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Category Archives: peltier
A Stacked Peltier Cloud Chamber Build
Subatomic particles are remarkably difficult to see, but they can be made visible with the right techniques. Building a cloud chamber with dry ice is a common way to achieve this, but coming by the material can be difficult. [The Thought Emporium] wanted a more accessible build, and went for …read more
Posted in cloud chamber, peltier, radioactivity, science
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Build Your Own Freezer With Thermoelectric Coolers
Freezers are highly useful devices. You can preserve food, stop a dead animal from stinking out your apartment, and keep your vodka at the optimal drinking temperature. Of course, most of us bought ours from the local whitegoods store, but [Tech Ingredients] set out to build his own (YouTube, embedded …read more
The Deep Space Energy Crisis Could Soon Be Over
On the face of it, powering most spacecraft would appear to be a straightforward engineering problem. After all, with no clouds to obscure the sun, adorning a satellite with enough solar panels to supply its electrical needs seems like a no-brainer. Finding a way to support photovoltaic (PV) arrays of the proper size and making sure they’re properly oriented to maximize the amount of power harvested can be tricky, but having essentially unlimited energy streaming out from the sun greatly simplifies the overall problem.
Unfortunately, this really only holds for spacecraft operating relatively close to the sun. The tyranny of …read more
Posted in Cassini, Featured, New Horizons, news, Original Art, peltier, Pioneer, Plutonium, radioisotope, RTG, seebeck, space, spacecraft, voyager
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See the Radioactive World with This Peltier Cloud Chamber
Remember when a homemade cloud chamber was a science fair staple? We haven’t participated for decades, but it seemed like every year someone would put a hunk of dry ice in a fish tank, add a little alcohol, and with the lighting just right – which it never was in the gymnasium – you might be lucky enough to see a few contrails in the supersaturated vapor as the occasional stray bit of background radiation whizzed through the apparatus.
Done right, the classic cloud chamber is a great demonstration, but stocking enough dry ice to keep the fun going is …read more
Artistic Images Made With Water Lens
It’s said that beauty and art can be found anywhere, as long as you look for it. The latest art project from [dmitry] both looks in unassuming places for that beauty, and projects what it sees for everyone to view. Like most of his projects, it’s able to produce its artwork in a very unconventional way. This particular project uses water as a lens, and by heating and cooling the water it produces a changing image.
The art installation uses a Peltier cooler to periodically freeze the water that’s being used as a lens. When light is projected through the …read more
Posted in arduino, art, cooler, ice, lens, peltier, projection, Raspberry Pi, water
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Hacked Heating Instruments for the DIY Biology Lab
[Justin] from The Thought Emporium takes on a common molecular biology problem with these homebrew heating instruments for the DIY biology lab.
The action at the molecular biology bench boils down to a few simple tasks: suck stuff, spit stuff, cool stuff, and heat stuff. Pipettes take care of the sucking and spitting, while ice buckets and refrigerators do the cooling. The heating, however, can be problematic; vessels of various sizes need to be accommodated at different, carefully controlled temperatures. It’s not uncommon to see dozens of different incubators, heat blocks, heat plates, and even walk-in environmental chambers in the …read more
Posted in bacteria, biochemistry, biohacking, biology, Chemistry, chemistry hacks, dna, heating, molecular biology, peltier, plasmids, yeast
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Lily Power Pods Make the Seebeck Effect Look Good
The Seebeck effect (part of the broader thermoelectric effect) is how a difference in temperature can be directly converted into a voltage, and it is the operating principle behind things like thermocouples and Peltier junctions. Harnessing this effect in an effort to wrangle a useful electrical current out of the environment has led to some interesting ideas, like the Lily Power Pods by [Josh Starnes].
What’s interesting about this particular design is that the artistic angle crosses over with functionality. Electrically speaking, the pods have one side of the thermoelectric generator heated by the sun while the other is cooled …read more
Big Power, Little Power, Tiny Power, Zap!
Our Hackaday Prize Challenges are evaluated by a panel of judges who examine every entry to see how they fare against judging criteria. With prize money at stake, it makes sense we want to make sure it is done right. But we also have our Hackaday Prize achievements, with less at stake leading to a more free-wheeling way to recognize projects that catch our eye. Most of the achievements center around fun topics that aren’t related to any particular challenge, but it’s a little different for the Infinite Improbability achievement. This achievement was unlocked by any project that impressed with …read more
A Flashlight Powered by Your Hot Little Hands
We are smack-dab in the middle of our Energy Harvesting Challenge, and [wasimashu] might have this one in the palm of his hand. Imagine a compact flashlight that doesn’t need batteries or bulbs. You’d buy a 10-pack and stash them everywhere, right? If there’s nothing that will leak or break or expire in your lifetime, why not have a bunch of them around?
Infinity uses nothing but body heat to power a single white LED. It only needs a five-degree temperature difference between the air and your hand to work, so it should be good in pretty much any environment. …read more