Who to Make a Solar Panel

Sputnik, Apollo and the Space Race. If you watched the State of the Union address last night, you probably heard President Barack Obama mention those three things. The Space Race was an informal bout between the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA) over the ascenda ...more

Solar panels are an amazing invention. Catching energy from the Sun before it even enters Earth's food chain, photovoltaics are like an all-natural nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the constituted parts of a solar panel are rare, valuable, and subject to the coercive forces ...more

Plants all around us capture sunlight every day and convert it to energy, making them a model of solar energy production. And while the energy they make may serve the needs of a plant, the process isn't efficient enough to generate power on a larger scale. So, scientists from ...more

There's nothing worse than when you come up with a brilliant idea while you're busy with other things and then promptly forget it. Whether it's the perfect ending for your novel or a comeback you should've said during that argument with your roommate last week, it's always ann ...more

A common misconception is that all car batteries die. This, in fact, isn't true—the majority of "dead" car batteries just don't contain enough juice to power a car, but they can still provide enough watts to keep emergency fans and lighting running, which is great when a power ...more

Omniscience is not required to make some really cool shit happen. Yes, it took a while, but we can make fuel from the Sun! Solar panels are basically our answer to God. And now that we can make solar electricity, finding the most efficient way to harvest it is tricky. Some so ...more

Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process ...more

Aside from being completely adorable, Fijibot is a completely autonomous robot that automatically seeks out light sources to charge his solar-powered battery. He's built from a 1.5 liter Fiji water bottle, packed with an Arduino Uno, 6 volt solar panel, and an Arduino Proto Sh ...more

This is definitely the work of a Trekkie. Reddit user ModXMV shared the below image of his uncle's new homemade Star Trek mailbox. It's constructed of different-sized PVC pipe, a plastic dish container, wood, lights, etc. It even has a solar panel attached so it can light up ...more

You can do a lot more with playing cards than you'd think, like turn them into gift boxes, fling them like throwing stars, and make them levitate or disappear. You can even make them recharge your batteries. Instructables user Shawn Frayne was sick of having a bunch of dead ba ...more

As sheltering at home orders ease up, we still have to remain respectful of social distancing. Camping is one of your best options. You'll avoid the crowded beaches and trails while still soaking up nature. Right now we can all use some fresh air and sunshine. The last thing ...more

This is just a simple survival light source. You can use a cheap outdoor solar yard light like the one in the video from walmart. There only about 3 to 5 bucks but you can use them not only as a light source but a way to recharge AA rechargeable batteries. First, it will make ...more

A smartphone is pretty much useless with a dead battery. When you're out and about, it can be hard to find a place to plug in (if you remembered your charger, that is). But this DIY solar panel backpack made by electrical engineer Theodore Protasiewicz will help you use the sc ...more

Want an electric car without the price tag? You could always build your own, or maybe just hack your old gas guzzler into an eco-friendly electric machine... This weekend at Defcon, security consultant David Brown showed off his "Voltswagon" project, a 1974 Beetle named Shocky ...more

Do you have two dollars and a water bottle? Then you can put together this simple but awesome solar-powered lantern that will provide more than enough light to read by at night. To begin, you'll need a water bottle, of course, some string, and optionally, a little bleach. You ...more

After years of tantalizing drone video, and then brief glimpses from special guests sharing photos on social media, the Apple Park Visitor Center finally opened to the public on Friday, Nov. 17. Anchored by a $427 million main building that is often referred to as the "spaces ...more

Science-fiction writer Jules Verne predicted many scientific breakthroughs, including the moon landing, tasers, and nuclear submarines. In his 1874 book The Mysterious Island, Verne writes: I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which ...more

It turns out that the popularity of soft circuit electronics has leaked out of the interwebs and into the hands of the U.S. military. Soft circuit electronics allow you to literally sew electronics circuits into fabric using flexible conductive thread instead of wire. Soft cir ...more

This article will show you how to make a proportionally correct 1/187 (about) size Hubble Space Telescope. I tried to add as many details as possible, but it was hard at such a small size. It was really easy, but it did take a while to make. Here are some specs for the real H ...more

I am writing this quick post in response to the recent earthquakes and tsunamis that are affecting Japan. As soon as the news broke, and we began to hear of tsunami warning for our area, I immediately realized how under prepared I was for a natural disaster. The thing that dro ...more

The holiday season is here! Whether you're gift shopping for the iPhone owners in your life or just trying to save some money on your own purchases, Black Friday can deal out the discounts. This year, you'll find great prices on iPhone accessories of all kinds — all Thanksgivi ...more

Recently, buyout talks between Google and Groupon ended with Groupon turning down Google's $6 million offer. But with Amazon backing LivingSocial, should they have? Your guess is as good as mine, but one thing's for sure— Groupon has a great voice, and they're sharing it with ...more

Not only does this solar-powered cinema have all the trimmings of a great movie theater — ticket booth, brick façade, Ionic columns, popcorn machine, fancy art deco signage —, it is itself remarkably trim: The Sol Cinema was commissioned by media arts charity Undercurrents an ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

The International Space Station is a habitable man-made satellite currently in orbit around the Earth. Launched in 1998, the ISS is used mainly as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory where astronauts perform experiments in large variety of fields, includin ...more

What's the first thing you would do once you realized you were lost in, say, a desert? If you're like me, you would immediately pull out your cell phone and start dialing every number. But what if you have no service? What if your battery is dead? If you make this survival so ...more

I hate being cold. That's why I live in Los Angeles. But, there are plenty of folks who are experiencing some pretty chilly temperatures this year, despite global warming, and one of the worst places affected is the garage. C'mon, who has a freakin' heater in their garage? St ...more

This low impact woodland home in Wales is the cream of the crop. The woodland home was built entirely of natural materials, and best of all - only took 4 months and $5000 to complete. The design is ingenious, dug into a hillside for low visual impact and strong shelter. Straw ...more

One thing that I got more and more excited about as we got closer and closer to the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference was finally learning about the new Acer Windows Mixed Reality head-mounted displays (HMD). Brandon Bray, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, ...more

Want to build your own life-sized, working replica of WALL-E? Be prepared to take on a second job! Mike Senna spent two years perfecting his own version, working 25 hours a week and totaling somewhere around 3,800 hours for the whole project. He had no blueprints to go by, so ...more

As our society and population grows, more developments such as housing and restaurants are built. While this is beneficial for us, it's not so great for the environment and the animals that occupy it. Some of the victims of our prosperity have been the birds, forced from their ...more

One of the most annoying things about summer is mowing the lawn. Depending on how big your yard is, it can mean spending hours out in the hot sun while you could be doing something a lot more fun like watching the Olympics or making giant soap bubbles. Reclaim your summer with ...more

The landscape of the augmented reality space is broad, diverse, and constantly shifting, perhaps more so than any other vertical in technology. At the same time, major players are attempting to standardize various hardware designs and delivery methods, while still others are r ...more

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk said during the Model 3 launch party Friday night that all Tesla cars in production have the same driverless hardware, signaling that Tesla's jump to Level 4 hinges on a software update — but Musk didn't exactly say that. Often overlooked is ho ...more

After poor sales of last year's HTC 10 and the terrible reviews their first 2017 flagship received, HTC really needs the HTC U11 to succeed. But they're not taking things lying down, as they've come up with some interesting tech for their latest handset. The biggest new featu ...more

You just sat down, coffee in hand, and the day is ready to start. Now that you have taken a few sips, let me pose a question: What is living in that coffeemaker of yours? The answer might make you dump that coffee down the drain pronto. Extremophiles are rugged microbial indi ...more

There's been a whole lot going on at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, from the latest in virtual reality gear to televisions that continue to slim down while producing higher quality images. We've seen so many smart automobiles and appliances that it feels like pretty s ...more