Blow up stuff with your mind :-)

Yes well........ we all need a break.

How To Signal Passing Aircraft For Help.

When trapped on a desert island every chap needs to be able to attract passing aircraft for help, but how do you tell the pilot of said plane exactly whats wrong? Well below is are some standard Emergency Ground Signals. This comes from a 1950s schoolboy handbook, and the request signal for "Send Firearms and Ammunition" was presumably to fight of attacking natives. You make the shapes in the ground, with twigs, clothes, animal bones or just footmarks.

Make A Rocket Out Of A Diet Coke Bottle

With a bottle of Diet Coke and a packet of Mentos you can make a quite spectacular rocket. A far better use for diet coke than drinking the stuff. Please note the rocket can be very powerful so protect your face when it goes off and remember its coke. Don't wear your best clothes.

1. Take one bottle of Diet Coke. The larger the better, we suggest 2 liters. For best results make sure its not chilled.

2. Take one packet of Mentos and remove the paper cover, but leave the foil.

3. Step outside to a big open area.

4. Remove the cap on the bottle and drop the Mentos inside. Replace cap.

5. Shake the bottle.

6. Open the cap just a little till you hear the fizz of air escaping.

7. Throw the bottle well away from you and watch.

8. Here's an example from youtube. Wait for the "Holy Cow".

How To Start A Fire With A Battery.

A fairly simple trick.

1. Take one battery a 9V works particularly well. But you can do it with smaller sizes.

2. Get a small handful of steel wool and bridge both contacts of the battery with the steel wool.

3. At this point sparks should be appearing.

4. Place some tinder (small dried grass or very small twigs) over the top of the wool.

5. Congratulations you've discovered fire!

How To Play Paper Golf

Ah Paper Golf, beloved by school boys everywhere....

Unlike real golf all you will need is a sheet of paper and a pen.

1. On a clean sheet of paper draw the hole. You can include what ever features you can imagine, water, sand traps, trees. Just make sure it includes the starting pin and the hole. The drawing below should give you a good example. N.B. The hole is drawn fairly large.

2. Place the tip of the pin on the starting pin and place your fore finger on the top of the pen.

3. Push down and diagonally flicking the pen in the direction you want the line to go.

4. Where the line stops on the paper draw an X. That's your first shot. The second shot starts from the X.

5. Carry on until you manage to get a line which stops in the hole.

6. If you stop in an obstacle eg water, sand, trees then you miss a shot.

7. Add up the number of shots for your score, then draw the next hole.

8. If your playing with 2 people make sure you use different colour pens.

Make A Lightsaber

This excellent video demonstrates how to make a very fine Star Wars Lightsaber, from fairly standard hardware store parts.

How To Make Ginger Beer.

Ginger Beer saw quite a decline in the 20th Century being replaced by Coke as the soft drink of choice. Now a days its hard to get and when available is often artificial or served with (shudder) ICE. Here's how to make the proper stuff.

1. Pour into a bowl one pint of water, boiled then cooled to 21 degrees C (70F).

2. Add 2 teaspoons of ground ginger, 2 of sugar and 2 of yeast.

3. Stir with wooden spoon and cover.

4. Store in a warm place room. No more 21 degrees C (70F) and no colder than 18 degrees C. (64F)

5. Every day add 1 teaspoon of ginger and 1 of sugar.

6. Continue for 8 days.

7. Then strain the liquid through a fine sieve in to anther bowl. Place the stuff in the sieve back in the first bowl. Cover both bowls.

8. Get hold of an 8 pint container. (Having trouble a new washing up bowl works well).

9. Into this place 2 pints of boiled water and dissolve 690g of sugar (1 1/2 lbs). Add the juice of 2 lemons and the liquid from the second bowl.

10. Cool liquid to 21 degrees C. Add 5 pints of water mix and bottle. In clean glass bottles with air tight seals. (Ie Screw Tops.) Leave for 8 days.

11. Drink. Enjoy. Don't add ICE.

12. You now have also have a Ginger Beer Plant, with which you can brew more.

Ginger Beer Plant.
1. Add 1 pint of boiled water cooled to 21 degrees C, over the first bowl with the stuff from the sieve. And repeat from step 4.

2. After 16 days halve the plant, add 1 pint of water 21 degrees C into 1st bowl and repeat step 4. The other half can be given away or reused.