Science

1439 Articles

You Paid For This Paper. Now You Can Read It Without Paying Again

August 26, 2022 by 44 Comments

There is probably very little among the topics covered here at Hackaday that doesn’t have its roots somewhere in scientific research. Semiconductor devices for example didn’t simply pop into being in Bell Labs or Texas Instruments, the scientists and engineers who created them did so standing on the shoulders of legions of earlier researchers who discovered the precursor steps that made them possible. As many readers will know, scientific research for its own sake is expensive, so much so that much of it is funded by governments, from your taxes. The research papers with the findings are then hidden from public view behind paywalls by the publishers who distribute them, an injustice which should soon be over for Americans, thanks to a White House memorandum paving the way for federally funded research to be freely available to the public at no cost by no later than 2025.

The academic publishing business originates in the days when paper was king, and it has several tiers. Officially an academic journal is usually the product of a professional body in its field, but it is normal for the publishing itself to be contracted out to a specialist academic publishing company. They accept submissions of papers, edit them, and arrange peer reviewers, before publishing the journals. Originally this was a paper process, but while journals are still printed it’s the Internet through which they are now read. The publishers pay nothing to the researcher for their paper and often only a nominal sum to the reviewers for their input, but charge a hefty subscription for access to the content. As you might imagine it’s an extremely lucrative business, so as this Hackaday scribe saw when she worked in that industry, the publishers and the learned bodies are in no hurry to kill their golden goose.

This move to open access may make few immediate waves outside the world of scientific publishing, but it affirms the principle that taxpayers should be able to see the fruits of their spending. As such it will be of benefit to less-well-off researchers and institutions worldwide. Rest in peace Aaron Swartz, if only you could have seen this day!

White House pic: Matt H. Wade, CC BY-SA 3.0.

There’s Gold In That There Graphene

August 23, 2022 by 14 Comments

There’s gold all around us, embedded in our electronics. There are people who collect e-waste and use various methods to extract gold from them. However, it is hard to qualify it as a “get rich quick” scheme because the amount of gold recovered is usually minute. Still, if you can do volume, you can make some money and recycling is always a good idea. At the University of Manchester, they have a better way to extract gold from e-waste using graphene. You can see a brief video about the process below, or read the full paper.

The process is relatively simple. You dissolve the e-waste in a solvent, add some graphene oxide, and the gold appears bound to the graphene. You pull out the graphene and burn it off to result in the gold you want. A gram of graphene can grab 2 grams of gold and graphene is relatively cheap per gram compared to gold.

Graphene oxide nanosheets are processed using ascorbic acid into a colloid suspension. The chemical process converts gold bound with chlorine into elemental gold. After diving into why the process works, they were able to increase the selectivity of the process by manipulating the pH so that the majority of the residue is actually gold.

The team believes they can build a continuous process that takes liquefied e-waste and extracts gold as it flows through the system. If you’d rather go with the traditional method, here’s a start for you. Then again, there are other metals to recover besides gold.

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Optimizing The Mining Of Uranium From Coal Ash And Seawater

August 23, 2022 by 55 Comments

Of all the elements that make up the Earth’s crust, uranium is reasonably abundant, coming in at 49th place, ahead of elements such as tin, tungsten and silver. Ever since humankind began to exploit uranium for its fissile properties in energy production, this abundance has also translated into widespread availability for mining. As of 2019, Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia formed the world’s main producers, accounting for about 68% of output.

Considering the enormous energy density of uranium when used as fuel in a nuclear fission reactor, the demand for uranium is relatively low, especially combined with the long (two years on average) refueling cycles of commercial reactors. The effect is that even with the very inefficient once-through fuel cycle – which only uses a fraction of the uranium fuel’s potential energy – uranium market prices have remained relatively low and stable even amidst geopolitical crises.

Despite this, the gradual rise in uranium market prices ($10/lb in 2003, $49/lb in 2022), as well as the rapid construction of new reactors is driving new exploration. Here recent innovations may make uranium fuel even more accessible to all nations, by unlocking the billions of tons of uranium found in plain seawater as well as the many tons of fly ash produced by coal plants every single day.

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Magic Mirror Isn’t Transparent Metal

August 22, 2022 by 20 Comments

One of the Star Trek movies has a McGuffin called “transparent aluminum.” While magic mirrors aren’t really transparent, it appears that way to a casual observer. If you haven’t seen one of these, they are polished metal mirrors with a pattern embossed on the back. When you shine a point source of light on the mirror, however, the reflection matches what is on the back of the mirror. Is it transparent? No, and the video by [Steve Mould] below explains what’s really going on.

The reality is that very subtle variations of the surface produce the image. You need some understanding of optics and calculus to fully understand what’s going on.

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Batteries Get Tiny

August 20, 2022 by 18 Comments

Steve Martin had a comedy routine that focused on the idea of “getting small.” That probably didn’t inspire the researchers at the Institute for Integrative Nanoscience when they set out to create a sub-square-millimeter microbattery. As you might expect, you won’t be starting your car with a battery the size of a grain of sand anytime soon, but these batteries do have a surprising capacity.

The key is creating what they call “micro-swiss rolls” where the electrodes are wrapped in a tiny cylinder. This isn’t a new idea. However, creating workable rolls at the scale where a grain of rice looks huge isn’t trivial.

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Replace An AA Battery With Paper

August 8, 2022 by 54 Comments

Paper is an ubiquitous part of society; so much so that the incredible engineering behind it often goes unnoticed. That isn’t the case for [Robert], though, who has a deep appreciation for the material and all its many uses far beyond recording information. In this particular video, he recreates a method found by researchers to turn a piece of paper into a battery with equivalent performance to a AA-sized alkaline battery. (Video, embedded below the break.)

The process involves the creation of a few different types of ink, each of which can be made with relatively common materials such as shellac, ethanol, polyethylene glycol, and graphite. Each of these materials are mixed in different proportions to create the inks. Once the cathode ink and anode ink are made, a third ink is needed called a current collector ink which functions essentially as a wire. The paper is dipped into a salt solution and then allowed to dry, given a partial waterproof coating, and when it is needed it can be activated by wetting it which allows the ion flow of the battery to happen.

The chemistry of this battery makes a lot of sense once you see it in action, and the battery production method also has a perk of having a long shelf life as long as the batteries stay dry. They also don’t damage the environment as much as non-rechargable alkaline cells do, at least unless you want to go to some extreme measures to reuse them.

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Reduced Sulfur Emissions Could Cause Climate Shock

August 4, 2022 by 53 Comments

When we talk about emissions these days, we typically talk about cutting them back for the good of the environment. However, the climate system is a complex beast, and one we’re still learning to understand.

As it turns out, cutting back on emissions may have unexpected or undesirable effects. Some scientists are concerned that cuts to human-induced sulfur emissions may actually be warming the Earth.

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