Dr. Amanda Foster

If your weather station barometer consistently reads high or low, the most likely culprit is elevation. Atmospheric pressure drops about 1 hPa for every 8 to 10 meters you climb above sea level, which means an uncalibrated barometer at 500 meters can be off by 50 hPa or more. Learning how to calibrate a weather … Read more

Every year, thousands of home chemistry accidents send people to emergency rooms, and most of them are preventable. The products sitting under your kitchen sink, in the garage, or on a laundry room shelf, things like bleach, ammonia, drain cleaners, and pool chemicals, can cause serious harm when they are mixed, stored, or used incorrectly. … Read more

When my daughter was four, she pointed at a bottle of bleach under the kitchen sink and asked, “Why does that bottle have a funny picture on it?” That question sent me down a rabbit hole of research, and now I want to share what I learned with you. Knowing how to read a chemical … Read more

I still remember the first time I mixed acetone and nitric acid in my garage with the door cracked open. The fumes hit the back of my throat before I even finished pouring. That was the day I stopped treating ventilation as optional and started treating it as the most important piece of equipment in … Read more

Every year, more than 300,000 children in the United States receive burn-related medical treatment, and a significant share of those injuries happen at home during everyday activities, including science experiments. I have spent the last decade running STEM workshops for families, and I have seen firsthand how a little preparation turns a kitchen-table volcano from … Read more

If you have ever mixed reagents in a kitchen lab and then stared at a coffee-stained scrap of paper six months later wondering what you actually did, this guide is for you. I kept my first home chemistry lab notebook in a cheap spiral-bound subject notebook, wrote in pencil, and lost two years of results … Read more

When I first started cleaning my own apartment, I figured mixing products would make them work better. A little bleach, a little ammonia, why not? That casual thinking is exactly why so many people end up in emergency rooms every year. Understanding why some kitchen chemicals should never be mixed isn’t about being alarmist. It’s … Read more

If you have ever mixed two reactants, watched something bubble or change color, and wondered why it happened, you are already thinking like a chemist. The fastest way to turn that curiosity into real knowledge is learning how to build a chemistry experiment around a single variable. This guide walks you through the definition, the … Read more

Setting up a home weather station for accurate readings is one of the most rewarding projects you can take on this year. I installed my first station in 2019 and spent three months figuring out why my temperature readings were off by 7 degrees. Spoiler: it was the asphalt driveway 15 feet away. This guide … Read more

Choosing where to mount a home weather station sensor is the single biggest factor in getting accurate readings. I have moved my own station three times over six years, and each move taught me that a $300 instrument mounted in a bad spot will outperform a $30 instrument mounted correctly, but barely. This guide walks … Read more