[HN Gopher] The Book of Experiments (1958) [pdf]
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The Book of Experiments (1958) [pdf]
Author : snee
Score : 178 points
Date : 2022-07-16 05:00 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.arvindguptatoys.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.arvindguptatoys.com)
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There were lots of books like this in the 1950s, some of which
| survived to my own childhood in the 70s. I was thinking for
| various reasons they probably don't exist now and that's a shame.
|
| But then I realized this is just a Book Of Potential TikTok
| Videos and felt better about it.
| jerome-jh wrote:
| I do not see Arvind Gupta marvelous website mentioned so here it
| is: http://arvindguptatoys.com/toys.html
|
| It is called "Toys from trash". From time to time we go there
| with my younger daughter and we randomly pick an activity.
| Compared to the book there is little text, explanations being
| mostly visual. That makes it accessible to non English speaking
| children.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| My anti virus software wont let me see any images on that site,
| any idea whats going on?
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I had an older professor of physics at the university (I was
| studying physics) - he was a theoretician. Once a year he felt
| the need to make an experiment "for completeness".
|
| As good as he was as a theoretical physicist, he was a walking
| disaster with experiments.
|
| In mechanics there is an experiment where you sit on a chair,
| with weights in your hands, someone makes you spin and then you
| extend the arms and the movement is slowed down (conservation of
| momentum if someone is interested).
|
| He wanted to show this, sat on a chair, extended his arms and
| asked a student to spin him fast. And then retracted his arms
| next to the torso. He flew two or three meters away from the
| chair and fell down, with us jumping to help him (he was
| something like 70 at that time).
|
| After getting back to his senses he continued with an experiment
| where you hold a bicycle wheel in your hands by the axis, it
| spins quickly and you cannot flip it right or left. So he did.
|
| And then he was left with a spinning wheel in his hands, wondered
| a moment what to do with it and simply dropped it on the floor.
| It is amazing he managed to squarely hit the audio system of the
| amphitheatre which did BOOM and we did not have sound anymore.
|
| That was the end of the experiments for that year.
| mav88 wrote:
| I have the original hardback of this book: yellow cover with a
| black stripe. Happy memories growing up and trying some of the
| experiments in it including the flour bomb which was shockingly
| loud.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Reminds me of the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments:
|
| https://archive.org/details/GoldenBookOfChemistryExperiments
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| When I was visiting Poland, some friends told me that they had,
| as kids, a TV show where a man was discussing how to build stuff.
|
| He would start with a set of wires, some wooden tablets, a few
| screws and a piece of paper. He would draw how "we" would build,
| say, a house out of this, moved the pieces around and suddenly
| was getting from below the table some incredibly complex
| construction they were supposed to easily reproduce :)
| Linda703 wrote:
| samizdis wrote:
| This is just priceless. I admire the breezy dismissal of
| potential harm/injury, and the confident reliance on exercising
| "reasonable care". Favourite (so far, that is):
|
| _26. A flour bomb as a noisy finale to our air experiments
|
| ... If you tried to set fire to a small heap of flour you would
| not succeed. But finely divided flour in a cloud--that can make a
| completely harmless bomb!
|
| ... With a great BANG! off flies the lid of the tin. The finely
| divided flour has exploded.
|
| It is best to do this experiment out of doors. Not that the
| explosion is dangerous, but the lid might go through a window or
| do some damage in the room. It is also important to take care
| that the lid does not hit you in the face. Given reasonable care
| this flour bomb explosion is perfectly harmless._
| genewitch wrote:
| Yes, a small flour puff can make a fancy show and is fairly
| safe, Mr. Wizard did it on his show decades ago.
|
| Then again, anything, when suspended in air in significant
| amounts and the right ratios, will explode. Sugar and flour
| explode just fine. Sawdust, metal particles, and don't drop
| that cup of flour next to an open flame if you like your
| eyebrows.
| timthorn wrote:
| I was reminded of this attitude last week, when I met a TV
| presenter from my childhood. He was known for doing daring
| things, the first of which was cleaning the Big Ben clockface.
| The Daleks were not the only scary thing on 80s BBC TV:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blue-peter--big-ben-is-cleaned...
| maire wrote:
| If you like this, then you will love this 1913 Boy Mechanic
| series.
|
| The Boy Mechanic Volume I: 700 Things For Boys To Do
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12655
|
| The Boy Mechanic, Book 2: 1000 Things for Boys to Do
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44585
|
| One of the transcriber said: Another class of projects
| illustrate the caviler attitude toward environment and health
| in 1913. These projects involve items such as asbestos,
| gunpowder, acetylene, hydrogen, lead, mercury, sulfuric acid,
| nitric acid, cadmium, potassium sulfate, potassium cyanide,
| potassium ferrocyanide, copper sulfate, and hydrochloric acid.
| Many references to these have been highlighted in red.
|
| Projects requiring extra skill and care that involve high
| voltage, melting metals, or other hazards, have the title
| highlighted.
| samizdis wrote:
| Wow. Just sublime. Insanely ambitious projects mixed with the
| insightfully practical and leavened with, er, just so many
| ways to die. Have downloaded both and will relish reading
| them thoroughly. Many thanks.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Years back had a teacher who would use this demo to liven up
| the first class of the year. She would go on at length about
| how important studying science was, wait til everyone looked
| half asleep, then _bang_.
| jhgb wrote:
| I'm surprised by the writer completely ignoring the possibility
| of blast injury to the lungs...? Blowing into a hose connected
| to a space in which an explosion takes place would worry me
| much more than what the lid might do.
| rflrob wrote:
| My naive assumption is that there's a combination of two
| factors going on: 1) the blast force will be proportional to
| the area through which it's transmitted, and a narrow hose
| will have a lot less area than the lid of a can, and 2) if
| the hose is fairly flexible rubber, there will be significant
| reduction of the force over the length of the tube.
| jhgb wrote:
| All of these things are possible, but personally I'd just
| never risk it by assuming that the pressure wave will
| escape "somewhere". Call me a coward, but still...
| iamthejuan wrote:
| There is also "Physics experiments for children" book.
| JackFr wrote:
| > _You will need: group of cigarette smokers, piece of ice,
| knife._
|
| OK. Curious where this is going.
|
| > _Where there is a group of people most of whom have a burning
| cigarette in their hand or mouth, you can play a smart little
| trick which shows how unreliable our senses are. Without letting
| anyone see, make a point on a piece of ice with a knife. Dry it
| well, then press it firmly against the neck of one of your
| friends. He will be startled and perhaps angry because you,
| according to him, have held the burning end of a cigarette
| against his neck._
|
| Yikes! Legitimately so I would think. On the other hand, while
| finding a gaggle of smokers is harder than it used to be, the
| subset of adolescent and post adolescent boys who find it amusing
| to injure, inflict pain and confuse their friends still seems
| limitless.
|
| > _Then it is your turn to be surprised and show him the piece of
| ice._
|
| Still might get punched.
| thret wrote:
| 59. You will nerd
|
| Wikipedia: The first documented appearance of the word nerd is as
| the name of a creature in Dr. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo
| (1950).
|
| I realise it is a typo.
| siva7 wrote:
| Re-release it as the "book of tik-tok challenges" and profit.
| Copyright has expired
| samizdis wrote:
| Has anyone tried this?
|
| _131. Cut glass with. .. scissors!
|
| You will need: bowl of water, pair of scissors, piece of glass.
|
| It is possible to cut glass with ordinary scissors in any shape
| you wish, provided that while cutting you hold the glass and the
| scissors as well as your hands completely under water. The water
| deadens the vibrations which make the glass crack. Yes, under
| water, glass can be cut almost as easily as cardboard._
|
| It's not mentioned, but I'd assume that the glass thickness would
| be something like a pane from a greenhouse. Might just have to
| try this one ...
| gdsimoes wrote:
| I found this video of some guy doing it:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tEAxhMECluM
| samizdis wrote:
| V informative, thanks. Nice to have a better explanation of
| what's happening (ie the water molecule interaction with
| glass and the propagation speed of cracks) than the original
| 1958 document's claim that it was due to water absorbing
| vibrations.
| [deleted]
| zabzonk wrote:
| Some good stuff, but also stuff like this, from the Cartesian
| Diver":
|
| > Air is easily compressible, water is not.
|
| Not significantly compressible, in the sense of reducing volume,
| but it is pressurisable (think of pressure at the bottom of the
| ocean), which is what this experiment depends on.
|
| > The water is not compressed by your called ions) and the
| chlorine atoms (chlorine ions) of which the salt in solution
| consists.
|
| Wot?
|
| Thinking about my own experiments as a child, my favourite tools
| were a 12-volt car battery charger, and fire. Sometimes I wonder
| that I'm still here :-)
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I think playing with fire is a basic part of being human.
| Humans, fire. The fire primate, why we don't have hair or fat
| for body heat, we have fire and clothes. Like how else are you
| going to learn but seeing what happens if you eg play with the
| gauge on a lighter (for education, playing is mostly about
| learning), more flame, less flame, look at it, marvel at it.
| Doesn't mean getting burned though for sure there will be
| burns.
|
| And it's becoming a lost art, like everything's electric, less
| and less fire in the house for fewer and fewer reasons, fewer
| smokers smoking less, vaping instead (which I consider good,
| harm reduction all the way), fewer ways to make fire, offices
| rarely have incinerators any more, well paper too, fire and
| paper, another combo. Less metallurgy due to less manufacturing
| in the States. SF Fire Department actually now do more
| like...helping the evicteds, because the codes to eliminate
| fires have worked very well in the regard of preventing fires.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| We don't have much hair because we'd just keep burning it off
| anyway.
| zabzonk wrote:
| My own worst experience with fire was with a Primus stove
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_stove) when I was about
| 14. I'd squirted the priming meths alcohol from a squeezy
| bottle on to the stove and lit it. But then (because alcohol
| burns with a near-invisible flame I thought it had gone out,
| so I squirted more on, then ... boom! Squeezy blew open,
| sending burning meths everywhere.
|
| Luckily alcohol doesn't burn at a high temperature, so only
| all the skin on my hands peeled off. And this is no criticism
| of the Primus, just wittlessness on behalf of 14-year-old me.
|
| I don't suppose kids get to do this sort of stuff these days?
| genewitch wrote:
| I show my kids by doing the same stupid stuff i did as a
| teen and how "dangerous" it is. Empty bottle of isopropyl
| alcohol? shake it, hold an electric or regular lighter over
| the opening - foomf. shake, foomf. shake, foomf. Over and
| over. The fire doesn't burn the liquid, but the vapor
| created by shaking the container.
|
| try explaining how a gas engine works to someone that
| doesn't understand how vapor burns but liquid doesn't.
|
| My latest "prove something" was taking my brightest
| flashlight and putting it flush against the bottom of a
| clear container of peanut butter in a dark room. When you
| shut off the flashlight, the peanut butter fluoresces. It
| "glows in the dark" for a short time. really cool.
|
| this whole PDF is whimsically old, but it has some good
| experiments nonetheless.
| 13of40 wrote:
| When I was about 13 years old, a retired engineer (slash
| wizard) who was friends with my mom gave me a 25,000 volt
| step-up transformer. Why any adult would do that is beyond
| me, but I was always very safe with it and managed to do a
| lot of cool experiments without killing myself. I let my
| friend borrow it, though, and his brain was calibrated a
| little bit differently as far as risk behavior, etc. He
| ended up shocking himself multiple times just because he'd
| do things like reach over and reposition the leads when the
| (freaking two inch) plasma arc died out.
| VLM wrote:
| Probably a neon sign transformer. The tube won't ionize
| until tens of thousands of KV but when it does light off,
| the resistance of the plasma drops to practically nothing
| compared to the excellent insulator it is when not
| ignited. Neon tubes are negative resistance devices, 25KV
| at zero current vs maybe 10 mA at 300 V after it ignites
| is a resistance of negative 30K or so. The point is a lot
| of EE work goes into the magnetic design of the
| transformer such that it current limits to some specified
| value. If you use a core material and shape that'll
| saturate at 10 mA but a ratio of number of turns such
| that it'll output 25 KV as long as the current is roughly
| zero, that would make a good neon sign transformer.
|
| Much like alcohol there is no minimum safe harmless
| amount of current thru the heart, but if you have what by
| neon transformer standards is a very low current
| transformer, like limited to 5 mA or so, that might be a
| low enough current to only kill like 0.0001% of the
| population or whatever. A kid will probably be fine. An
| old person with heart problems, maybe not so much.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| They play Minecraft.
|
| Which I think is a great game, or was when I played it, I
| bought when I had no money, it was I think $40, and was
| very satisfied. I wanted to play it again see what had
| changed but Microsoft didn't honor my purchase, they wanted
| me to buy it again. Obviously not in so many words but dude
| they have hundreds of UI UX people they A/B test
| everything. They fucking know. They fucking know. It may
| have been a mistake (there is literally a 0 probability of
| this), all the same, I went through the whole protocol, did
| the backup option, the works. Totally agree that piracy is
| a service problem. Self-service.
|
| If I feel like playing Minecraft again I won't steal it,
| wrong word--seize it, take my own property back for myself.
| I own Minecraft in the specific capacity I agreed to--just
| a perpetual license for myself, no more than one person
| playing at a time, no piracy, never even looked it up on
| all those sites only the Russian search engines can parse.
|
| Yeah that's what "must have happened", someone put a zh in
| there, it didn't compile, Minkraft. MS database failure,
| that's the mistake they didn't make. Yeah that makes sense
| it's a Russian plant getting children to play indoors only,
| fake TNT fake water fake fire, play video games and become
| overweight in elementary, obese in sophomore year of High
| School. US Army complains about this, all these recruits
| are busted, nearsighted from screens, fat, flat-footed,
| everyone has a 1-in-1000000 condition that requires
| favoritism, never gotten burned, never scraped their knees,
| nothing.
|
| When I was a kid I had some wound somewhere most of the
| time. Like they even made the clothing with patches in the
| elbows and knees not because that would be any protection
| but to get the clothing to last the year.
| abecedarius wrote:
| The cartesian diver mishmash is clearly a transcription error:
| it ends with some lines from the next entry on dissolving salt.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| These are wonderful. Let me add one of my own to the collection.
| This is a true story from that same era, maybe a couple of years
| later when I got kicked out of my third grade class for being a
| troublemaker and had to go to a special ed class called Mrs.
| Spencer's Workshop.
|
| _199. Make your own printed circuit board_
|
| You will need: a common kitchen cutting board, a sheet of copper,
| a roll of electrical tape, a fish tank, and a supply of nitric
| acid. And whatever electrical components you need to complete
| your circuit.
|
| All of these supplies are readily available to a third grader,
| except for the nitric acid which you will have to ask your
| teacher to source.
|
| First, design your circuit and test it in your mind. Then tape it
| out - literally - with the electrical tape on one side of the
| copper sheet and matching tape on the other side.
|
| Pour the nitric acid into the fish tank.
|
| Dip the copper sheet into the nitric acid. Watch it with your
| teacher as the acid dissolves the copper, except where you have
| taped out your circuit.
|
| When all that remains are the taped out traces, remove the copper
| circuit from the acid and rinse it with water.
|
| Peel off the electrical tape and fasten the copper traces onto
| the cutting board. This is what makes it a circuit _board_.
|
| Connect the rest of the components and test your circuit.
|
| Go to the science fair, demonstrate the printed circuit, and
| explain to the visitors how you made it.
|
| Thank you, Mrs. Spencer.
| pvitz wrote:
| Thanks for your story! I am wondering why your teacher would
| use nitric acid. Wouldn't iron(III) chloride have been much
| safer in a workshop with children?
| VLM wrote:
| WRT safety its probably a taste thing.
|
| Diluted enough, the nitric could easily be made weaker than
| your stomach acid but will still eventually dissolve the
| copper. Its a sort of linear-ish relationship of
| concentration vs time so you can trade safety for time (as
| with most industrial processes, LOL)
|
| I would think dilute iron chloride would not taste good, but
| you could probably chug enough to get sick.
|
| I believe there would be a similar relationship WRT staining
| skin and clothes, dilute enough HNO3 would not be TOO much
| more dangerous than letting kids handle a can of Mt Dew
| unsupervised, but FeCl in any dilution will stain and damage
| clothes and skin.
|
| If I had to work with maximal concentration solutions of
| both, I'd agree and definitely prefer the conc FeCl vs fuming
| nitric.
| medionsa23 wrote:
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(page generated 2022-07-16 23:01 UTC)