How about a paint that will make a room secure against Wi-Fi? Basically, the idea would be to keep your Wi-Fi signals (think cell phone or wireless internet) from getting out where anyone could eavesdrop on them.
EM-SEC Technologies, a company in North Carolina, has developed the paint and has successfully tested it. I don’t have info on pricing, but it’s currently available and meets National Security Administration’s (NSA) TEMPEST (Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions) requirements. Since it’s intended for corporate and government security, my bet is that it’s pretty pricey.
However, the article where I originally saw this (afterdawn.com) suggested that it could be used to jam cell phone calls in a movie theater. Just put on fresh coat of paint!
Okay, what’s up with teens nowadays? Hot on the heels of the home spectrograph, I now find that another teen has been able to achieve nuclear fusion at his home. Using spare parts he bought from eBay, from hardware stores, and from just scrounging around he built his aparatus in his basement and actually achieved nuclear fusion. Nothing dangerous or commercially valuable, but quite an achievement.
Ben & Jerry’s
This is just a cool story. Mary Masterman is 17 years old and wins the Intel Science Talent Search for building an inexpensive spectrograph, which is a fairly sophisticated piece of equipment. For beating out 1700 other high school seniors in the 66th annual event, she wins a $100,000 scholarship. The design is pretty cool, and you can read more at