11 Christmas cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks
Science Geeks will love these…
Science comes up with a lot of awesome
stuff, and you don’t need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to
get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We’ve got a list of
11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you’re a science geek.
1. Aerogel
Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world’s lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It’s
basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been
taken out and replaced with gas instead. If you hold a small piece in
your hand, it’s practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it’s like styrofoam.
Aerogel
isn’t just neat, it’s useful. It supports up to 4,000 times its own
weight and can apparently withstand a direct blast from two pounds of
dynamite. It’s also the best insulator in existence, which is why we
don’t have Aerogel jackets: it works so well that people were complaining about overheating on Mt. Everest.
Go and Buy2. EcoSphere
Inside these sealed glass balls live
shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater.
Put it somewhere with some light, and this little ecosystem will chug
along happily for years, no feeding or cleaning necessary, totally oblivious to the fact that the rest of the world exists outside.
EcoSpheres came out of research
looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration
space travel. They’re like little microcosms for the entire world, man. But ask yourself: are we the shrimp, or the algae?
3. Mars Rock
NASA
has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from
Mars for a while now. You can beat them to the punch and pick up a
little piece of the red planet without having to travel a hundred
million miles, by just taking advantage of all the rocks Mars sends our
way.
Every once in a while, a meteorite
smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around
the sun. And every once in a while, one of these rocks lands on Earth.
It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, and whoever finds the
meteorite is allowed to cut it up into bits and sell it to people who want to have their very own piece of another planet.
Go and Buy – Click price > $70+
4. Gömböc
Gömböc
The existence of a shape with these
properties was conjectured in 1995, but it took ten years for someone to
figure out how to actually make one that worked. And then everyone was
embarrassed when it turned out that turtles had evolved this same basic shape
in their shells a long time ago, to make it easier for them to roll
themselves back over if they get flipped.The Gömböc is a self-righting
object, which means that no
matter which way you put it down, it stands itself back up. It’s like a
Weeble, except it doesn’t cheat by having a weight at the bottom, and
it’s the only shape that can do this.
Go and Buy – Click price > $150
5. Violet Laser Pointer
It’s no
longer geeky enough to have a red laser pointer, or a green laser
pointer, or even a blue laser pointer. Keep moving up the spectrum until
you get to violet, and you’ll find the new hotness at 405 nanometers.
So what’s next year’s new color going to
be? It’s looking like orange, but they’re not quite what I’d call
affordable yet. Something to look forward to for next year, especially
if you’re going for your own personal laser rainbow. – Update, they are
affordable now!
6. Gallium
Gallium
is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It’s used in semiconductors
and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting point, which is
only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid gallium crystal in
your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly melt into a silvery
metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes back into a solid.
While you probably shouldn’t lick your fingers after playing with it, gallium isn’t toxic and won’t make you crazy like mercury does. And if you get tired of it, you can melt it onto glass and make yourself a mirror.
miracle berry
7. Miracle Berries
By themselves, Miracle berries
don’t taste like much. The reason to eat them is that they contain a
chemical called miraculin that binds to the sweet taste receptors on
your tongue, changing their shape and making them respond to sour and
acidic foods.
The upshot of this effect is that some
things you eat taste spectacularly different. Straight Tabasco sauce
tastes like donut glaze. Guinness tastes like a chocolate malt. Goat
cheese tastes like cheesecake. After about an hour of craziness, your
taste buds go back to normal, no harm done.
DNA Genotyping
8. DNA Genotyping
There’s nothing more personal than
someone’s own DNA. And there are ways to give the gift DNA that won’t
get you children or arrested. With just a little bit of spit, you can
get an genotype analysis that will reveal fun insights about longevity, intelligence, susceptibility to diseases, and even food preferences.
While the technology hasn’t reached the
point where you can affordably get a complete sequence of an entire
genome, looking at specific markers is still good enough to suggest some
things worth looking out for while spurring a lively nature versus
nurture debate.
Go and Buy – Click price > $100
Klein Bottle
9. Klein Bottle
If you want to give a mathematician something to try to wrap their head around, a Klein bottle is a good place to start. A real
Klein bottle is an object with no inside and no outside that can only
exist in four dimensions. These glass models exist in three, which means
that unlike the real thing, they can actually hold liquid.
The difference between the models and the real
thing is that by adding an extra dimension, you can make it so that the
neck of the bottle doesn’t actually intersect the side of the bottle.
Take a couple aspirin and try to picture that in your head.
Go and Buy – Click price > $35
Giant Microbes Toy Plushies
10. Giant Plush Microbes
They’re cute!
They’re fuzzy! They’re potentially deadly! All of the microbes,
bacteria, and viruses that you know and love (or maybe not) are
available in huggable forms about a million times larger than real life.
In the picture are gonorrhea, syphilis, mono, and herpes.
These giant plushes are the perfect way to make the holidays
even more awkward, when you present your friends with a variety of
adorable STDs. Microbiologists, at least, will appreciate that they’re
more or less anatomically correct, too.
Ferrofluid
11. Ferrofluid
Magnetic particles suspended in oil
never looked so sexy. That’s all a ferrofluid is, and it looks pretty
gross until you put it in close proximity to a magnet, at which point it
grows spikes all over the place as the fluid flows out along magnetic
force lines.
Ferrofluids are found in everything from speakers to hard drives, but it’s much more fun to play with when when you’ve got a puddle of it naked and out in the open
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