Golden Animal Magnets

Who doesn't love a gilded elephant butt?

Buy plastic animals from dollar store, cut in half, spray paint gold, and glue magnet on bottom.

This is one that looks like it might actually work, but I haven't seen anyone who has done it.  The picture for this pin is from Uncovet, where this set is no longer available for sale.  So we're featuring this pin purely for the "you used a picture that is not what you said it was" reason.  I'm sure the original poster was just making a personal note, but when these things get seen and repinned a hundred times by others who don't read very thoroughly (or notice where the pin actually leads to), it can snowball into an avalanche of disappointed pinners.

The good news is, here's why I think this pin can work (though not with the gold spray paint that the pin recommends):  Heodeza did something similar with plastic animals and a gold metallic pen.  Her results really look nice and I think you could make a reasonable attempt at recreating Uncovet's magnet set if you followed her lead. Go take a look at what she was able to do; I was impressed.

One thing to think about if you attempt this pin is that these magnets sit flat against the surface they are on - to replicate Uncovet's magnetic animals, you will have to figure out a way to set your magnet into the back of your half-animal (and if your animals are hollow, that presents its own set of challenges with building it back up to seat the magnet properly).

Alexandria's Genesis

Elizabeth Taylor didn't have to shave? (Warning: Bad Language at Link)

No shaving, no periods, purple eyes?! Are you kidding me? This sounds like the best deal ever!

This is one of those pins that you come across and think, "...Really?"  I mean, who would fall for that?  

Lots of folks, apparently, who would probably be very disappointed to find out that it's a false mutation.  

The best part about this pin, is that unlike other pins where it's very hard to track down who first made the mistake (or who first made up the deception), there is an entire web page devoted to explaining the origin of Alexandria's Genesis.  It's a really good read, and I recommend that if you thought even for a moment that Alexandria's Genesis was a real thing, you go peruse it.  Here's a sample:

"Nearly 15 years ago (circa 1998), I was a huge fan of Daria, MTV’s favourite high school cynic. I had also discovered fan fiction then, and when I found some related to my favourite show, I wanted to leave my mark.

I just didn’t know my mark would be the size of a logic-bomb crater."

So there you have it; Alexandria's Genesis is just the fantasy of a fanfiction writer that took on a life of its own through the wishful thinking of others.

Water Marbles

Ingredients you already have in the kitchen!

Water marbles! Crazy how a few kitchen ingredients will make these. Weird, I can't wait to try. Science party?

Probably just regular glass marbles in this picture!

How to make "Water Marbles" from household ingredients - COOL science experiment!

Crazy how something that seems to be too good to be true usually is!

Water marbles! Crazy how a few kitchen ingredients will make these.

So.  Water marbles.  This is an extremely popular pin in many different incarnations.  And it's easy to see why - the photos are beautiful and the idea that you can make these yourself is intoxicating.  And unlike a lot of other pins that rely on people's optimism to fool them into belief, this pin has a YouTube video to back it up!

The hard truth is, this isn't real.  Someone went to a lot of time and effort to create a video (much like the glowing Mountain Dew hoax) to mislead people into believing you could cook up water marbles in your kitchen.

The water marbles you see in this video are really hydrogel beads - they start out as tiny bb-sized, hard pieces of superabsorbent polymer, and when you soak them in water, they absorb it and swell up to a squishy water ball.  You can even color them by adding colors to the water when you soak the beads.

I think the best part about this fake pin is that some of the pins go straight to ChemSpider's site, where Antony Williams handily debunks the whole thing.  People!  Pin responsibly!  Click through the pins you're adding to your boards to make sure they're legitimate.  You'll save yourself and countless others the heartbreak of attempting a really cool kitchen experiment like water beads, which was doomed to failure before it began.

Glow in the Dark NOT Paint: The Glowing Drink

Oh My God, It's Full of Stars!

crazy! it's a glow-in-the-dark aurora borealis cocktail you can actually make!

The more I look around, the more I notice that Pinners adore "glow in the dark" pins.  Glow in the dark paint, glow in the dark fingernail polish, glow in the dark garden stones, glow in the dark planters, glow in the dark bubbles, glow in the dark glitter jars, glow in the dark Mountain Dew. . . You could probably create a pinterest clone site devoted solely to glow in the dark pictures and crafts and it would win the internet.  Especially if it involved glow in the dark cats.

The thing is, most of the glow in the dark pins aren't actually pictures of things that glow in the dark.  The picture above is clearly photoshopped, but that doesn't stop people from hopefully pinning it.  The drink in question, the Aurora Borealis (or Jungle Juice), really does fluoresce under a black light.  In regular light it looks pink, and when the black light comes on it glows blue.

Cocktail Recipes and Mixed Drinks

This may be a good time to get into the way certain kinds of luminescence work.  Luminescence is what it's called when something gives off light.  The type of luminescence that Pinners seem to love the most is photoluminescence, which means that matter absorbs energy and then emits light either immediately or as a delayed process.  

When you have a delayed release, you have something that glows in the dark.  Glow in the dark paint and other items slowly let go of the radiation they have absorbed (I'm talking about light here, not nuclear fission), and that energy is seen as visible light.  When the energy is gone, the object stops glowing.  This type of luminescence is called "phosphorescence."

When the glow happens immediately, as soon as you apply the energy (and it disappears pretty much as soon as the energy source is shut off), you have fluorescence.  This is what is happening with the Aurora Borealis drink.  The black light hits the drink and the drink absorbs and then re-emits that radiation.  

So this pin really has a couple of deceptions going on.  First, that any drink you could mix up could look like that picture, and second, classifying a fluorescent drink as "glow in the dark."  Once the black light is off, that drink stops "glowing."  

I just mention this so that people who were not fooled by the photoshop job but who may have fallen for the "glow in the dark" part will know - you can mix up this drink and expose it to bright light all day, and once those lights go out so will the drink.  It needs a black light to work.

Glow in the Dark Paint: Part 1 - Path of Glowing Stones

There are a LOT of pins about adding glow in the dark paint to outside features.  Today's post addresses the infamous Glow in the Dark Path.

Glow in the dark path?

Line a pathway with rocks painted in glow in the dark paint. During the day they “charge” in the sun and in the evening they reflect the stored light. Rust-Oleum Glow in the Dark Brush-on Paint.

or

glow stones…..glows at night after soaking up the sun all day omg

It's hard to know where to start with this one.  So many people have pinned it, seeming to believe that these really are stones that have been painted with glow in the dark paint or that maybe these are special glowing stones that are available for purchase.  But you just need to look at this picture to recognize that this effect is not attributable to glow in the dark paint, nor are the rocks glowing from within.  

Look at how the light is focused on each stone.  It's brightest in the center and fades out toward the edges, which if the rocks were glowing from within would make sense.  But then there are the pebbles around each stone, which are showing some spillover illumination.  If that's from the stones, why isn't it consistent around each stone?  And why are those pebbles sometimes brighter than the edges of the stones that they are bordering?

Then, check out the gate and urns at the end of the path.  If these stones are glowing, why is that same "glow" coming off of the gate?  Surely no one believes that the glowing stones are powerful enough to light up that gate.  

And even without that sort of analysis, the color is a dead giveaway.  Glow in the dark paint does not give off this color.  Over at Observations, they did a comparison between the glow in the dark paint from Krylon and Rust-Oleum.  They even delved into the ingredients that cause the glow in the dark effect (Strontium Aluminate and Zinc Sulfide).  Both of those paints (which each use Zinc Sulfide) glow green as they release the energy stored from being exposed to light.  But whether you are using Strontium Aluminate or Zinc Sulfide, it looks like you cannot achieve the warmth in the pinned picture through glow in the dark paints.

It's probably worth mentioning that even if you did want to paint your stones so that they would glow a spooky green for about two hours after sundown, for at least the Rust-Oleum paint, the directions say it's for interior use only.

So how was the picture in the pin achieved?  It's a technique the photographer used called "Painting With Light."  He walked along the path and used a handheld light to "paint" each of the stones, then the fence, then the urns and gate, and finally walked back to the camera to close the shutter.  Because of the way the settings were done, he never appears in the picture - he was moving too quickly to be captured.

The good news for people who do want a glowing pathway is that there are companies that sell glowing stones.  And interestingly enough, one of the pins that has a picture of that glowing path above has the URL to Ambient Glow Technology.  If you go to their Gallery page you can see a set of stepping stones that really do glow in the dark, and per the claim on that page, they will last all night.  Or there is GLOW Stones USA, which has a lovely picture of a driveway incorporating their glow in the dark stones.

Moon Melon

Magical Taste-Altering Melon

Moonmelon (scientifically knows as asidus). This fruit grows in some parts of Japan and is known for its vibrant blue colour. This fruit's party trick is that it can switch flavours after you eat it. Everything sour will taste sweet, everything salty will taste bitter, and it gives water a strong orange-like taste!

This magical Moon Melon does not exist.  Many other websites have decried the photo as being photoshopped:

• The Obvious Winner

• Museum of Hoaxes

• Lili Ribeira

• Know Your Meme

It's too bad - a beautiful blue watermelon with the ability to fool your taste buds would be pretty cool.

Lace Tape

Genius or not?  You decide!

GENIUS: Take lace and put it on transparent tape. Great gift wrap idea or decoration for presents. #Gift_Wrap #Ribbon #Lace_Ribbon_Tape

This post inspired me to add my first label to this blog.  There are way too many pins out there that say "GENIUS" which are, let's say, less brilliant than that.

This pin heavily implies that you can achieve results like the picture by laying lace on tape and then using that tape for gift wrapping or other decoration.  While that could work, it's unlikely that using lace that is nearly the width of your tape and which is also that dense would result in tape that was sticky enough to work.  And if you look closely at this picture, you can tell that the lace is printed on the tape; lace has not actually been affixed to the tape.

Maybe if you glued the lace to the non-sticky part of the tape it might work, but then if you rolled it back up (like this picture) you'd end up getting the lace stuck to the rest of your tape and it'd probably end up getting linty.

If you really want lace tape, it's probably best to go ahead and buy it from the Etsy seller who posted this picture in the first place (or numerous other sources).