Did you ever wonder how the mechanical voltage regulator — that big black box wired up to the generator on a car from the ’60s or before — worked? [Jonelsonster] has some answers. For most people in 2026 an old car perhaps means one from the 20th century, now that vehicles from the 1990s and […]
Cooking with charcoal is a fairly common human activity, as much as others have come to prefer fuels like propane and propane accessories for their outdoor, summertime grilling. Although it’s made from wood, it has properties that make it much more useful for cooking — including burning at a higher temperature and with more consistent […]
Most end tables that you might find in a home are relatively static objects. However, [Peter Waldraff] of Tiny World Studios likes to build furniture that’s a little more interesting. Thus came about this beautiful piece with a real working railway built right in. The end table was built from scratch, with [Peter] going through […]
Although it can be hard to imagine in today’s semiconductor-powered, digital world, there was electrical technology around before the widespread adoption of the transistor in the latter half of the 1900s that could do more than provide lighting. People figured out clever ways to send information around analog systems, whether that was a telegraph or […]
[Jamie] decided to build a generator, and Lego is his medium of choice. Thus was created a fancy levitating generator that turns a stream of air into electricity. The basic concept is simple enough for a generator—magnets moving past coils to generate electricity. Of course, Lego doesn’t offer high-strength magnetic components or copper coils, so […]
Vehicle alternators are interesting beasts. Produced on a massive scale, these electric machines are available for a minimum of cost and contain all kinds of great parts: some power electronics and a belt-driven generator are generally standard fare. This generator can also be used as a motor with only minor changes to the machine as […]
Siphons are one of those physics phenomena that, like gyroscopes, non-Newtonian fluids, and electricity, seem almost magical. Thanks to atmospheric pressure, simply filling a tube with liquid and placing the end of the tube below the liquid level of a container allows it to flow against gravity, over a barrier, and down into another container […]
For economic reasons, not every lake with a dam can support a hydroelectric power plant. Some rivers or creeks are dammed for flood control or simply for recreation, and don’t have the flow rate or aren’t deep enough to make the investment of a grid-scale generation facility worthwhile. But for those of us with a […]
Steam turbines have helped drive a large chunk of our technological development over the last century or so, and they’ll always make for interesting DIY. [Hyperspace Pirate] built a small turbine and boiler in his garage, turning fire into flowing electrons, and learning a bunch in the process. [Hyperspace Pirate] based the turbine design on […]