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Overheard a guy at the hardware store say he uses old pizza pans as satellite dish reflectors
I tried it with a 16 inch pan from a clearance rack and caught 3 extra channels from a satellite 22,000 miles up, anyone else ever repurpose kitchen stuff for this?
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roberts.leo2mo ago
That's honestly genius, people sleep on how much random kitchen gear can pull double duty. I've noticed a pattern where the stuff we throw out or ignore is actually engineered better than we give it credit for. Like, I used an old colander as a makeshift faraday cage for my car keys once and it actually blocked the signal. Coffee cans make decent antenna mounts if you drill them right, and I bet a muffin tin could focus radio waves if you angled it properly. It's like half the "hacks" out there are just realizing that everyday objects were already designed to do something useful, we just never thought to ask.
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diana_kim662mo ago
Huh, you know what, I used to be one of those people who thought kitchen gadgets were just for cooking and nothing else. I'd see stuff like colanders and muffin tins and just think "why would you ever need them for anything besides draining pasta or baking." But your colander faraday cage example really got me thinking because I tried something similar with a metal mixing bowl and my key fob and it actually worked too. It's wild how we overlook the engineering behind everyday stuff just because it's sitting in a drawer. I guess the lesson is that good design is good design no matter where you find it, even if it's in something as boring as a coffee can or a muffin pan.
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carter.joseph2mo ago
Yeah exactly! That mixing bowl trick works great because it's basically the same principle. What gets me is how many things in a normal kitchen are just waiting to be used for something totally different. Like those silicone muffin cups? They make great parts trays when you're working on small electronics. A wire cooling rack can double as a phone stand if you bend one of the wires a bit. I think we get so used to seeing things as one-purpose items that we forget how much thought went into their actual shape and materials. Once you start looking at stuff that way, you see potential hacks everywhere.
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