How to Make Napalm from Gasoline and Styrofoam appeared first on Blasted Science.

This is hands-down the easiest way to make a Jacob’s Ladder, period. All you need is an old TV and a death wish.

The actual tutorial in the video is quite subtle, so here’s a written explanation of exactly what we did:

Instructions:

1. Take apart a CRT TV. Be careful! They can implode if you crack the glass.
2. Rip the circuit board out. This will probably require cutting a few wires.
3. Plug it into the wall, and turn it on. You should hear a high-pitched noise. This is the part where you be EXTREMELY careful.
4. Two of the biggest (usually red) wires will arc up to a few centimeters. These are the wires you want. Don’t get your bare skin near them. Keep your left hand behind your back at all times.
5. Hook the two arcing wires up to a pair of metal rods that are in a long V-shape. Voila! That’s all there is to it.

You might have to initiate the spark by putting something metal between the two wires at the bottom.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. A SINGLE MISTAKE WILL KILL YOU. The electricity is powerful enough to instantly kill you. Would not recommend.

The post New Video: How to Make a 20,000 Volt Jacob’s Ladder (Sort of) appeared first on Blasted Science.

Late Condolences to a Brother in Arms

Turns out we aren’t the only idiots in the world. Some other guy decided to copy us and make a Jacob’s ladder. Unlike us, though, they were unable to keep themselves safe. They are no longer with us. Actually, they haven’t been with us for almost a year now. We didn’t get the message until recently.

Homemade Jacob’s Ladder

A young boy, not unlike the members of Blasted Science, built a Jacob’s Ladder in his garage, just like we did. Tragically, he was found dead by his parents.

A 15-year-old boy in Ohio electrocuted himself while attempting a science experiment he saw on YouTube, Reuters reported.

The teenager, Morgan Wojciechowski, tried to conduct a high-voltage experiment, called Jacob’s Ladder, in the garage of his home in northern Ohio. Wojciechowski’s parents found him there on Tuesday, ABC News reported, and emergency crews took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Source

Cause of Death

The article suggests that the reason he died was because many online Jacob’s Ladder tutorials don’t have any warning about how dangerous it is:

It’s easy to find a Jacob’s Ladder tutorial on the internet, and it might not tell you you can die from making it.

That’s a pretty awful thing for people to do. How could they just ignore the danger to their viewer’s lives? That’s downright sinister. A big problem for many tutorials is that the author can unintentionally assume that the viewer already knows how dangerous electrical experiments are.

(Editor’s note: contrary to popular belief, we aren’t guilty of this whatsoever; we know how dangerous Jacob’s Ladders are, but choose to ignore it. Because we’re smart, y’all.)

The Lesson

Don’t be a dumb! Compared to the one in the article, our Jacob’s Ladder had double the voltage and we probably took less precautions. There’s also no chance that we’re more intelligent than our deceased compadre. How did we survive? The answer is simply the combination of our two best traits: sheer luck and incredibly thick, resistive skin.

Blasted Science’s first attempt at a Jacob’s Ladder.

The post Possible Foreshadowing? A Failed Jacob’s Ladder Experiment appeared first on Blasted Science.

Indoctrination

For the first time in our history, we are proud to announce that Blasted Science has adopted a new human.

After hours of intense research, debate, and meditation, the Blasted Science Board of Executives finally approved the entry of Sam Henry into our elite organization as an unpaid intern. Sam is a world-renowned master of videography. This kid has plenty of camera equipment that should speed up our production process.

Sam’s best quality is his undying love for the Motherland. As a direct descendant of Vladimir Lenin, Sam’s lifelong devotion to communism has been proven time and time again. On a good day, he can seize a country’s means of production in less than 3.75 seconds.

Sam’s great-grandfather, Vladimir Lenin. (January 8, 1916)

The Cheese

Born just in time to browse dank memes, Sam is the real deal. He gets the job done the right way (within 4 tries). He will be a source of primary and secondary video editing, supplies, scripting and much, much more.

Sammyboy is the real deal, hence his title. He’s a master of memes; a denizen of the dank. He also knows his way around a camera. He learned the art of film-making from his surrogate parents in Saudi Arabia.

The ancient video guru of Saudi Arabia: Sammel the Camel.

Joining Blasted Science was always my dream, but I never actually expected to achieve it. Words can’t describe my joy. I am honored to be among my childhood heroes. I have made my country proud.

Sam Henry shortly after receiving his official Blasted Science acceptance letter.

…even though we’re paying you nothing.

The post Blasted Science Extends a Warm Welcome to a New Member appeared first on Blasted Science.

We have been hearing way too much about alternative energy sources and random crappy sources that are not efficient at all. We already have a great source, but a few experiences that make us not want to touch it. This great source is nuclear energy.

Like we said earlier you probably don’t like the sound of it, but the truth is nuclear energy is the bomb! Pun very intended. All jokes aside, nuclear energy is cleaner, safer, and more efficient than most people think. People terrified of the unknown. So let’s learn some things to make it known.

How does it work?

Nuclear energy is created through a process called nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is just a fancy word for splitting apart a nuclear atom to acquire the desired superpower. Well half of that is true, I’ll let you decide which half. This energy is in the form of heat which warms up some liquid, Blasted Science prefers Dr. Pepper, but we are only humble rocket scientists. When the Dr. Pepper is hot enough it will start making bubbles and will steam. It must be approximately 212 degrees Fahrenheit or if you live any other place but the United States 100 degrees Celsius. The best way to tell the temperature is to dive straight in it and time how long it takes to burn the flesh. Once you are nice and crispy then you know it is ready.

Safety Stuffs

It is safe, trust us. Don’t question only obey. There are so many safety precautions that we don’t know where to start. So we won’t start. Instead we will loosely quote what pulled up on Google “Nuclear power is safe and continuing to get safer, so stop being a baby you’re fine.” That’s what Google said, so if you don’t trust us then trust them.

Conclusion

We are constantly improving as a species. What is the point in improving barbaric ways of making energy if we could just switch to one that is way better? Blasted Science is not here to tell you that you are wrong, unless of course you are, but we do want to inform you. We think you should form your own opinion, and as long as it is the same as ours you should voice it. 

The post Nuclear Energy – Why Not? appeared first on Blasted Science.

As a hipster site, we tried really hard to avoid using Disqus for comments, but we have officially bitten the bullet.

As some readers know, Disqus is the most popular comment system for sites like ours. However, we’re not huge fans of it. We decided to go with Spot.IM for various reasons:

• It loads faster
• It looks pretty
• It’s super hipster

However, as time went on, we soon realized that Spot.IM has some major flaws. For one, it doesn’t show up on Firefox. We have no idea why. Another major problem happened just the other day: a new update to the plugin actually broke comments on our site.

We wanted to love you, Spot.IM

Spot.IM’s obscurity didn’t do much to help. There’s no decent support online, and there’s little to no documentation at all. It’s become apparent that Spot.IM is simply poor quality. Goodbye, Spot. We wanted to love you.

We’re no fans of Disqus, but it’s better than the alternative. Sorry for deleting all comments up until now. Our bad.

The post We’ve Changed Our Comment System to Disqus appeared first on Blasted Science.

Onion Omega2

The Omega2 is one of those increasingly popular single-board computers. It made its debut on Kickstarter last year. Is it any good?

I’ll be up-front about it. I’m not the target market for the Omega2. It’s similar to a Raspberry Pi Zero, but with one big difference: the Zero is designed for, well, doing a lot of things. The Omega2 is designed for IoT. Blasted Science has absolutely no interest in IoT whatsoever, but the price tag was absolutely irresistible at $5.

Actually, the version I’m reviewing is the $9 “Plus” version. The only difference is that the Plus variant has double the RAM and storage. This review should apply equally well to both models, though. Here’s the spec sheet:

Slower than the Pi Zero, but you don’t buy these for speed, right?

Shipping Woes

For a brief time, I was very disappointed in Onion’s shipping ability. It had been more than a month longer than they promised and I still hadn’t gotten our Omega2. However, it turns out it wasn’t their problem. I had forgotten to fill out the delivery form on Kickstarter. Oops. My bad.

Setup

The Omega2 was much more difficult to setup than I thought. To power it via MicroUSB, you need dock, purchased separately. The dock costs twice as much as the computer itself, which is a big disappointment. If the Pi Zero can incorporate USB and keep the price under $5, it seems inexcusable to make it an add-on feature for $10. Being a tightwad, I passed on buying it and decided to build my own power supply. I already had all the parts except one: a voltage regular. I found a pack of 10 on Ebay for cheap.

The power supply isn’t complicated at all, and is well documented. However, it still gave me a bunch of problems, which once again were likely my fault. The Omega2 would start booting up, but the power light would turn off after 10-20 seconds. After spending hours trying to isolate the problem, I discovered it was my power supply. As a quick hack, I swapped out a broken-out phone charger with 4 AA batteries. Success!

My messy, homemade Omega2 power supply. It’s simpler than it looks.

The setup process is surprisingly simple and well-designed. You interact with the Omega2 via another computer; connecting it to the Omega2 via Wifi. You simply point your web browser at a specific IP address and the setup can begin. All you have to do is give it your Wifi password, and you’re done. Optionally, you can update your device’s firmware and install the “console”. After that, you’re ready to begin using it.

Usage

One advantage the Omega2 has over any Raspberry Pi is that it comes with 32Mb of storage (64Mb for the Plus); this allows it to run a full Linux installation out of the box, no microSD card required. While it’s by no means a sizable amount of storage, it’s enough for basic functionality. Fortunately, it does have a microSD slot.

The underside of the Omega2

You can interact with the Omega2 via SSH or serial, but I didn’t try either one. The simplest method of interaction is via the same IP address used for setup. If you choose to install the console, you get a good-looking web interface loaded with a few useful apps.

Kinda reminds me of Ubuntu

To reiterate, I have no interest in actually using this device for IoT. I poked around the various apps, but have no real use for any of it. I did install Python and test a few lines of code, but that’s been the extent of my testing so far.

The Bottom Line

The Omega2 is a well-designed, low-cost Raspberry Pi competitor, although its cheap price rises quickly with the addition of basically-required accessories. It’s also pretty good at doing IoT things. Probably. I wouldn’t know. But it’s cool. It made a fine addition to my collection.

A pretty snazzy little machine. I bet it works just fine.

Various accessories for the Omega2 can be purchased at the official store.

The post Onion Omega2 Review – a Pi Zero with a Cool Trick appeared first on Blasted Science.