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Ultralight tents don’t have to lighten your wallet.Save a bundle of cash by making one from Tyvek. The breathable, water-resistant material, a favorite of home contractors, weighs less than two ounces and costs about $2 per square yard. Here’s how to fashion a featherweight bivouac from the stuff. 

MATERIALS & TOOLS

Two 6-foot by 9-foot sheets of Tyvek HomeWrap, hammer, ½-inch grommet kit, 8 lengths of 12-foot-long parachute cord (or thin rope)

INSTRUCTIONS

1) Lay one Tyvek sheet on the ground, and fold over three inches of each edge.

2) Hammer a grommet into each corner and the center of each folded edge.

3) Tie a parachute cord to each grommet.

4) Push a tall stick into the center grommet of one short side. Stake or tie the other end. 

5) Fasten the ends of the parachute cords to trees, rocks, or stakes to pull the Tyvek taut.

6) Use the other sheet as a ground cloth, roll out a sleeping bag, and catch some z’s.

Approximate time: 1 hour

Cost: About $25

Difficulty: 1/5

WARNING: Bad weather could send this temporary shelter sailing. Build and use at your own risk. 

 

This article originally appeard in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science. 

I still remember flipping through paper magazines while waiting for webpages to load on my family’s PC, in the 1990s. Maybe one day waiting for your phone to charge will seem as antiquated.

An Israeli startup recently demonstrated a prototype charger that fully charges a smartphone in 30 seconds. You can watch it above, oooh.

As you can probably guess, the charger isn’t exactly ready for the market yet. It’s about the size of a laptop charger, so its creators are working on making it smaller, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company, called StoreDot, plans to have a charger ready for production by late 2016.

StoreDot’s technology depends on nano-size crystals, called quantum dots, that are made of biological materials. Researchers have studied quantum dots intensely because they have cool electrical and optical properties that could improve electronic displays and data storage. Usually, however, researchers make quantum dots out of non-biological minerals such as silicon or cadmium selenide. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that by putting its biological crystals in the electrolyte of a power cell, StoreDot made the power cell hold five times as much charge.

[The Wall Street Journal, Gizmag]