Hans is a friend of mine, and this is hosted on my VPS. It might be of interest to some that in order to handle the HN Hug Of Death on my little server, I've manually cached this page as HTML on the server and it's served via a rewrite rather than being served by the rather old CMS running an equally old PHP.
Evidlo 15 hours ago [-]
Doesn't a caching reverse proxy do this sort of thing automatically?
geocrasher 15 hours ago [-]
It would, if I had one.
titanomachy 10 hours ago [-]
YAGNI (you ain’t gonna need it)
trod1234 7 hours ago [-]
Hi Geo, Interesting.
Has he done anything more recently with regards to homemade batteries, or was it just a passing interest?
Since this article no longer has comment submissions on the page itself, is it possible to add a little something about the chemistry for bleach and safe handling?.
While the experiments are interesting, I can't help but notice significant deficits in safety that might cause anyone duplicating this (at different scale) to have regretful issues, proper chemical handling isn't really mentioned.
I'm no chemist, but I do have a working knowledge with some of these chemicals related to water chemistry (pools).
Bleach (NaClO) naturally corrodes (oxidizes) metal because of its strong electronegativity from Chlorine. Any metal vessel is going to rupture as a matter of time, potentially creating conditions where hazmat cleanup may be needed, where reactants need to be safely neutralized before byproduct cleanup can occur; this is not intuitive since dilution may not be sufficient; its highly dependent on the chemistry of the formed byproducts.
For example, Sodium by itself (metallic) reacts violently in air which is why its often stored in oil.
Many of the potential byproducts of the experiment are hazardous, or carcinogenic, and there is a possibility that some may recombine at the electrodes. No mention of needed PPE is made.
The voltage differential across two electrodes unless externally driven (electrochemistry) is almost always driven by redox reactions (reduction / oxidation).
The solution may recombine into chlorine gas on the reduction side. There are other reactions that may also occur.
While I don't see too many unaddress-able issues at the small scale, if someone scaled this up as-is to get an appropriate level of voltage/current, I'd be worried for their safety.
Animats 11 hours ago [-]
The classic on this: "A Boy and a Battery", by Yates. (1959 ed).[1]
There's a whole series, "A Boy and a Motor", etc., all the way up to how to build your own model railroad from scrap, if you have the skills of a master machinist. Plus "Atomic Experiments for Boys". Really.
The Internet Archive has many of these.[2] "Shop Practice for Home Mechanics" is still useful, teaching how to do basic metalwork with simple hand tools. They cover lathe work, all the way up to how to make a crankshaft.
All this dates from an era before the availability of unlimited entertainment for timepass.
If you're interested in DIY repairable batteries for e-bikes, check what we're building with engineers and designers from France at https://get.gouach.com :)
littlestymaar 9 hours ago [-]
As much as I like your product, your message feels a bit too close to marketing spam in my book and I'd rather not have the HN comment section becoming full of such posts.
Keep up the good work though!
oulipo 13 minutes ago [-]
We're trying to get the word out around people interested in batteries, that's why I kept it as light as possible, just so that people can learn about it and see if they're interested! :)
JKCalhoun 12 hours ago [-]
Ahhh.... the old Web that I remember.
NotYourLawyer 10 hours ago [-]
Love it. Web pages like this are what the old Internet used to be. A dying breed now though.
Rendered at 08:19:21 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
Has he done anything more recently with regards to homemade batteries, or was it just a passing interest?
Since this article no longer has comment submissions on the page itself, is it possible to add a little something about the chemistry for bleach and safe handling?.
While the experiments are interesting, I can't help but notice significant deficits in safety that might cause anyone duplicating this (at different scale) to have regretful issues, proper chemical handling isn't really mentioned.
I'm no chemist, but I do have a working knowledge with some of these chemicals related to water chemistry (pools).
Bleach (NaClO) naturally corrodes (oxidizes) metal because of its strong electronegativity from Chlorine. Any metal vessel is going to rupture as a matter of time, potentially creating conditions where hazmat cleanup may be needed, where reactants need to be safely neutralized before byproduct cleanup can occur; this is not intuitive since dilution may not be sufficient; its highly dependent on the chemistry of the formed byproducts.
For example, Sodium by itself (metallic) reacts violently in air which is why its often stored in oil.
Many of the potential byproducts of the experiment are hazardous, or carcinogenic, and there is a possibility that some may recombine at the electrodes. No mention of needed PPE is made.
The voltage differential across two electrodes unless externally driven (electrochemistry) is almost always driven by redox reactions (reduction / oxidation).
The solution may recombine into chlorine gas on the reduction side. There are other reactions that may also occur.
While I don't see too many unaddress-able issues at the small scale, if someone scaled this up as-is to get an appropriate level of voltage/current, I'd be worried for their safety.
There's a whole series, "A Boy and a Motor", etc., all the way up to how to build your own model railroad from scrap, if you have the skills of a master machinist. Plus "Atomic Experiments for Boys". Really.
The Internet Archive has many of these.[2] "Shop Practice for Home Mechanics" is still useful, teaching how to do basic metalwork with simple hand tools. They cover lathe work, all the way up to how to make a crankshaft.
All this dates from an era before the availability of unlimited entertainment for timepass.
[1] https://archive.org/details/boyandbattery00yate/
[2] https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Yates%2C+Raymo...
Keep up the good work though!