3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent hands-on intro to gears, August 16, 2008
This review is from: Hands-on-Science: Get in Gear (Hands-On Science (Innovative Kids)) (Hardcover)
Some time after my son discovered gears in David Macauley's book _The New Way Things Work_ it became clear that we needed gears. Lego offers construction sets with gears, but they are targeted for older children with the patience and skills to build models with many hundreds of small pieces. This book is an excellent hands-on introduction to gears that provides not only gears and a motor to play with, but also tutorial text aimed at the young experimenter. Consider this the lecture/lab series for the elementary school engineer. When I bought the book I figured if it could provide four hours of entertainment then it was a better deal than going to the movies. That was four months ago and several times a week this book is pulled off the shelf and gear combinations are created and recreated.
We first saw this book at the Franklin Institute science museum gift shop. It was the last one on the shelf. It was difficult to determine just what was inside the covers. The book is 10 1/2 inches by 9 1/2 inches and is constructed like a toddler's board book. Thick cardboard pages with punch-out holes tell the story of gears through the entertaining antics of Doc Sprocket and his dog Gizmo. Each page has a project that illustrates fundamentals of gears and mechanical power transfer. At the end of the book is a special gear box with all the gears and items needed for the experiments in the book.
The topics covered are: gear basics, spur gears, compound gears, rack and pinion, crank and rocker, planetary gears, Gizmo's gear groomer (combines all the previous sections to make a machine that my son loves to build over and over again). The last two pages are a "work bench" area where you can build any combination of gears you want. All of the projects use a battery-powered motor in the gear box to bring each experiment to life.
The recommended age group is 6 and up. The gears are properly sized for smaller hands (whereas the gears that come with Lego Technical sets are small and better suited for older children). For younger children you should plan on lots of parent participation the first couple of times through the book. The planetary gear section required a small adjustment as it is difficult to get perfect alignment of the cardboard page sections. A razor knife and a few small cuts were sufficient to fix the problem. The learning and play value of the book far offset the small effort needed to fine tune the planetary gear experiment--but if you really must have a perfectly working planetary gear with little fuss you may want to consider the Hasbro Spirograph.
While the copyright is 2002, the book under review is from the third printing. The cover has changed slightly from that shown on the Amazon website. I was hesitant to buy this at first because I simply did not know what to expect: is it a book, or a toy? My son says it is a toy, but I consider it a book with tremendous play value. After reading this book and trying all the experiments (and creating many more) it is becoming clear that we will need more gears.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great activities!, November 28, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Hands-on-Science: Get in Gear (Hands-On Science (Innovative Kids)) (Hardcover)
This book is wonderful! I got it for my 7-year-old daughter, and she immediately sat down to work. This books takes kids from the basic idea of how gears work, through all the every day uses gears have. She absolutely loved the book!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great intro to gears, March 21, 2005
This review is from: Hands-on-Science: Get in Gear (Hands-On Science (Innovative Kids)) (Hardcover)
I gave this to my son for his 4th birthday and expected to use it with him. He really enjoys the projects and both of us have a great time playing and learning. The only problem we had was that one page was warped and made the project involving planetary gears challenging.
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