Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home, But Probably Shouldn't

This is a beautiful, fun, inspiring, and thoroughly entertaining book, but it's also filled with experiments requiring either heavy machining equipment or substances that you need a license to buy. You could only do these experiments at home if you also have a machine shop in that home. Mr Gray probably has all the equipment in his basement, but most folks don't. For those looking for cool stuff to do with kids, the "sneaky uses for everyday things" books are a better source, if less entertaining in their own right.

This book clearly explains a variety of experiments and the danger levels of each. While most are listed as more dangerous than you should try at home, even those are clearly explained in case you decide to try it out. Good reading even if you don't want to risk doing any.

This is a beautifully-photographed and illustrated book rife with the kind of elemental wizardry we all wished our chemistry and physics professors had the guts (and liability insurance) to demonstrate. Why see it on the Discovery Channel, et. al. when you can hold nearly 50 wild and crazy experiments safely in your hands, living vicariously as Theo Gray risks poking an eye out or melting the earth just below his feet. This book was so fun that I experienced every experiment in one read! And now I'll get to relive the details I found literally humorous with more friends and family. An impressive collection of scientific mayhem!

This book is one that your kids (or husbands) will treasure forever. It contains some of the most exciting things in chemistry they could "safely" do (with supervision...) After buying one copy, we are buying a dozen more as gifts.

Who among us hasn't wanted to blow something up? I lent my copy of this book to a very distinguished 88-year-old who made pioneering measurements of the properties of single crystal metals. A week later I dropped in to see him. "I read the whole thing," he reported. "Every page. This guy is telling people how to do really DANGEROUS things! It's great! I just hope no one gets killed." Reminded by Gray's alkali metals explosions, he was eager to tell me about the time he himself threw a chunk of sodium into the stream near his house. He was 12 years old. It was 1933. ("We could get that sort of thing then; kids today can't. I took it from my brother's chemistry set when he was off at college.") "The explosion was enormous, much bigger than I expected. Glass pieces flew all around my head. I could have been killed." He paused, a big smile on his face. "I never told my mother." The rest of our conversation focused on how today's kids just don't get to tinker and experiment with materials the way we did in his day, and even in mine. He thinks the best thing about this book is that the excitement gets captured in Theo Gray's words (which are often funny) and the GREAT pictures; maybe reading this book can give kids -- and even adults who missed this part of growing up -- a feel for what those of us who survived those childhoods remember most fondly about them. Shortly after that conversation I was talking with a woman whose 13-year-old son bought a copy. He, too, read the whole thing. But he got mad when he realized that he couldn't really repeat these experiments in their kitchen. (I guess he'll just have to sign up for chemistry lab, if any school still has one.) So there they are -- 75 years apart in age: both read it from cover to cover and want to tell all about it. What more recommendation do you need? You don't even have to hear what I think. (But I'll tell you anyway: this is THE ULTIMATE GIFT BOOK and you should start by giving it to yourself.) Reading never killed anyone; the only way this book can kill you is from laughing. (And if you really must repeat any of the experiments, Gray is actually VERY CAREFUL to point out what the risks are and how to avoid them).