HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

You might like - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKhUizkXxA ( DIY mass spectrometer measures potassium in dietary salt substitute ) by Ben Krasnow

⬐ nbernard

As well as Chromatogiraffery's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ8l6SdZuRuoSdze1dIpzAQ

Ben Krasnow took some steps in that direction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKhUizkXxA

As with his Raman setup, there were some good questions raised in the comments about whether he really saw the effect in question or just got lucky with plausible-appearing artifacts. It's hard to assess validity from the presented results alone, which is unfortunately common in Ben's videos. In the Raman video, he didn't test anything but a single styrofoam cup, and in the mass-spec video he didn't do the obvious baseline run with a clean filament.

Ben's channel is one of those rare ones where the comments are worth reading. You can really see how easy it is for a scientist to inadvertently fool themselves and others. I often end up yelling at the screen, but it's still my favorite YouTube channel of all time.

⬐ alpineidyll3

I'm a huge fan of Ben's. In all honesty Zbignew was definitely more talented at munging together homebrew instruments. But who could compete with that old timey eastern bloc science curriculum ;).

I think Ben's misused over there at google. He should be designing the national high school science lab curriculum.

You'd be interested in Ben Krasnow's DiY attempt. It's still understandable but he tries to explain why it's built the way it is and give you a good basis of the theory of operation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKhUizkXxA

⬐ dmix

That's awesome, it does a good job of explaining it in layman terms which I needed, thank you.

⬐ gus_massa

This is in the "Applied Science" channel. The idea of what is a DIY project of this guy is very high. The videos are very interesting, but expect a lot of work to reproduce it.

Also, it's interesting to notice that the project is somewhat based in an old Scientific American article. In the old times, the articles in that publication were much more technical than the current ones.

⬐ brudgers

To me, this doesn't seem more technically involved than many DIY software projects that wind up on the HN front page. The big difference I see is meat operations require workspaces. A laptop isn't enough. Control of suitable real-estate is probably the highest barrier other than ordinary commitment. A shop makes making things easier or a lab for doing science.

⬐ gus_massa

This is not one of the more technical crazy projects in the channel [1], but he use two vacuum pump (it's necessary because one work at normal pressure and the other work near vacuum) and he has another one that he is not using. Also soldering the OpAmp is not very difficult, but at this amplification level my nasty cold welding will probably cause problems.

[1] Have you seen the one about aerogels? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X24np30GS2o

⬐ brudgers

Thanks. The aerogel video was awesome. I have a friend who freelances organic cosmetics benchwork on the dining room table. Chemistry PhD. Stainless pots, white powders, and picks up the kids from practice. Doing something all the time normalizes it.