In a previous article I built a magnetic stirrer using littleBits and Erector set parts for the home laboratory. At the end of the article I added a design for a sample rotator (a device used to…

Scholars writing in the Danish Journal of Archaeology say that "grog" dates back a lot farther than previously believed; to perhaps 1500 B.C. and in an area stretching from northwest Denmark to the…

Follow me on Twitter: @SteveSchuler20. Back in the day, some chemistry sets came with a mechanical centrifuge. They were operated similar to those old-timey pump style tin spinning toy tops. This is…

While writing my series on the Science Play and Research Kit, I hoped to survey chemistry sets that are already on the market. I was able to get a reviewer’s sample of the Chem C3000 and you can…

If you buy extra virgin olive oil, caveat emptor. Olive oil has been an avenue for corruption for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years. Some extra virgin olive oil in studies was found to not…

Platinum is used in catalytic converters to transform toxic fumes from a car's engine into more benign gases, to produce high octane gasoline, plastics and synthetic rubbers, and to fight the spread…

President Obama called it a 'Sputnik Moment' and, when you weren't wondering why a guy who is against war uses a lot of military terminology and invokes Ronald Reagan(1), you may have still…

Though table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), is one of the best-known and most studied chemical compounds known, it still has a few mysteries. Under ambient conditions, it crystallizes in a cubic…

Vodka can make people do strange things - especially if they also have a phone. But it can also do cool things, like demonstrating how to message people using chemical signals when conventional…

You can perform simple qualitative analysis to detect certain metals in various substances using borax bead, and flame tests. The inoculating loop for these tests is very easy to make. You can use 20…