( 12 reviews )
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Posted: Feb 14 2009
Nothing great...was hoping for some totally unique things. Good for your middle school aged child who might want to do something other than play video games on a Saturday morning.
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Posted: Dec 3 2008
I liked this book, it's got a lot of projects kids would be interested in doing, and they all have room for improvement. I think that's a good thing though. Instead of step by steps to a perfect polished project, you can add in your own touches and refinements. As far as lot of the projects being stuff on the internet, that's true. You can go to any number of sites and get all grown up electronics projects for building "spy" gear. But I like books. I'm biased. I like going through them with my children and deciding which project we are going to try together. It's not very expensive, and it's a fun book for the 8-12 set, maybe even for 12-15 year olds who are only marginally interested in electronics, or just getting started with that sort of making. Plus, I just love books with projects that can be made with stuff that would normally be thrown away, or with inexpensive items.
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( 4 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Sep 25 2008
Just in case you didn't understand, let me say at the outset, this book was written and is obviously intended for kids. Boys, most likely, and under the age of 10 or 11 is about right. For THAT audience, this book is actually quite interesting. If you have a Ph.D. in physics, don't buy it. And if you considered the idea, how did you get that Ph.D., again? Not to be a smarty, or anything, but I'm really surprised at readers trashing this book because it's not useful. The book is meant to put kids into the discovery mode, to see capabilities in things they might not otherwise have seen, to think outside the box, as it were. And while not all the suggestions here provide the least bit of interest to an adult, I have to wonder why anyone would have bought this book expecting to get a Master's Degree in Science from it. Geez, the title alone is a dead giveaway. If this book were published by Brown Paper School, a la The Book of Think: Or, How to Solve a Problem Twice Your Size, it would have five stars from everyone. And apart from the marketing, which should put "for kids" or something like on the cover, the book deserves 5 stars. Personally, while I've no intention of running the experiment, I found it interesting to read about how to extract drinking water from a plant. Remember, "you can survive a month without food, but only a few days without water." And for curious kids at least, this book is akin to water.
