Vacuum Bazookas, Electric Rainbow Jelly, and 27 Other Saturday Science Projects

Neil Downie has developed another outstanding summary of science projects/challenges for all ages. At this time, when bcominig a scientist may not be the #1 career--- these projects get the attention of the student,parent and teacher alike. The opportunity to try, fail and try again--usually ends in success. We need this type of approach to encourgae our children to consider science as a career.

The technical language was easily understood and presented in a clear interesting manner. Mr Downie has inspired me to have a real go at these projects. As we say in New Zealand "Sweet As".

I enjoyed the book, but so far the only experiment we've done is the vacuum bazooka, for which I recommend using a wet vac and small water balloons as ammo.

I've only had this book for a few days, but have found the projects unusual and offbeat. For the most part, they are not a rehash of old science projects. They are well described and each one has a good description of the science and math behind them. The illustrations are not overly detailed, but they do the job quite well. I found it a little odd that the description of what the project is about is separated from the chapter on the project. The summaries of what is interesting about the projects and simply what they do is in the front of the book. If you open to a project within the book, you'll wonder what the real appeal of the project is until you go to the front of the book.The author is quite a tinkerer and at least one of the project toys is patented. I believe a few others are heading toward patents.Several projects require access to a small amount of Mecanno (or Erector) set parts. These companies almost do not exist it the U.S. any longer. However, Brio recently started distributing Erector sets again. I'm sure one could find substitutes for the Mecanno parts at a local hardware store or maybe even make them.