This Drone Can Fly, Swim, and Explode….. Wait, What?

You’ve probably heard of micro-drones, perhaps even nano-drones, but there research institutions that shrink these machines down to the size of insects. Leading from the [Wiss Institute For Biologically Inspired Engineering] at Harvard University, a team of researchers have developed a miniscule robot that — after a quick dip — literally explodes out of the water.

To assist with the take off, RoboBee has four buoyant outriggers to keep it near the water’s surface as it uses electrolysis to brew oxyhydrogen in its gas chamber. Once enough of the combustible gas has accumulated — pushing the robot’s wings out of …read more

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How to Speed Up Firefox With Multi-Process, If It’s Not Working By Default

After years of waiting, Mozilla last week launched Firefox 54 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android, with multi-process support — a “major improvement” to improve your browsing experience — but many users are still struggling to take advantage of this feature.

Mozilla’s multi-process support in Firefox has been in development for over eight years as part of a project, codenamed Electrolysis or

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Grow Your Own Tin Crystals

[The Plutonium Bunny] saw homegrown tin crystals on YouTube and reckoned he could do better—those crystals were flimsy and couldn’t stand up outside of the solution in which they were grown. Having previously tackled copper crystals, he applied the same procedure to tin.

Beginning with a 140 ml baby food jar filled with a solution of tin II chloride, 90 grams per liter, with a small amount of HCl as the electrolyte. A wire at the bottom of the jar was connected to a blob of tin and served as the anode, while the cathode, a loop of tin, stuck …read more

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Fail of the Week: Cutting Steel with Baking Soda

[NightHawkInLight] wants what may be the impossible – a dirt cheap replacement for a laser cutter or a water jet. He’s got this crazy idea about using electrolysis to etch sheet steel parts, but he just can’t get the process to work. Sounds like a job for the Hackaday community.

In theory, electrolytic cutting of metal  is pretty simple to understand. Anyone who lives in the northeast of the USA knows all about how road salt can cut holes in steel given enough time – say, one winter into payments on that new car. Adding a few electrons to the …read more

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