How Pure Is This Cup Of Joe? Coffee, Conspiracy, And Citizen Science

November 6, 2017 by Sean Boyce 38 Comments

Have you ever thought about coffee purity? It’s more something you’d encounter with prescription or elicit drugs, but coffee is actually a rather valuable commodity. If a seller can make the actual grounds go a bit further by stretching the brew with alternative ingredients there becomes an incentive to cheat.

If this sounds like the stuff rumors are made of, that’s because it is! Here in Ho Chi Minh City there are age-old rumors a coffee syndicate that masterfully passes off adulterated product as pure, high-grade coffee. Rumors are one thing, but the local media started picking up on these suspicions and that caught my attention. I decided to look to simple chemistry to see if I could prove or disprove the story.

What we want to investigate is whether price and coffee purity are related. If they are, then after accounting for the effect of price, we will want to know whether proximity to the market where artificial coffee flavoring is sold has an effect on coffee purity.

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Yellowing: The Plastic Equivalent Of A Sunburn

November 3, 2017 by Bob Baddeley 62 Comments

Your fancy white electronic brick of consumer electronics started off white, but after some time it yellowed and became brittle. This shouldn’t have happened; plastic is supposed to last forever. It turns out that plastic enclosures are vulnerable to the same things as skin, and the effects are similar. When they are stared at by the sun, the damage is done even though it might not be visible to you for quite some time.

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Why Wait? Just Plate Your Own PCB Vias

November 2, 2017 by Kristina Panos 34 Comments

[Jan Mrázek] is a pro when it comes to rolling his own PCBs. He can crank out a 6/6 mil double-sided PCB in 45 minutes flat. As a challenge to his prowess, he decided to experiment with plating through-hole PCBs at home, because sometimes you just can’t wait for China to deliver the goods.

The key here is to make a non-conductive surface—the walls of holes drilled in a sheet of copper clad–conductive. While there are some established ways of doing this at home, the chemicals are difficult to source. When his local supplier started stocking colloidal graphite paint, which is used to prevent ESD and fix non-working remote control buttons, he decided to try it.

[Jan] drilled up a board with holes ranging from 0.1mm up to 8mm, polished it, and gave it an acetone bath. He sprayed each side with graphite and cured it at 100 °C for 20 minutes. At this point, wall hole resistance measured 21 Ω. [Jan] wet-sanded away the graphite and set up an electroplating bath. Right away, he could see a layer of copper forming on the holes. After 90 minutes, he polished the board again and separated the vias to prepare for the real test: solder. This time, every hole except the smallest size reported a resistance of 0.1 Ω. But they all sucked solder through the vias, making this experiment a success.

[Jan] concluded that this is a simple and effective process, but is rarely worth the effort. We wonder how the simplicity of this method compares to drilling wells instead of holes, filling them with conductive ink, and then drilling the rest of the via.

Via [Dangerous Prototypes]

Coffee, Conspiracy, And Citizen Science: An Introduction To Iodometry

October 30, 2017 by Sean Boyce 40 Comments

I take coffee very seriously. It’s probably the most important meal of the day, and apparently the largest overall dietary source of antioxidants in the United States of America. Regardless of whether you believe antioxidants have a health effect (I’m skeptical), that’s interesting!

Unfortunately, industrially roasted and ground coffee is sometimes adulterated with a variety of unwanted ‘other stuff’: corn, soybeans, wheat husks, etc. Across Southeast Asia, there’s a lot of concern over food adulteration and safety in general, as the cost-driven nature of the market pushes a minority of vendors to dishonest business practices. Here in Vietnam, one of the specific rumors is that coffee from street vendors is not actually coffee, but unsafe chemical flavoring agents mixed with corn silk, roasted coconut husks, and soy. Local news reported that 30% of street coffee doesn’t even contain caffeine.

While I’ve heard some pretty fanciful tales told at street side coffee shops, some of them turned out to be based on some grain (bean?) of truth, and local news has certainly featured it often enough. Then again, I’ve been buying coffee at the same friendly street vendors for years, and take some offense at unfounded accusations directed at them.

This sounds like a job for science, but what can we use to quantify the purity of many coffee samples without spending a fortune? As usual, the solution to the problem (pun intended) was already in the room:

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Thermite Creates A Sword

October 26, 2017 by Brian McEvoy 26 Comments

Thermite can cut cars in half but [TheBackyardScientist] relies on its ability to create rather than destroy. In fact, thermite was the key component when he casts a solid metal sword. The casting doesn’t require a furnace since the heat is produced by the thermite itself.

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear: this procedure is not without risk.

[TheBackyardScientist] compares two types of iron oxide, red and black, then judges their usability based on the post-ignition mass. His goal is to get the most metal from a single reaction. He also adds some stainless steel beads to improve the quality of the casting and to utilize some of the excess heat.

With encouragement from his neighbors and a couple of trials with fire bricks, buckets, and sand, [TheBackyardScientist] is successful. The resulting sword is treated, given a handle, sharpened, then scientifically tested with a variety of things found in a regular kitchen.

If you look in the background of [TheBackyardScientist]’s workshop, you may notice his molten PEWter gun. This steel sword is an upgrade from his recycled pewter sword a few years ago.

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Restoring A Tonka Truck With Science

October 26, 2017 by Tom Nardi 36 Comments

The yellow Tonka Truck. Instantly recognizable by any child of decades past, that big metal beast would always make you popular around the sandbox. There were no blinking lights to dazzle, no noises to be heard (unless you count the hard plastic wheels rolling on concrete), even the dumping action is completely manual. But back then, it was a possession to be treasured indeed.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that there is a certain following for these classic trucks today, though like with most other collectibles, a specimen in good condition can be prohibitively expensive. The truck that [PoppaFixIt] found in the trash was certainly not one of those specimens, but with some patience and knowledge of basic chemistry, he was able to bring this vintage toy back to the present.

The first step was to disassemble the truck. Before they switched over to Chinese mass production, these trucks were built with actual rivets. After drilling them out and unfolding the little metal tabs that toy makers loved back in the day, he was able to separate the metal body of the truck from the plastic detail bits. The plastic parts just needed a fresh coat of paint, but the rusted metal body would need a bit more attention.

Remembering a tip he read online, [PoppaFixIt] decided to attempt electrolytic rust removal to get the metal parts back into serviceable condition. A big plastic bin, some washing soda, and old steel window weights for his sacrificial anodes was all the equipment he needed for the electrolysis tank. To power the chemical reaction he used a standard 12 volt car battery and charger wired in parallel; this step is important, as he notes most newer chargers are smart enough not to work unless they see a real battery connected.

After running the setup overnight, the collected rust and junk on the window weights was proof enough the process worked. From there, it was just a fresh coat of yellow paint, a new sticker kit from eBay, and his Tonka truck was ready to face another 30+ years of service.

If you’re looking to restore things larger than a child’s toy, you may be interested in the much larger electrolytic setup we’ve covered previously. Of course if you’re really pressed for time, you could try blasting the rust away with a laser.

Tinning Solution From The Hardware Store

October 23, 2017 by Brian McEvoy 20 Comments

Making your own printed circuit board at home often leads to a board which looks homemade. Exposed copper is one of the tell-tale signs. That may be your aesthetic and we won’t cramp your style, but exposed copper is harder to solder than tinned copper and it likes to oxidize over time. Tinning at home can bring you a step closer to having a full-featured board. In the video after the break, famed chemist [nurdrage] shows us how to make tinning solution at home in the video below the break.

There are only three ingredients to make the solution and you can probably find them all at a corner hardware store.

Hydrochloric acid. Also known as muriatic acid.
Solid lead-free solder with ≥ 95% tin
Silver polish containing thiourea

Everything to pull this off is in the first three minutes of the video. [nurdrage] goes on to explain the chemistry behind this reaction. It doesn’t require electricity or heat but heat will speed up the reactions. With this kind of simplicity, there’s no reason to make untinned circuit boards in your kitchen anymore. If aesthetics are very important, home tinning yourself allows you to mask off certain regions and have exposed copper and tin on the same board.

[nurdrage] is no stranger to Hackaday, he even has an article here about making your own PCB etchants and a hotplate to kick your PCB production into high gear.

Thanks for the tip, [drnbutyllithium].

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