The Ultimate Book of Saturday Science: The Very Best Backyard Science Experiments You Can Do Yourself [NOOK Book]

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

SIMPLE BUT SUBTLE . . . SIMPLE BUT NOT ALWAYS EASY TO EXPLAIN 1

1. Blunderspuds and Carrot Cannons--Artillery and Boyle's Law 3
2. Mr. Bernoulli's Pop-Up Piston--More Bernoulli Weirdness 9
3. The Rapid-Fire Vacuum Bazooka--Fire Projectiles or Clean the Floor 15
4. Single-Blade Propellers--Venetian Gondolas 22
5. Soda Mint Fountains--Thirst for Knowledge and Water Quenched at Once 29
6. The Armor-Plated Sandcastle--Gas and Sand Combine 34
7. The Riddle of the Sands--Weird but Beautiful Patterns Appear, All of Their Own Accord 39
8. Tricks of Sideways Light--Magic Mondrians and Invisible Watches 47
9. Sunbeam Exploders--Ray Guns Aren't Sci-Fi Any More 55
10. The Dead-or-Alive Ball--To Bounce or Not to Bounce, Th at Is the Question 64
11. Cowboy Coffee--Yee Haw! 68
12. Electric Glue--The Modern Glue 77
13. Electric Gunpowder--Explosive Electricity! 84
14. An Eiffel Brick Tower--Eat Your Heart Out, Monsieur Eiffel! 90
15. Dominoids--Four-Foot Brobdingnagian Monster Dominoes Will Hit the Floor at the End of a Row of Standard Dominoes 97
16. Colloons--Civil and Aeronautical Engineering Combined: Neither Column nor Balloon 104
17. Motor Brushes--The Science of Vibration-Driven Vehicles Is Applied to a Humble Household Brush 112
18. A Smooth-Wheel Paddle Steamer--Invisible (well, almost) Marine Propulsion 117
19. A String Amplifier--The Powerful Science of Loops of String 124
20. The Punkah Pendulum--Air-Conditioning and Timekeeping Combined 130
21. The Maharaja's Sunshade--Air in Motion Provides Tent and Air-Conditioning Rolled into One 136

SURPRISINGLY SUBTLE . . . SURPRISES GALORE IN THIS MAVERICK COLLECTION 143

1. An Electric Sundial--Tired of Running to Your Cave Entrance to Get the Time? 145
2. The Kleenex Clock--Time from Tissue Paper 153
3. The Torsion Time Pencil--Peeling off Atomic Layers as Time Goes by 160
4. The Swell-Gel Flowstopper--Stop Water Going up Your Gas Lines 165
5. The Vortex Pump--Whirling Water Magic 170
6. Waxaulics--Hydraulics for Candles 175
7. Telestrings--Remote-Controlled Art 182
8. Squirting String--Getting String to Flow through Pipes 189
9. Spider Technology--The Silken Secrets of Spiderman 194

SIMPLE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE . . . FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD UNCOVERED IN ELEGANTLY SIMPLE DEMONSTRATIONS 203

1. The Molecule Meter--I Speak Your Molecular Weight! 205
2. Talking Sparks--Send Messages at 186 Million Miles per Hour: See How Radio Pioneer Marconi First Sent Radio a Thousand Miles 211
3. Light and Lens Pipes--The Strong Focusing Principle Used in the Microscopes of Fundamental Particle Physics 221
4. Fire from Water--The Power of Concentration 230
5. The Heliracket--Waves, Molecules, and Music 239
6. The Helitower--The Momentum Principle of Rockets and Helicopters 248

CLOXOTICA-- EXOTIC CLOCKS AND OSCILLATORS: A CORNUCOPIA OF UNUSUAL CLOCKS 257

1. The Paperclip Clock--A Major Leap Forward in Horological Science, the Acme of Simplicity 259
2. The Micropendulum--The Prestipendulous Tick-Tock Clock 266
3. The String Thing--Ballet Dancing for Pendulums 274
4. Eddy the Coniclock--A Spinning Disk Powers a Conical Pendulum 280
5. The Humming Clock--Recycle Unwanted Mains Hum to Run Your Clock 285
6. An Hourglass Wallah--The Sands of Time Updated 292
7. The Knife-through-Butter Clock--Melting Time 300
8. Creepy Clocks and Time Pencils--The Slow Flow of Solids 307
9. A Polymerizing Clock--Telling Time with Glue and Chemistry 316
10. Delay-Line Oscillators--Pass-the-Parcel Oscillators 322
11. The Fan Flap Flip-Flop Clock--A Huffi ng and Puffing Clock 328
12. The Faucet Oscillator--Measuring Time with Spurts of Water 333
13. The Slugulator--Not an Oscillator for the Impatient! 338
14. The Sloshulator--Time from Waves 344

GEEKONICS--SIMPLER THAN YOU MIGHT EXPECT, AND NOT JUST FOR GEEKS 351

1. The Telebubblegraph--Sending Bubbly Messages the Electrolytic Way 353
2. The Touchy-Feely Sensor--Putting a Number to Hotfeelingness and Coldfeelingness 361
3. Fire Wire--Finding Fire along a Wire 368
4. Electric Bubble Memory--Minute Electric Cells Keep Your 1s and 0s Safe 375
5. Red-Hot Memory--Binary Memory: 0s Are Cold and 1s Are (ouch!) Hot 381
6. Deflation Detection--Ultrasonic Tire Monitoring 390

MAD, BAD, AND DANGEROUS--PROJECTS THAT HAVE HAZARDS, ALTHOUGH THEY CAN BE MINIMIZED 397

1. Deep Impact--Armor-Piercing Carrots: High-Speed Vegetables 399
2. The Flying Soda Bottle--A Spectacular Piece of Practical Science Using the Rapid Release of Energy from Compressed Gas 409
3. Oxygen Fireworks--The Greener, Safer Ground Fireworks System 419

GREAT STUFF--BIGGER PROJECTS THAT NEED SPACE AND LARGER PARTS 431

1. The Helevator--The Elevator of Oz: Is It a Helicopter or an Elevator? 433
2. An Airbag Oscillator--Your Body Forms Part of This Ride-On Brobdingnagian Oscillator 441
3. A Bubble-Tube Oscillator--Trains of Bubbles Chase Each Other Upward 449
4. The Preposterously Big Party Blowout--The Holiday Party Favorite Scaled up to Span Football Fields 457
5. Pink-Noise Pipes--Make Music from Noise! 463
6. Turbo Panjandrums--The Auto-Unicycle 469
7. The Impossible Turbine--The Backward-Forward-Always-Clockwise Turbine 477
8. A Rocket Railroad--Th is Rocket Pumps Propellant from the Track as It Goes Along 483
9. The Hovertrain--A Railroad without Rails 489
10. A Jet-Wash Rocket--The Superclean Rocket 496
11. The Single-Helix Pump--You Don't Need a Double Helix to Squirt Water at Surprising Pressure 503
12. Leonardo's Bridge--No Nails or Screws or String: It's Just a Subtle Stack of Sticks 509
13. Your Personal Hovercraft--You Have a Personal Computer, Why Not Ride Around on Your Personal Hovercraft? 517

Tips and Tricks 527

Old-Fashioned Units 531

Bibliography 533

Index