Eventually any pristine box of crayons ends up as a pile of busted stubs at the bottom of a craft bin. In the U.S., between 45,000 and 75,000 pounds of crayons end up in landfills every year and traditional paraffin-based crayons are not biodegradable. Instead of trashing broken crayons, give them a new, colorful life by creating rainbow crayons.

This simple DIY project can also be a fun lesson for kids on the states of matter. The crayons start as a solid, melt into a liquid at temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and return to a solid when removed from heat.

[Related: How to Frankenstein old wax scraps into a totally new candle]

The best part about creating recycled crayons is that you’re not limited to boring old pencil-like shapes. With silicone molds, you can create crayons in the shape of Darth Vader, a Lego minifig, flowers, sea stars, or even Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

What you’ll need to make recycled rainbow crayons

Ingredients

• 2-3 cups broken crayons with paper removed
  Note: You can use new crayons, but where’s the fun in that?

Tools

• Silicone molds. We suggest Star Wars, Lego, flowers, or Emoji.
• Oven
• Baking sheet or wire rack
• Oven mitts
• Optional: Water, bowl, scissors

Activity Time

• 30-60 minutes, depending on your method for peeling the paper off the crayons.

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 250-degrees.
2. Peel paper off crayons.
   Note: To speed up the process, soak crayons in tub of water first. To slow down the process (and keep little hands occupied), don’t soak.
3. Break or cut crayons into 1/4 to 1/2-inch pieces.
4. Arrange crayon chunks in silicone molds. You’ll want to slightly overfill the molds.
5. Place molds on baking sheet or wire rack.
6. Bake crayon chunks for 8-10 minutes, or until all crayon chunks are melted.
7. Remove molds from oven and allow to cool (approximately 25 minutes at room temperature or 10 minutes in the freezer).
8. When fully cooled, carefully remove the crayons from the molds.

That’s it! Now grab a coloring book or sheet of paper and color away.

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5. Use a small paint brush to paint your eggs with the baking soda and food coloring paste.
   Note: You can also use your hands to dip the eggs, but may want to wear gloves to avoid colorful finger tips.
6. After completing your painting masterpiece, place eggs in a bowl to let the color set for 5 minutes.
7. While the color is setting, wash and dry muffin tin (or use additional tin). Then, scoop 1 tablespoon of baking soda in each cup.
8. Place one painted egg on top of baking soda in each cup.
   Note: For even brighter colors, add a few more drops of food coloring directly onto eggs in the cups.

9. Now it’s volcano egg time! Add a hefty splash of vinegar to each cup. Allow the bubbles to fizz out before moving onto the next cup.
   Note: If you don’t want the egg colors mixing, use less vinegar. If you, like us, enjoy chaos, use more vinegar and let all the colors run into each other.

10. After “exploding” (as my child called it) all your eggs, place eggs back in carton or on wired rack to dry. Use tongs or a spoon to move eggs, if you’re trying to keep fingers dye-free.
    Note: We didn’t use gloves and it took 3-5 hand washes to remove the dye from our fingers.

And that’s it! Sit back and admire your beautiful color-explosion volcano eggs while biting the head off a chocolate bunny.

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The vibe of Aescape’s massage rooms is familiar: soft lighting, inviting earth tones, a fresh smell, and stylish chairs with fluffy pillows that you only use to daintily pile your clothes on top of. Like a typical spa, the room also has a massage table, but instead of the classic flat surface covered in a white sheet, it’s a large, pill-shaped device. And then there’s the pair of large robotic arms.

Aescape is a New York City-based company that has created an “AI-enhanced” massage table. As a person who is highly skeptical of robots but loves massages, I volunteered to find out if a robot massage can live up to the incredibly satisfying experience of a massage by a human.

Aescape calls itself “The World’s Most Advanced Massage” but will it alleviate the stubborn back knots of a middle-aged mom who walks everywhere but refuses to stretch or properly hydrate and spends all day hunched over a laptop? On a Monday afternoon in February, me and my aches and pains visited Aescape’s offices and test labs for an appointment with the massage table to find out.

Now at this point you may be wondering but scared to ask: Are you naked for the massage? The answer is no. Instead of stripping down and awkwardly positioning yourself under a sheet, Aescape provides “Aerwar apparel” for rent or purchase. The tight-fitting dark gray pants and matching shirt feel like a combination of yoga gear and a wetsuit. After squeezing into the stretchy ‘fit and pulling my hair back, I took a moment to appreciate how I looked like a humanoid sea lion.

Now it was massage time. Aescape CEO Eric Litman helped walk me through the setup process, but the machines are designed to be self-service. Litman has spent seven years developing Aescape with $80 million in funding. He says that the idea for a fully automated, AI-driven massage table “was born out of a personal pain point” of being unable to have focused, regular treatment for a chronic pain. 

The entire massage happens while you lay on your stomach. Your face pokes through a hole that’s conveniently large enough to accommodate eye glasses. I would normally remove my glasses for a massage, but the Aescape table includes a tablet about the size of a laptop screen under the face hole that helps you control all aspects of your massage. Without my glasses, I might end up picking a weak calf massage and bad nature sounds music–nightmare scenario. I worried about my face feeling squished or ending up with the dreaded bagel-shaped indent across my forehead, cheeks, and chin but the wide space for my upper face made me forget I was even wearing my glasses. 

Before the robot hands get to work detangling my mess of muscles, I use the touchscreen to select a massage type (I go with a 30-minute “Total Back & Glutes Relief”), musical preference (a chill surf music), and pressure (as strong as humanly, errr robotly, possible). The table scans my body for 1.1 million 3D data points to map out my treatment. Aescape also says that the table learns more about your body and preferences with each massage. “We use AI to personalize your massage-going experience. Our data, trained by [massage] therapists, learns from your feedback over time, adjusting treatments to your preferences,” Litman tells PopSci. 

One issue I’ve encountered while trying robotic back massagers or massage chairs is a one-size-fits-all approach and ending up with rotating massage balls bruising my spine instead of providing any actual relief. By scanning each body, Aescape aims to remedy the fact that bodies come in many different shapes and sizes. The scan takes less than a minute and it’s time for the robot arms to start digging in. 

The massage started with a five-minute full body acclimation that allowed me to adjust to the feeling of warm robot nubs (yes, they’re heated) pushing on my muscles. I worried the robot “hands” would feel like a frisky WALL-E, but the shape felt more like a large, firm human palm. And again, it was warm–like the underside of an overworked laptop. The touchscreen under my face laid out exactly what to expect for the next 30 minutes and showed where I was at in the massage and what was coming next. I found this incredibly comforting as a person who spends half her massages trying to figure out the time instead of relaxing. The screen also shows a live view of exactly what muscles are being worked on, avoiding the surprise of “oh, I guess we’re doing legs now?”

Throughout the 30-minute massage, I played with the pressure settings–softer on the legs, harder on the back–and found the minute-by-minute customizations helpful for getting exactly what I wanted. You also have the option to “move on” or “focus” on different body parts as the massage progresses. This is a huge win for people like me who are shy about asking a human masseuse to switch it up for fear of an awkward interaction. 

I thought the screen in my face might distract from the relaxation element of a typical massage but I found it easy to close my eyes and let the robot do its thing. 

OK, but how did it feel? Honestly, great. My expectation was that it would be pleasant, probably not tear off a limb (again, fear of robots), and feel moderately nice. But within the first pass of the robot arms on my extremely tight traps (the vaguely trapezoid-shaped muscles that sit between the shoulders and the neck), I felt pleasantly surprised. On the subway ride home, my body felt more relaxed and the next day I still felt a looseness in my back despite returning to child-lugging and computer-typing duties. 

I wouldn’t say the Aescape massage table is a one-to-one replacement for a traditional massage because it’s currently limited to a face-down position and doesn’t get all the tiny muscles, but it’s a solid supplement to regular body care. The massage tables can be booked via an app and plan to be integrated into hotels, spas, corporate offices, and fitness centers throughout 2024. The convenience and customization are major plus sides for anyone looking for quick relief. 

The Aescape massage table is launching in New York City at 10 Equinox locations this spring with 30-minute massages starting at $60.

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Siri. Alexa. Google Assistant. Butler in a Box? Hold up. While you might not recognize Butler in a Box by its name, you will recognize its function: a voice-activated virtual assistant. Or so it claimed to be. 

Billed as the “World’s first artificial intelligent environmental control system for the home,” the Mastervoice Butler in a Box was first introduced in 1983. In the March 1987 issue of Popular Science, writer Jim Schefter tested the device with its big futuristic promises and hours-long setup time. The gadget claimed to be able to call 16 different people, provide home security, understand four different languages, and turn on electronics using voice commands–all for a steep price tag of $1,495 (or about $4,100 in today’s money). 

By 2024, Butler in a Box wasn’t even a footnote on the Wikipedia pages of its modern successors. But why? Why did we wipe the Butler in a Box from our memories? 

Popular Science’s Kevin Lieber set out to unravel the lofty aspirations and complex history of the gadget. The first step: Acquire a Butler in a Box on eBay. That part was surprisingly easy. Trying to actually use it proved a bit more…challenging. 

Watch Kevin try to make sense of the 134-page owner’s guide with a goal of getting the Butler in a Box to do a seemingly simple task: turn on a lamp using a voice command. We won’t spoil the ending, but the journey is worth it.

This is just the first episode of the technology show on Popular Science’s newly relaunched YouTube channel. If you want deeper dissections into the forgotten past and the unknowable future of technology, then definitely subscribe.

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Psst, hey, big news here at Popular Science: We’re back on YouTube. Wait, let me say it louder: POPULAR SCIENCE IS BACK ON YOUTUBE. Whew, that felt good.

As you may have gleaned from my only mildly irritating use of all caps, I’m thrilled to not only announce the relaunch of Popular Science on YouTube, but also introduce the team leading the channel. 

Reader, say hello to Kevin Lieber and Matt Tabor. If you’ve spent any time on YouTube in the past decade or so, you’re probably already familiar with their work. Kevin and Matt are the team behind the esteemed Vsauce2 channel, which has accumulated 4.5 million subscribers and nearly 800 million views since launching in 2010. Now they’ve joined the staff at Popular Science, and we’re super excited to have them on the team! Let me tell you why. 

Kevin and Matt love Popular Science as much as you do. One of the most incredible things about leading Popular Science is the reaction I get when people ask what I do for a living. When I say “I’m the editor-in-chief of Popular Science,” the glazed over look we all get when making small talk disappears and is replaced with a sudden twinkle, a spark of oh cool. And then, I’ll hear something like “Wow, I love Popular Science” or “I LOVED Popular Science as a kid,” followed by them telling me about their favorite story from the past 150 years. Kevin and Matt share that giddy enthusiasm and will be bringing you videos that capture the spirit of why we’ve maintained a loyal audience for more than a century. 

I asked Kevin to share why he wanted to join us: “Popular Science has analyzed and entertained since before the telephone was patented. Eight generations have relied on this publication to understand what’s happening in the world and what’s about to happen in the world. My family subscribed to the magazine when I was a kid, and now I’m merging that incredible legacy with my experience on YouTube.”

We’ll soon be rolling out four new series types: 

• Technology: A show analyzing the promise of past technology (both failed and realized) and its implications on the future.
• Documentaries: A series of deep-dives in science topics that utilizes every discipline within the sciences, social sciences, and humanities
• Visualizations: A series of dynamic computer animated visual-scale comparison videos that contextualize important concepts in science
• And finally, Stories: A storytelling series that unravels the incredible unknown context surrounding the most compelling tales in science history

In many of our videos, we’ll be digging through our extensive archives for inspiration, unearthing the stories that make us say “wow,” “coooool,” or “HUH?” and giving them a modern spin. For example: In the March 1987 issue of Popular Science, writer Jim Schefter covered the Butler in a Box, an early precursor to Siri and Alexa. The inventor, Gus Searcy, was a professional magician who owned a 7-Eleven at age 21, had a world champion frisbee-catching dog, invented a cannon to feed fish from a submarine, and, somehow the least surprising tidbit, wrote a motivational book. A wow, coooool, HUH story all in one. Plus Kevin bought a Butler in a Box on eBay and it was a whole thing. You know what? Just watch the video. 

The nod to our history can also be found in the new logo for our YouTube channel. Much like what you’ll find in the upcoming videos, the design is a nod to our past (think way back to the 1920s-era covers) with a strong present-day influence. 

If all of this sounds interesting to you (and duh, it should), subscribe on YouTube. And remember that you can find fascinating Popular Science written stories on PopSci.com and in our newsletters. And you should definitely still tune in to our delightfully weird podcasts on YouTube (or wherever you get your podcasts) at their new home. See you in the future. 

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In the December 1972 issue of Popular Science, writer Alden P. Armagnac described Apollo 17 as “the most exciting geological field trip in history.” The lunar landing concluded NASA’s groundbreaking Apollo program and ended up being the last time the United States landed on the moon in the 20th century.

This week, after 51 years, the US returned to moon on Odysseus, an uncrewed lander that became the first privately-built spacecraft to survive a moon landing. Odysseus (or “Odie”) was built by Texas-based Intuitive Machines and carried a payload that included NASA navigation and tech experiments. NASA plans to use the instruments to collect vital data ahead of planned crewed missions later this decade.

To mark the American return to the moon, we wanted to take a look back at Apollo 17 through images. Commander Gene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on December 7, 1972. The 12-day mission included several notable feats: the first astronaut-scientist on the moon (Schmitt), the first poem read from the surface of the moon, and circling the moon 75 times.

As Armagnac wrote: “When some future lunar settler writes the history of man on the moon, its most dramatic chapter is bound to be the Apollo adventures of 1969-1972.” We’ll have to wait and see what dramatics 21st century moon exploration brings.

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Dive into the curiosities of our vast oceans, captured in stunning detail by photographers.

Alex Dawson of Sweden swam away with the top honor at the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year competition for an eerie image titled “Whale Bones.” Photographers from around the world submitted 6,500 underwater photographs, but it was Dawson’s captivating image that won over the judges.

“Whale Bones was photographed in the toughest conditions,” noted Alex Mustard, chair of judging panel. “As a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to the carcasses. The composition invites us to consider our impact on the great creatures of this planet.”

Other notable images from this year’s contest include a shark showing off its toothy grin, a spectacular lionfish out for a swim, and a whale opening its mouth wide for a sardine snack.

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An unexpected and astonishing find located more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth took top honors at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards this week. Amateur astronomers Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, and Yann Sainty captured an image of a massive plasma arc near the Andromeda Galaxy, a discovery that has resulted in scientists looking closer into the giant gas cloud.

“This astrophoto is as spectacular as [it is] valuable,” judge and astrophotographer László Francsics said in a press release. “It not only presents Andromeda in a new way, but also raises the quality of astrophotography to a higher level.”

[Related: How to get a great nightsky shot]

While “Andromeda, Unexpected” captured the prestigious overall winner title, other category winners also dazzled with photos of dancing auroras, neon sprites raining down from the night’s sky, and stunning far-off nebulas that might make you feel like a tiny earthling floating through space.

Sit back and scroll in awe at all the category winners, runners-up, and highly commended images from the 2023 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year honorees.

Galaxy

Overall winner: Andromeda, Unexpected

Runner-Up: The Eyes Galaxies

Highly Commended: Neighbors

Aurora

Winner: Brushstroke

Runner-up: Circle of Light

Highly Commended: Fire on the Horizon

Our Moon

Winner: Mars-Set

Runner-Up: Sundown on the Terminator

Highly Commended: Last Full Moon of the Year Featuring a Colourful Corona During a Close Encounter with Mars

Our Sun

Winner: A Sun Question

Runner-Up: Dark Star

Highly Commended: The Great Solar Flare 

People & Space

Winner: Zeila

Runner-Up: A Visit to Tycho

Highly Commended: Close Encounters of The Haslingden Kind

Planets, Comets & Asteroids

Winner: Suspended in a Sunbeam

Runner-Up: Jupiter Close to Opposition

Highly Commended: Uranus with Umbriel, Ariel, Miranda, Oberon and Titania

Skyscapes

Winner: Grand Cosmic Fireworks

Runner-Up: Celestial Equator Above First World War Trench Memorial

Highly Commended: Noctilucent Night

Stars & Nebulae

Winner: New Class of Galactic Nebulae Around the Star YY Hya

Runner-Up: LDN 1448 et al.

Highly Commended: The Dark Wolf – Fenrir

The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer

Winner: Sh2-132: Blinded by the Light

Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Winner: The Running Chicken Nebula

Runner-Up: Blue Spirit Drifting in the Clouds

Highly Commended: Lunar Occultation of Mars

Highly Commended: Roses Blooming in the Dark: NGC 2337

Highly Commended: Moon at Nightfall

Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation

Winner: Black Echo

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THIS IS THE REAL ANNIE COLBERT writing to you, not an AI trained on thousands of random tweets, hours of Zoom calls, and a deep dive into half-finished Google Doc drafts. I did, however, ask PopSci’s design director to give my headshot a little sizzle with help from Photoshop’s generative AI fill feature. The results were…well, see for yourself:

My adventures with two-headed cats and off-brand Muppets will thankfully not be the issue’s only dip into AI. We dedicated all seven Ask Us Anything stories (like this one about how safe it is to get health advice from an AI) in our fall “Fake” issue to answering pressing questions about the real-life impacts of artificial intelligence—everything from “Could an AI influence an election?” to “Can AI chatbots give good medical advice?” 

If you read those questions and thought Absolutely not, but or Well, maybe, then you can start to understand why the theme of Fake provoked lively discussions across our newsroom. It’s the nuance, the hazy in-between when something can’t be 100 percent good, 100 percent bad, or 100 percent anything. 

Fake has been used as an insult (“You’re so fake”), a means of discrediting (“fake news,” sigh), and an antithesis of authenticity. But if we can release our grip on a need for the definitive and wade into the gray areas, you’ll find complex and subtle details that could make you question your beliefs about the not quite real. 

In this issue, we examine numerous facets of fakeness. Maddie Stone performs a scratch test on the thriving business of fake crystals, dulling the sparkle of that cotton-candy-colored quartz sold at a discount on eBay. In rural Colorado, Riley Black visits a fossil reconstruction studio overflowing with bones made not of sediment tens of millions of years old but of modern materials like polyurethane resin. Art and science swirl together in the afterlife with a photo essay by Ted Cavanaugh that captures the morbid beauty of taxidermy. 

We also wandered off the planet with Tatyana Woodall, who looks at the future of pioneering space medicine innovations that could change how we treat the maladies of earthbound humans. And on the home planet, at CERN, Rahul Rao visits the physicists attempting an otherworldly triumph: reconstructing our early universe with help from the Large Hadron Collider. 

Finally, in celebration of spooky season, a time for good-natured tricks and tales of hauntings, Bill Gourgey digs a treat out of our archives with a look back at a DIY “spiritphone” originally published in 1930. I hope our takes on fakes, written entirely by actual humans, reframe your perceptions of fakery because—boo!—you never know what’s real.

Cheers to PopSci’s fall 2023 issue from me and my AI-generated hand!

How to read the issue stories

• If you’re a subscriber but haven’t set up an account yet, you can do that here. Then find the stories in the reduced-ad section of our website, PopSci+.
• Use our iPhone, Android, and desktop apps. Log in with the email associated with your account. If you have trouble, make sure you’re using the latest version of the app. And if that doesn’t work, contact customer service.
• If you’re an Apple News+ subscriber, read the issue here.

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“I AM HANS. And I am Franz. And we want to pump you up.” 

Yes, that’s a three-decade-old reference to a Saturday Night Live sketch. I process most things through a lens of pop culture, with memories dislodged at random. Blame a childhood entertainment diet of Saturday-morning cartoons and rushing home to watch Alf with my brother on Sunday nights. So when the Popular Science editors started talking about a theme of “Muscle,” my mind shook out a snapshot of Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon beefing out in gray sweatsuits. 

The skit encapsulated an era of ripped-muscle obsession. A poster of Hans and Franz’s idol, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even hung in my elementary school gym with an intimidating message that read, “I want YOU! To Commit to Get Fit.” We took this narrow definition of what it meant to be strong and turned it into an entire culture. 

For the summer 2023 issue of PopSci, we stretched the concept of muscle to examine what being powerful means beyond the comically bulging biceps of a 1980s fitness ideal. Though we couldn’t find a falcon that can use the elliptical, Laura Baisas did investigate the birds of prey overpowering pizza-stealing gulls on Ocean City’s famous boardwalk. Ali Blumenthal guides us through the world of predators of the plant variety by zooming in on the brutal beauty of carnivorous greenery. Christopher Payne traveled to rural Ohio for an inside look at the guts of the massive plane engines that power air travel. In Arizona, Erica Gies explores the “slow-water movement,” which taps proven Indigenous techniques to tame floods and battle droughts. Kenneth Rosen weaves the story of how Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine might have derailed a Mars rover mission, if not for the determination of engineers at the European Space Agency. 

Finally, we do spend some time in the gym with Urmi Bhattacheryya as she powerlifts her way through living with fibromyalgia. All that comes with Rachel Feltman’s breakdown of bodacious booties and a dedicated Ask Us Anything section on exercising effectively and safely—from blending the perfect pre-workout beverage to healing your post-workout pains with pasta.  

Muscle was a fitting theme for my first issue as PopSci’s editor-in-chief. I witnessed the strength of a newsroom dedicated to flexing its storytelling skills with engaging reads. Now that I’m warmed up, I know you’ll be pumped up for what’s next, no sweating required.

Read PopSci+ stories.

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