The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory: Build Over 200 Pieces of Science Equipment! (Make: Technology on Your Time) The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory: Build Over 200 Pieces of Science Equipment! (Make: Technology on Your Time) The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory: Build Over 200 Pieces of Science Equipment! (Make: Technology on Your Time) Paperback Kindle

Three Questions with Author Windell Oskay

Why should a modern student be interested in making equipment that can easily be purchased?

The possibilities for amateur science today are unbelievable. You learn so much about the physics principles of how things work by doing it yourself. By learning to make things, you get good at making things. In experimental science as a whole, you'll invariably come across something that you need to make that's never been made before. It's a key skill to being an experimental scientist.

Is there a line of inquiry that the original author neglected that you wish was included?

I wish that he had gone more into detail with basic computers. There are two experiments with analog and digital computers in the book. There was a time when it was unclear whether the world would be dominated by analog or digital computers. U.S. Navy battleships used gigantic, extremely complicated analog computers to determine where to fire their great guns, and the ability to do complications, including calculus problems, is staggering. But the book includes very primitive analog and digital computer experiments. When I was growing up, in the era of early Apple computers, I knew about early analog computers and as far as I knew, they were comparable things. I wish he had gone into more detail, as there's a inkling about the coming of the digital computer but not much more after that.

Why are the book's questions great for science fairs?

The collection of questions in the book is a golden resource. There are roughly 2,000 questions in the book and some of the open-ended research questions have no obvious connection to the resources in the book. This is how this book bridges the gap between just being, 'here's a neat physics demo' to 'here's how to learn how to do science.' A really important concept to learn as you develop your understanding of science is that it's not a collection of facts—it's a way of doing things, a method of learning, a framework for categorizing your human understanding of things. When you approach problems with the scientific attitude that you'll follow the data where it leads you, you have a marvelous way of understanding the world.

Filled with 160 projects, you'll learn to...