Vacuum Bazookas, Electric Rainbow Jelly, and 27 Other Saturday Science Projects / / Neil A. Downie.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Downie, Neil A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2018]; ©2002
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

How do you crack nuts with a piece of string? Reverse gravity? Cobble together a clock out of a coffee cup, a soda bottle, and some water? Use a vacuum cleaner and nineteenth-century railroad technology to fashion a makeshift bazooka that can launch paper projectiles? Create a rainbow in a block of Jello? This is a one-volume romp through a whole array of counterintuitive science experiments that require little more than common household items and a sense of curiosity. Prepare to have your surprise sensors on overload as Neil Downie stretches math, physics, and chemistry to do what they have never done before. This book describes twenty-nine unusual but practical experiments, detailing how they are done and the math and physics behind them. It will delight both casual and inveterate tinkerers. Of varying levels of complexity, the experiments are grouped in sections covering a wide field of physics and the borders of chemistry, ranging from dynamic mechanics (''Kinetic Curiosities'') to electricity (''Antediluvian Electronics'') and combustion (''Infernal Inventions''). The chapters are titillatingly titled, from ''Twisted Sinews'' and ''Mole Radio'' to ''A Symphony of Siphons'' and ''Tornado Transistor.'' More-detailed explanations, along with simple mathematical models using high-school level math, are given in boxes accompanying each experiment. Armchair scientists will welcome this edifying and entertaining alternative to idleness, not least for the buoyant prose, enriched by historical and literary anecdotes introducing each topic. With this book in hand, tinkerers, whether dabblers in science or devotees, students or teachers, need never again wonder how to impress friends, the judges at the science fair, and, not least, themselves.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents in Brief -- Contents in Detail -- Project Ratings -- Preface -- Kinetic Curiosities -- 1. Hovering Rings -- 2. Dynabrolly -- 3. Gravity Reversal -- 4. Maypole Drill -- 5. Rotarope -- Strong String Things -- 6. String Nutcracker -- 7. Twisted Sinews -- Strong Nothing -- 8. Vacuum Muscles -- 9. Vacuum Bazooka -- Sounds Peculiar -- 10. String Radio -- 11. Mole Radio -- 12. Bat Doppler -- Transmissions with Omissions -- 13. Toothless Gearwheels -- 14. Flying Pulleys -- Clocks without Cuckoos or Quartz -- 15. The Crank and the Pendulum -- 16. A Symphony of Siphons -- 17. Bernoulli's Clock -- Curious Conveyances -- 18. Dougall or Vibrocraft -- 19. Follow That Sunbeam -- 20. Duohelicon -- 21. Fishy Boat -- 22. Rotarudder -- 23. Cable Yacht -- Antediluvian Electronics -- 24. Beard Amplifier -- 25. Tornado Transistor -- Electric Water -- 26. Meltdown Alarm -- 27. Electric Rainbow Jelly -- Infernal Inventions -- 28. Binary Match -- 29. Ultimate Bunsen Burner -- Useful Materials and Components -- A Reminder about Units -- Bibliography -- Index