Physics, Fun, and Beyond: Electrifying Projects and Inventions from Recycled and Low-Cost Materials (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Screw the nut on all the way to the head of the bolt..." (more)
Key Phrases: Electrifying Experiments, Exploring the Laser Ray, Popping Them (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"The best magic is that which involves absolutely no sleight-of-hand, only the unexpected yet natural workings of nature. Physics, Fun, and Beyond is chock full of just this kind of magic--simple yet fascinating experiments, easy to follow and colorful drawings, and fun facts. Simply wonderful!" --Roald Hoffmann, 1981 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry Pure Fun, Pure Excitement: You';ve Never Learned Physics Like This Before! Physics is pure excitement: nothing';s more fun than discovering how the world works and exploring its many possibilities! With Physics, Fun, and Beyond, you';ll grab the universe in your own two hands as you build more than 110 projects that uncover the physics beneath everyday life! Most of these projects are amazingly easy to build: all you';ll need are your everyday household tools and cheap (sometimes even free) materials. From wind tunnels to flying saucers, you';ll learn exactly how to safely build these experiments, why they work, and what they mean. Learn about all this, and more: * Step on eggs without breaking them...and understand the principles of material strength * Build the "Magic Can" that teaches you about the different kinds of energy * Discover why the Earth isn';t exactly round * Learn more about gravity, with the "Astronaut in the Elevator" experiment * Use pendulums to visualize radio/TV frequencies and broadcasting * Feel pressure by sitting on a bed of nails * Build hydraulic robots to discover how you can transmit and amplify forces * Construct wings and wind tunnels that show why airplanes fly * Learn about optics by making bottles invisible * Recreate the sun and sky to realize why the sky is blue * Demonstrate the "greenhouse effect" with a homemade solar heater * Get water to climb walls--as you understand cohesion and adhesion * Build "wireless phones" that capture sound and make acoustics fun * Create simple motors that display the basics of electromagnetism Physics, Fun, and Beyond is for kids, teenagers, teachers, parents, homeschoolers. ..everyone from 10 to 100 with curiosity and a passion for discovery and new challenges! A(c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved

From the Back Cover

“The best magic is that which involves absolutely no sleight-of-hand, only the unexpected yet natural workings of nature. Physics, Fun, and Beyond is chock full of just this kind of magic–simple yet fascinating experiments, easy to follow and colorful drawings, and fun facts. Simply wonderful!”

–Roald Hoffmann, 1981 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry

Pure Fun, Pure Excitement: You’;ve Never Learned Physics Like This Before!

Physics is pure excitement: nothing’;s more fun than discovering how the world works and exploring its many possibilities! With Physics, Fun, and Beyond, you’;ll grab the universe in your own two hands as you build more than 110 projects that uncover the physics beneath everyday life!

Most of these projects are amazingly easy to build: all you’;ll need are your everyday household tools and cheap (sometimes even free) materials. From wind tunnels to flying saucers, you’;ll learn exactly how to safely build these experiments, why they work, and what they mean. Learn about all this, and more:

• Step on eggs without breaking them...and understand the principles of material strength

• Build the “Magic Can” that teaches you about the different kinds of energy

• Discover why the Earth isn’;t exactly round

• Learn more about gravity, with the “Astronaut in the Elevator” experiment

• Use pendulums to visualize radio/TV frequencies and broadcasting

• Feel pressure by sitting on a bed of nails

• Build hydraulic robots to discover how you can transmit and amplify forces

• Construct wings and wind tunnels that show why airplanes fly

• Learn about optics by making bottles invisible

• Recreate the sun and sky to realize why the sky is blue

• Demonstrate the “greenhouse effect” with a homemade solar heater

• Get water to climb walls–as you understand cohesion and adhesion

• Build “wireless phones” that capture sound and make acoustics fun

• Create simple motors that display the basics of electromagnetism

Physics, Fun, and Beyond is for kids, teenagers, teachers, parents, homeschoolers...everyone from 10 to 100 with curiosity and a passion for discovery and new challenges!

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (August 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131856731
• ISBN-13: 978-0131856738
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, September 17, 2005

By	G. G. Cuevas "Willy" (Mexico City, D.F., Mexico) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm working as a senior high school physics teacher and I find that this book is an excellent help to my job. I have several similar books and this one is one of the best.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXPERIMENTING TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS!, October 25, 2008

By	Michael Hugh Knowles (Belo Horizonte, MG, BRASIL) - See all my reviews

Upfront FYI: (I should have written this review years ago; my apologies to everyone.) I was the main translator of this book from the Portuguese version to English, although Eduardo added many new experiments in his very good English, which I merely polished. I even enjoyed doing dry runs on all the experiments to make sure pieces were counted right, fit together right, etc. In fact, this was how I first met Eduardo. I was (and am) retired and living in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil, with my Brazilian wife, Maristela. Back in the 1960s I was a physics major in college (but got my bachelors in math, etc). My native English was still good (although I keep forgetting it more and more), and my Portuguese just passable enough for me to try, so I wangled the job. I was very lucky to have done so. Eduardo's enthusiasm for finding new experiments with new insights was contagious, and his philosophy for sharing his love and knowledge of physics inspiring. (And they still are!) I have known Eduardo as a friend for years now, and it is always a pleasure to meet with him and find out his latest experiments and successes in improving science education around the world.

The most important thing I want to say here is that Physics, Fun and Beyond is much more than just your usual book of a bunch of physics experiments for kids. Sure, it helps that a real effort was made to make sure all the experiments could be done with recycled and low cost materials. But Eduardo has a philosophy of teaching kids TO LOVE EXPERIMENTING TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS, not just to obtain a result they are told in advance they should obtain. Although the publisher/editor insisted that he add some of that, which Eduardo did well, his philosophy of actually experimenting to find out what happens makes his Physics, Fun and Beyond quite special, (I hope merely almost) unique.

But there is more. I can affirm this as I was a physics major for years (at the U. of Illinois). We were always doing experiments in the lab. But the experiments we did in the lab were "canned experiments" where we knew what results--quantitative, of course--we should get. But MORE than this, ALL the lab experiments were not only COMPLETELY oriented toward QUANTIFICATION, but to FITTING the RESULTS to ESTABLISHED THEORY. NONE were just to "find out what happens". Most of the experiments in Eduardo's Physics, Fun and Beyond are experiments that you will NEVER PERFORM if you go through what has been the standard school route to become a physicist; you will never "find out what happens" in so many fascinating real world situations that Eduardo has collected, having discovered/invented very many or most of them himself. The physics of PhD physicists is a "completely" different world from the one you will enter if you perform all the experiments in Physics, Fun and Beyond. These worlds SHOULD be ONE WORLD, but our schools and scientists do not yet realize this. Since the experiments are so low cost in preparation time and materials, adding them to grade school science classes, high school science classes, and even to undergraduate and graduate university science classes, would be budgetarily on the trivial side.

Many of Eduardo's experiments give results that are difficult to figure out how to describe QUALITATIVELY, even though you can form inspiring mental models of what is happening. This adds to the joy of experimenting, even if it is at times frustrating (like when trying to tell someone about it). And, too, many of them are essentially impossible to figure out how to QUANTIFY, how to measure (even if you had the best scientific lab equipment available) and get the usual "meaningful numbers", etc, even though it is joyfully obvious that real physics is happening right before your very eyes. The experiments are simple, but do not mistake that for scientifically naïve or unsophisticated. Some of them are "elementary" in the best scientific sense of that word. We can even toss in Thomas Kuhn's "paradigmatic", or some such. If such experiments as these were standard in our science education, our science would find itself rapidly evolving in new directions.

Eduardo's Physics, Fun and Beyond, invites children, grownups, and even professional physicists, to experience a WHOLE NEW WORLD of physics that they may never find (or may never have found) in school, unless their teachers wisely make good use of this book. (I hope there are others like it, though I have not yet found them.) And I recommend it in no uncertain terms for you professional physicists out there, ESPECIALLY those experiments in the area that you think of as your specialty.

Physics, Fun and Beyond is an excellent book for curious children of any age who want to find out what happens, even better for "gifted" children of any age, and for anyone who wants to help our science of physics to realize the full potential of its future evolution.