Can you help me find an awesome old book of science projects. I remember many relevant details, but nothing handy like the author or title.
In the early 80's when I was growing up in Salt Lake City, I found an awesome book of science projects in the main branch of the public library. It was old, I'd guess late 50s, perhaps pre-sputnik, because I don't remember much space or rocketry content. A substantial portion of the original slip cover looked like it had probably been safety orange, though it was faded by the time I got my hands on it. Lettering on the covering was sans serif and there were various halftones of apparatus and experiments from the book.
I most clearly remember the chemistry experiments with luminol and other forms of chemiluminescece, and a variety of awesome electrical apparatus including Van de Graf generators, enormous transformers, tesla coils, induction coils and Jacobs ladders. There was also a section on kirlian photography. It may or may not have had a section on lasers and holography (which would place it into the 60s). There may also have been sections on radio transmitters and more, but they didn't make the same impression.
It was a pretty thick book, probably 2", the other dimensions were probably close to that of a typical trade hardback. Inside, the layout was pretty business-like. There were captioned halftone photos, illustrations and diagrams, interspersed with blocks of text. It did not mingle text with illustrations in the manner of the
Golden Book of Chemistry.
It was not a kids book, I'd guess that it was targeted at teenagers, or even science instructors. I've looked through the online catalog and it looks like they've purged any science project books older than the late 60s from their collection.
I hope my description will ring a bell with someone. I'd love to pick up a used copy. It was a great book, and I think about it every time I open a new copy of Make magazine.
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During the 50's, 60's, and 70's they used to publish some of the damndest things, like how to make your own sputtering chamber for putting metal onto glass mirrors. You used a nichrome wire to cut off the bottom of a 1-gallon glass jug. Rubber from an innertube was cut to make a seal. To evacuate the chamber, you used a compressor scavanged from a refrigerator. Then you had to muck with high voltage to make the metal deposition work, but that wasn't too tough as long as you don't mind screwing with hundreds of volts... All the articles from that period were like that; entirely too cool, right out of Tom Swift.
In the mid 1980's some time there was a change, and after that they stopped being fun. (They started writing articles about how to study a candle flame, and similarly prosaic stuff like that.)
The kinds of things you listed would be completely plausible as being from the golden age of The Amateur Scientist.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:08 AM on August 8, 2007