Force carbonating root beer with dry ice

[Paul] is sick and tired of his homemade root beer being flat. He analyzed the problem with his carbonation techniques and ended up with a method of force carbonating beverages using dry ice.

He starts of by discussing the various methods that are used to carbonate beverages. There’s the old yeast and sugar trick that takes place inside of … Read the rest

Incredible home made low cost CO2 Laser

[LokisMischief] wrote in to the tip line to let us know about this incredible home made CO2 laser. This thing is a complete DIY beauty, from the PVC cooling jacket to the toolbox based controller.  The whole thing is essentially built from DIY parts,  hand blown glass for the laser tube, plumbing store mirror mounts,  a PVC cooling jacket … Read the rest

Beer chilling in the name of science

We’ve all been there. The day is done and it’s time for a cold one but you neglected to put more beer in the fridge after imbibing the last bottle the night before. You could chuck it in the freezer and revisit your attempt at refreshment in an hour. But if you need a malty beverage right now there’s no … Read the rest

CO2 powered pinewood derby car is definitely cheating

The Pinewood Derby is a classic Cub Scout competition where dads and sons come together to build a small-scale race car. You start with a kit that includes a block of wood for the body, as well as four plastic wheels and four nails to act as axles. Most innovations in the ‘sport’ center around reducing friction between the wheels … Read the rest

DIY fizzy fruit

co2inator

[Rich] over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs took it upon himself to make eating fruit a little more enjoyable for his kids by infusing it with CO2 using his CO2inator. Observing the same principles used in making soft drinks and force-carbed beer, he decided to build a CO2 pressure chamber for use in his kitchen. He gathered a handful … Read the rest

The Heinz Automato

[Bill Fienup] and [Barry Kudrowitz]‘s robots, The Automatos, have been leaving a sticky path of destruction all over the internet. Their sole purpose: to crap ketchup. They accomplish this feat by dumping a CO2 cartridge into a ketchup bottle at the push of a button, leading to some pretty awesome results.  While the details are a little sparse it appears … Read the rest

Wine cask sensor suite

As part of his Master’s dissertation [Salvador Faria] built a sensor suite for wine monitoring. He needed to develop a method of tracking data inside the wine cask during the vinification process. What he came up with eclipses the wine cellar temperature monitors we’ve seen before.

He picked up pH, temperature, carbon dioxide, alcohol, and relative humidity sensors from … Read the rest