Experiments & Projects

Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices

The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies

Inventive, (mostly) edible DIY gadgets and projects guaranteed to captivate

The Hungry Scientist Handbook brings DIY technology into the kitchen and onto the plate. It compiles the most mouthwatering projects created by mechanical engineer Patrick Buckley and his band of intrepid techie friends, whose collaboration on contraptions started at a memorable 2005 Bay Area dinner party and resulted in the formation of the Hungry Scientist Society—a loose confederation of creative minds dedicated to the pursuit of projects possessing varying degrees of whimsy and utility.

Featuring twenty projects ranging from edible origami to glowing lollipops, cryogenic martinis to Tupperware boom boxes, the book draws from the expertise of programmers, professors, and garden-variety geeks and offers something to delight DIYers of all skill levels.

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things: How to Turn a Penny into a Radio, Make a Flood Alarm with an Aspirin, Change Milk into Plastic, Extract Water and Electricity ... a TV with Your Ring, and Other Amazing Feats

Do you know how to make something that can tell whether the $20 bill in your wallet is a fake? Or how to generate battery power with simple household items? Or how to create your own home security system?Science-savvy author Cy Tymony does. And now you can learn how to create these things¿and more than 40 other handy gadgets and gizmos¿in Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things. More than a simple do-it-yourself guide, this quirky collection is a valuable resource for transforming ordinary objects into the extraordinary. With over 80 solutions and bonus applications at your disposal, you will be ready for almost any situation. Included are survival, security, self-defense, and silly applications that are just plain fun.You¿ll be seen as a superhero as you amaze your friends by:¿ Transforming a simple FM radio into a device that enables you to eavesdrop on tower-to-air conversations.¿ Creating your own personalized electronic greeting cards.¿ Making a compact fire extinguisher from items typically found in a kitchen pantry.¿ Thwarting intruders with a single rubber band.By using run-of-the-mill household items and the easy-to-follow instructions and diagrams within, you¿ll be able to complete most projects in just a few minutes. Whether you use Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things as a practical tool to build useful devices, a fun little fantasy escape, or as a trivia guide to impress friends and family, this book is sure to be a reference favorite for years to come.

Sneakiest Uses for Everyday Things: How to Make a Boomerang with a Business Card, Convert a Pencil into a Microphone, Make Animated Origami, Turn a TV ... Create Alternative Energy Science Projects

In the third book in Cy Tymony's Sneaky Uses series you will learn how to turn a piece of paper into a Frisbee, a business card into a boomerang, a TV tray into a robot, and more.

* Beginning with a complete list of materials and continuing through easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions paired with helpful illustrations, most projects will be completed in just minutes using common items found around the house.

* Teachers, parents, scout leaders, and enterprising youngsters will use their ingenuity to turn ordinary, everyday objects into something extraordinary, like a pencil into a microphone, Walkman ear buds into an intercom, or a telephone cord into a motor. The book also includes bonus alternative-energy projects and a foreword by NPR's Science Friday host Ira Flatow.

Author's web site: http://wwwsneakyuses.com

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

From the acclaimed New York Times science writer George Johnson, an irresistible book on the ten most fascinating experiments in the history of science—moments when a curious soul posed a particularly eloquent question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply.

Johnson takes us to those times when the world seemed filled with mysterious forces, when scientists were dazzled by light, by electricity, and by the beating of the hearts they laid bare on the dissecting table.

We see Galileo singing to mark time as he measures the pull of gravity, and Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his eye to learn how light causes vibrations in the retina. William Harvey ties a tourniquet around his arm and watches his arteries throb above and his veins bulge below, proving that blood circulates. Luigi Galvani sparks electrical currents in dissected frog legs, wondering at the twitching muscle fibers, and Ivan Pavlov makes his now-famous dogs salivate at ascending chord progressions.

For all of them, diligence was rewarded. In an instant, confusion was swept aside and something new about nature leaped into view. In bringing us these stories, Johnson restores some of the romance to science, reminding us of the existential excitement of a single soul staring down the unknown.

Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science)

For students, DIY hobbyists, and science buffs, who can no longer get real chemistry sets, this one-of-a-kind guide explains how to set up and use a home chemistry lab, with step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments in basic chemistry -- not just to make pretty colors and stinky smells, but to learn how to do real lab work:

• Purify alcohol by distillation
• Produce hydrogen and oxygen gas by electrolysis
• Smelt metallic copper from copper ore you make yourself
• Analyze the makeup of seawater, bone, and other common substances
• Synthesize oil of wintergreen from aspirin and rayon fiber from paper
• Perform forensics tests for fingerprints, blood, drugs, and poisons
• and much more

From the 1930s through the 1970s, chemistry sets were among the most popular Christmas gifts, selling in the millions. But two decades ago, real chemistry sets began to disappear as manufacturers and retailers became concerned about liability. ,em>The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments steps up to the plate with lessons on how to equip your home chemistry lab, master laboratory skills, and work safely in your lab. The bulk of this book consists of 17 hands-on chapters that include multiple laboratory sessions on the following topics:

• Separating Mixtures
• Solubility and Solutions
• Colligative Properties of Solutions
• Introduction to Chemical Reactions & Stoichiometry
• Reduction-Oxidation (Redox) Reactions
• Acid-Base Chemistry
• Chemical Kinetics
• Chemical Equilibrium and Le Chatelier's Principle
• Gas Chemistry
• Thermochemistry and Calorimetry
• Electrochemistry
• Photochemistry
• Colloids and Suspensions
• Qualitative Analysis
• Quantitative Analysis
• Synthesis of Useful Compounds
• Forensic Chemistry

Grant's Dissector

Practical Research: Planning and Design (8th Edition)

Written in uncommonly engaging, lucid, and elegant prose, this book is an “understand-it-yourself, do-it-yourself” manual designed to help readers understand the fundamental structure of quality research and the methodical process that leads to genuinely significant results.

It guides the reader, step-by-step, from the selection of a problem to study, through the process of conducting authentic research, to the preparation of a completed report, with practical suggestions based on a solid theoretical framework and sound pedagogy. This book will show readers two things: 1) that quality research demands planning and design; and, 2) how their own research projects can be executed effectively and professionally. For researchers and research analysts in any discipline.

Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things: How to Turn a Calculator into a Metal Detector, Carry a Survival Kit in a Shoestring, Make a Gas Mask with a Balloon, ... a James Bond Spy Jacket with Everyday Thing

How to Turn a Calculator into a Metal Detector, Carry a Survival Kit in a Shoestring, Make a Gas Mask with a Balloon, Turn Dishwashng Liquid into a Copy Machine, Convert a Styrofoam Cup into a Speaker, and Make a James Bond Spy Jacket with Everyday Things

Did you know that your standard issue of Sports Illustrated magazine can be turned into over 20 useful gadgets? In author Cy Tymony's Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things, you'll learn how an average magazine can become many extraordinary gadgets such as a compass, hearing aid, magnifier, peashooter, and bottle opener.

Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things covers 40 new educational and unique projects that anybody can successfully complete with simple household items. The book includes a list of necessary materials, detailed sketches, and step-by-step instructions for each gadget and gizmo. Among the sneaky schemes are:

" Creating a electroscope out of a glass jar

" Turning a drinking cup into a speaker

" Using an AM radio as a metal detector

" Making a spy gadget jacket with over 20 individual sneaky uses ranging from a siren and

whistle to a walkie-talkie and voice recorder

These days, "be prepared" applies to more than just the Boy Scouts. Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things provides loads of practical ideas, science projects, and captivating solutions for dealing with life's unexpected challenges. Great fun for the curious, inventive, and creative of all ages.

Failure is not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

In 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik and the ensuing space race. Three years later, Gene Kranz left his aircraft testing job to join NASA and champion the American cause. What he found was an embryonic department run by whiz kids (such as himself), sharp engineers and technicians who had to create the Mercury mission rules and procedure from the ground up. As he says, "Since there were no books written on the actual methodology of space flight, we had to write them as we went along."

Kranz was part of the mission control team that, in January 1961, launched a chimpanzee into space and successfully retrieved him, and made Alan Shepard the first American in space in May 1961. Just two months later they launched Gus Grissom for a space orbit, John Glenn orbited Earth three times in February 1962, and in May of 1963 Gordon Cooper completed the final Project Mercury launch with 22 Earth orbits. And through them all, and the many Apollo missions that followed, Gene Kranz was one of the integral inside men--one of those who bore the responsibility for the Apollo 1 tragedy, and the leader of the "tiger team" that saved the Apollo 13 astronauts.

Moviegoers know Gene Kranz through Ed Harris's Oscar-nominated portrayal of him in Apollo 13, but Kranz provides a more detailed insider's perspective in his book Failure Is Not an Option. You see NASA through his eyes, from its primitive days when he first joined up, through the 1993 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, his last mission control project. His memoir, however, is not high literature. Kranz has many accomplishments and honors to his credit, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but this is his first book, and he's not a polished author. There are, perhaps, more behind-the-scenes details and more paragraphs devoted to what Cape Canaveral looked like than the general public demands. If, however, you have a long-standing fascination with aeronautics, if you watched Apollo 13 and wanted more, Failure Is Not an Option will fill the bill. --Stephanie Gold

A breathtaking, first-hand account of the early days of the NASA space program, through the eyes of the man who held it all together...