Science Gifts: Running Experiments at Home

Interesting science-gift ideas can be found in the "home experiments" area. There's been a small boom in this sort of book in recent years, which I think is a good thing all the way around. I believe that there's a good audience out there of people who are interested in science, but have no particular training in it, either because they're young enough not to have encountered much (or much that was any good), or because they missed out on it while they were in school themselves. Last year I mentioned Robert Bruce (and Barbara) Thompson's Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments along with its sequels, the Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments and the Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments. Similar books are Hands-On Chemistry Activities and its companion Hands-On Physics Activities. Related to these are two from Theodore Gray: Theo Gray's Mad Science, and its new sequel, Mad Science 2. Both of these are subtitles "Experiments that you can do at home - but probably shouldn't", and I'd say that's pretty accurate. Many of these use equipment and materials that most people probably won't have sitting around, and some of the experiments are on the hazardous side (which, I should mention, is something that's fully noted in the book). But they're well-illustrated from Gray's own demonstration runs, so you can at least see what they look like, and learn about the concepts behind them. And there's copious chemistry available in a series of books by B...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Science Gifts Source Type: blogs