Finely powdered aluminium can make almost anything more pyrotechnically interesting, from fireworks to machine shop cleanups – even ceramics, as [Degree of Freedom] discovered. He was experimenting with mixing aluminium powder with various other substances to see whether they could make a thermite-like combination, and found that he could shape a paste of aluminium powder […]
Designing a circuit is a lot easier on paper, where components have well-defined values, or lacking that, at least well-defined tolerances. Unfortunately, even keeping percentage tolerances in mind isn’t always enough to make sure that circuits work correctly in the real world, as [Tahmid] demonstrates by diagnosing a buck converter with an oddly strong voltage […]