Table of Contents for Downie, N.A.: The Ultimate Book of Saturday Science: The Very Best Backyard Science Experiments You Can Do Yourself.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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